Waltz For The Wolves
Wolf's 10th Anniversary Celebration

This summer Wolf will mark its official Tenth Anniversary. Wolf incorporated as a nonprofit charitable organization on July 5th 1995. In May Wolf will also mark the first observance of National Animal Sanctuary Day. On June 4, 2005, we are going to celebrate these milestones by hosting a DINNER, DANCE, LIVE AND SILENT AUCTION.

The ‘committee of seven’ has been working on the preparations to insure everyone has a wonderful time. The event will be held at The Hilton Fort Collins, 425 West Prospect Road, Fort Collins, CO. There will be dancing until midnight to Altered Egos and entertainment by Violet.


The festivities will start at 6:30 pm with Hors d’oeuvres and a champagne toast. During this time you can peruse the silent auction items on display. There will be many wonderful items for you to bid on. Ambassador animals will be present for you to meet from 6:30 pm until 7:30 pm.

At approximately 7:30 dinner will be served and you may choose from two delicious entrées; Lasagna with Basil Marinara or Roast Vegetable Wellington with Fresh Tomato Fresca. After dinner the live auction will be held followed by your choice of two sumptuous desserts. Dancing and entertainment will continue after the auction until the stroke of midnight.
Attire will be up to you, come as dressed up or dressed down as you like. Tickets are on sale now for $50.00 per person. Please consider sponsoring a corporate table for your company or a private table for your family and friends. Every person attending will also receive a token of appreciation commemorating Wolf’s Tenth Anniversary.

For further information on sponsorship levels and the benefits you will receive as a table sponsor, call Pat Wendland at 970-416-9531. You can also contact Pat if you would like to have an invitation sent to someone you know or have contacts who would like to donate an item for the auction.

Frank and Pat Wendland, cofounders of Wolf, hope you will join them for a wonderful, entertaining night out on the town. (Yes, you heard right, Frank will actually be leaving the mountain.) This is a great opportunity for us to spend an evening with all of the people who have supported Wolf for all these years. All proceeds from the Celebration will go to the Sanctuary animals for their care. Please remember your ticket price is tax deductible.

Please RSVP with the following form by May 28, 2005.

Wolf Assisted Therapy

For many years now the Founders of Wolf have known of the therapeutic value of animal assisted therapy. Over the years Wolf has worked with not only the animals but with people who have needed to find their path in life. People from all walks of life and all ages have come to the Sanctuary to volunteer and have had life changing experiences. Many of these are teens at risk. Wolf has had a somewhat formal program to assist young people in rising above addictions, abuse and other social problems.

This program has been very successful and the results are amazing. To this end Wolf has been working with numerous schools for youth at risk. Among these schools are AIM House, Turning Point and Wingshadow just to mention a few.

On other levels the wolves have helped people who are ill or dying. They have been able to reach out in their own way and help others through grief when nothing else helps.

Wolf, in an effort to continue this program, now works with Mary Ann McCain, MACP, NCAC II. Below is a brief version of Mary Ann’s opinion as to why animal assisted therapy, with the wolves, helps.

“For many centuries, wolves have been categorized in negative terms. Wolves have represented the “shadow” side of human nature. Due to this representation, humans have feared these incredible animals.”

“As I have observed many interactions between these intuitive animals and humans, I am in awe. The wolves have an incredible ability to reflect back to humans all aspects of themselves. In the same instant, wolves intuitively “know” all beings need love and affection to encourage and foster the self-healing we all need to truly follow our heart.”

As part of this program we often ask these people to write an essay expressing what they feel when they come to Wolf. This is often heart wrenching for the person involved as well as us, but it enables the person to express feelings that otherwise would not be spoken. It is a first step in the healing process, the first step to recovery. The beginning step of a journey on a path to a meaningful life, free of fear and addictions whether physical or emotional. The following is an essay from one of the young people in this program. For this person it is the first true expression of his/her fears, the first step to healing.

It’s safe to say that I have low self esteem. I have always felt that at the most primal and core level, I was not good enough. This has transferred itself into many aspects of my life from interacting socially to underachieving to, well, you name it.

