WALDEN, Colo. — Neighborhood block parties just look different, when cattle outnumber kids and incessant moo-ing replaces a playlist.
Donna Sykes likes it that way.
“We’ve lived up here 28 years — I’m so thankful I don’t have to live in the city,” said Sykes, who is a rancher who works for Swift Ranches near Walden. "There’s not an ugly place in North Park.”
Donna, her husband Greg, and everyone in the sparsely populated North Park area of Colorado depend on one another. So when the Sykeses needed help branding hundreds of calves, the neighbors showed up in droves.
“I don’t have a job because we’ve got so many people,” Sykes said.
She knows her neighbors' birthdays, and who in the group would want an extra brownie from the batch she baked the night before. In turn, her neighbors know she and Greg are going through a tough time.
“The fact that wolves have killed people’s dogs and pets,” said John Harvat, a Colorado rancher. “They had nine dogs — and it was their very best dog, a very valuable dog.”
Harvat is talking about Cisco, the Sykeses’ black-and-white border collie — a dog well-known in the area for being helpful in moving cows on the vast landscape in North Park. Greg Sykes loved him for that. He also just loved him like anyone loves a special dog.
“Stock dogs aren’t family, and he was family,” Greg Sykes said. “Everything’s different. I don’t know how to explain it, and I won’t cry. He knew this ranch as well as I did or anybody else.”
A wolf, or wolves, killed Cisco in March. Greg Sykes had just let him out of his indoor kennel in the early hours of the morning. They were getting ready to go work. When Greg went outside, he found Cisco dead.
“Cisco was out here, just right out front,” he said, gesturing to a spot just a few hundred feet from his front door. "We both feel a little guilt, like we let him down — they count on us, and we weren’t there for him.”
Colorado Parks and Wildlife investigated and reimbursed the Sykes’ for Cisco’s death, as is policy in wolf-related livestock and stock dog deaths. In calendar year 2022, CPW confirmed eleven wolf depredations. Four wolf claims were paid in fiscal year 2022, which started in July of 2021 to July of 2022, and totaled $12,929.75. So far in calendar year 2023, there have been two confirmed wolf depredations. Eight claims have been paid in fiscal year 2023, which started in July of 2022 until July of 2023, totaling $26,474.23.
The Sykes’ are not comfortable with talking about what they were reimbursed. They said that money is not a replacement for a dog they depended on and cared about.
“There’s not a value, I don’t think,” Greg Sykes said. “They put values together, but there’s not a value.”
> The video below is of Cisco:
CPW said they can confirm there are two wolves that are radio collared in the area that the Sykeses and their neighbors live. Those wolves migrated to Colorado in 2019, but there will be more coming.
In 2020, Colorado voted by a margin of less than 2% to reintroduce wolves by the end of 2023. Most of the votes came from counties miles away from where wolves will be introduced. Currently, wolves are federally listed in Colorado, so if a rancher sees a wolf killing a calf or another animal, they are not allowed to kill the wolf.
“This is a whole new episode of my life,” Greg Sykes said. “This is a whole new avenue I’m going to have to deal with.”
Many of the Sykeses’ ranching neighbors have similar worries.
“If the wolves were tearing my horses apart in my yard, I’d have a hard time watching them tear my horse apart,” Harvat said. “I think if people knew a little more about it like they do now, I don’t think it would’ve passed.”
The Sykeses miss Cisco. They are grateful for the help of their neighbors — those who knew how valuable their dog was and what kind of hole he left on the ranch.
“There were lots of times when Cisco, Greg’s dog — we didn’t want Greg, we just wanted his dog to come and help us,” said Johnny Schmidt, a rancher. “That was a heartbreaker for us because we all knew that dog.”
Donna Sykes said she prays every night that wolves will not be reintroduced to Colorado.
“The wolf thing — to think that’s just another thing we could be dealing with,” she said. “With calves suffering, being mauled and torn apart by a wolf where we have no control.”
Colorado Parks and Wildlife has said they will be getting 10 to 15 wolves from somewhere in the Rocky Mountain west, to be released by the end of 2023. So far, Wyoming and Idaho have said they will not give Colorado wolves.
> Video below: The conflict over the reintroduction of wolves in Colorado:
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