Feb. 20, 2005
Ranchers dread wolves’ return

By BILL McKEOWN THE GAZETTE

MONTROSE - Sheepman Angelo Theos’ last line of defense consists of cute puppies yipping and squirming for attention inside a pen.

Yeah, he’s worried, all right.

The white pups, a Turkish breed called Akbash, will be formidable guard dogs when they’re grown. But Theos suspects they’ll be no match for the gray wolves scientists think eventually will move into the high mountain desert in northwestern Colorado, where the Theos family has run sheep for four generations.

“That’s a killing machine, we know that,” Theos said of the wolves that even now may be making their way down from healthy packs in Yellowstone Park, Idaho and Montana. “By God, coyotes are killing our dogs and sheep now, and they’re nowhere near as aggressive as wolves.”

Up the road in Craig, Theos’ friend Steve Raftopoulos runs one of the biggest sheep operations in Colorado. He spends $18,000 a year in food for his 50 herd and guard dogs. He knows the dogs and his small army of sheepherders won’t be able to protect his 12,000 lambs when wolves slink back.

“They’re brutal. They kill for sport. They have no fear. They just devastate everything,” Raftopoulos said. “Our forefathers wouldn’t have got rid of them if they weren’t a big threat.”

As early as March, the Colorado Wildlife Commission could vote on whether to approve a plan that puts no impediments on the natural migration of wolves back into a state that killed its last native wolf in the 1930s.

The plan has won the reluctant support of the livestock industry, partly because it requires compensation for animals killed in wolf attacks and allows ranchers to kill wolves attacking their herds.

But they aren’t wild about it. Not at all.

“If we had the power, we’d say, ‘Hell, no!’” Raftopoulos said.

Some members of the stateappointed panel that devel- oped the plan want to launch into a far more controversial action: reintroduction of wolves somewhere on the Western Slope, much like what was done in Yellowstone National Park in the 1990s.

That prospect greatly troubles livestock producers such as Theos and Raftopoulos.

They’ve heard wolf advocates cite surveys showing that a majority of Coloradans want to see the carnivores back. They know the wolf has become a symbol of wildness in an increasingly urbanized state.

They, too, think the wolf is a symbol. For them, it symbolizes a threat to their animals, their pocketbooks and their ability to control their destinies.

“If you’re a kid in Denver and all you see is sidewalk and pavement and someone shows you a film about the wolf, you’re going to fall in love with it,” Raftopoulos said. “But if you have to suffer the consequences, you’ll have a different viewpoint.”

Their perspective is shaped by their history. The two men are descendants of Greeks who moved to the United States to work in the coal mines in Price, Utah. Their ancestors eventually scrimped together enough money to move east to Colorado, carving sheep and cattle ranches out of sage and oak brush.

That was possible, the two men say, because those early settlers were able to manage the land and and animals in this dry, inhospitable corner of Colorado.

A century later, Theos and Raftopoulos feel that control slipping away in a pasteurized New West.

Growth is spreading west from Steamboat Springs, carrying a wave of 35-acre ranchettes, double-wide trailers, domestic dogs and fences. Ranchers’ historic grazing rights are under attack by environmentalists. Prices of fuel, trucks and insurance are soaring. Colorado voters in 1996 banned the use of most trapping to control predators.

“As good a sheepman as my grandfather was,” Theos said, “he couldn’t have made it today.”

Raftopoulos’ take: “Society has regulated us so much the past 20 years, one layer piled on after another, it’s getting to the point of diminishing returns.”

The two men aren’t hicks or hotheads. They have college degrees — Theos in agriculture, Raftopoulos in accounting. Raftopoulos’ brother, John, a veterinarian, runs the family’s cattle operation.

They are soft-spoken; men of stature in their communities. They’ve known animals all their lives and can appreciate what walks on all fours.

But when those legs are carrying off their lambs, all they see are home invaders making off with hard-earned money.

Last year, Raftopoulos lost more than 900 lambs to predators, 200 more than the year before. At $100 a head, that’s a $90,000-plus loss for a business that normally returns a modest 2 to 5 percent profit, he said.

Theos, despite an increased use of the Akbash guard dogs, lost 8 percent of his lambs — about 260 — last year to coyote and bear. Six years ago, he lost 12 percent of his lambs. Theos said that’s akin to asking city folks to take an 8 percent to 12 percent cut in their annual salary — year after year.

Attacks by predators — bears, coyotes, mountain lions, golden eagles — wreak havoc even among the sheep that aren’t killed, Theos said. The ewes can go dry; the animals get stress sicknesses; and many scatter so far his Peruvian herders never find them.

Sheepmen in Wyoming and Montana said they can expect such losses to climb steeply if wolves return, and that the compensation program won’t fully cover the damage.

They say they can handle the periodic droughts, the market fluctuations, even a certain level of loss from predators. That’s part of the game.

The wolf, they say, will be one more obstacle.

“If you can’t make a living off the land, you sell the land,” Raftopoulos said. “Steamboat is coming this way. Guess what the land will be used for.”

Theos’ son, Tony, is back on his dad’s ranch after graduating from college. He expects to run the operation one day and hand it on to the next generation — if he can.

“Hopefully, when I’m my dad’s age, I can pass it to my son,” he said recently, looking out over the tidy barn and outbuildings of Swallow Fork Ranch from a ridgeline. “But there are a lot of challenges he didn’t have when he was young.”

His dad is more pessimistic: “You might have to go to the zoo in 10 years to see a sheepman.”