Leonardo DiCaprio Instagram – Repost from @postclimate Colorado wildlife officials released gray wolves on public lands on Dec. 18, as a part of the state’s voter-backed reintroduction program to create a permanent, self-sustaining wolf population. The wolves are part of a first-in-the-nation effort to reintroduce an endangered species to the wild at the behest of voters, rather than the government. It came three years after the narrow passage of a ballot measure calling for their return to a state from which wolves had been extirpated nearly a century before. The ballot measure was heavily supported in urban areas east of the Rockies and widely opposed on the rural Western Slope, where the releases are taking place. Ranchers had previously reported dead cattle, sheep and working dogs.