En route to Wolf the first day I felt the pang of anxiety gnawing at my stomach. I had heard countless tales of how genuinely wolves can feel a person’s energy, their soul. This terrified me. I felt I had done a decent job of ‘convincing’ people to like me. I had maintained a façade and fooled the masses. In one day however, the wolves would uncover this veneer and react by running from me, attacking me, or a combination of the two. I somehow sustained my breath as I walked into the first pen. To my surprise, I was not mauled, nor feared. Rather the wolves approached me with comfort and ease. They were attracted by my energy, my spirit, my core.
This didn’t feel right. Why were they not running from me? Can’t they see what a terrible person I am? Is there a possibility that I am alright as a being? But this felt so unsuitable to me. I had convinced myself for 21 years that I was intrinsically wrong, and here my heart felt beliefs were being challenged in one morning.

This pattern continued throughout the day, and even the wolves that typically object to people were approaching me. My outlook was being contested and I had reason to believe these intuitive animals, rather than my own skewed vision of myself. Maybe I am not all that bad.

As I wandered inside for lunch, I began to laugh at the absurdity of my fears. The truth I so desperately wanted to hide from the wolves was that I was potentially a good person. Through being with the wolves, I am beginning to learn that on an inherent level I am okay. I have begun to understand that by wolf and wolf-dog standards, I’m not too bad, but more importantly, by my own standards, I’m not so bad either.

I am sure some of you are wondering why a wolf sanctuary would want to run a program like this. It is very simple; humans and wolves are extremely social animals and wolves because of their social/family way of life can teach. For some of these young people this is the only family life they have experienced. It involves caring, nurturing, trust and safety. The animals become family and the humans learn about a different way of life, a different way to live their lives, with respect for others and most importantly themselves. In this process all benefit, the wolves are cared for and the humans learn the way to a more meaningful and productive life.

Colorado Wolf Management Plan Update

Executive Summary
Presented by the Division of Wildlife

Dispersing wolves could enter Colorado as a result of expanding populations from recovery programs to the north and south, as evidenced by a wolf killed on Interstate 70 in June 2004. In April of 2004, the Colorado Division of Wildlife (CDOW) appointed a 14-member Wolf Management Working Group (Working Group) to address management of wolves in Colorado, composed of four livestock producers, four wildlife advocates, two wildlife biologist, two sportsman, and two local government officials.

The focus of the Working Group was on State management after the federal government removes the wolf from the protections of the Endangered Species Act (ESA). The working group met from June through December of 2004. They agreed to use consensus for their deliberations and for the recommendations in the final report.

The Working Group agreed that there would be both positive and negative impacts from wolf presence in Colorado. Positive impacts could include restoration of ecological systems and aesthetic contributions to the Colorado landscape, while negative impacts could include depredation on livestock and reduction of wild ungulate populations.

The Working Group finalized their recommendations by consensus to the CDOW in the following document.

Four guiding principles for wolf management were agreed upon:
Impact-Based Management: Address positive and negative impacts of wolf presence.

Adaptive Management: Learn by doing, monitor, and apply new knowledge.

Monitoring: Use various methods to track and understand wolf populations, livestock depredation, wild ungulate populations, and human attitudes.

Damage Payments/Proactive Measures: Compensate for losses and encourage methods to minimize livestock-wolf conflicts.

Specific recommendations include the following:
Migrating wolves should be allowed to live with no boundaries where they find habitat. Wolf distribution in Colorado will ultimately be defined by the interplay between ecological needs and social tolerance.

If wolves are causing problems, manage to resolve the problem. When negative impacts occur, they should be addressed on a case-by-case basis utilizing a combination of appropriate management tools and damage payments. Allow take of wolves to manage depredations.

Flexibility should be maintained in the array of management tools available to accommodate changing circumstances over time. These management tools include a variety of lethal and non-lethal methods authorized under the Colorado Wildlife Commission regulation 1002.B.4 (Federal Endangered Species Act 4(d) rule) for wolves in the Western Distinct Population Segment (WDPS).

Wolf monitoring is an essential component of the plan. Monitoring can be conducted with different types of technology and at varying intensity levels based on local needs and CDOW discretion.

It is in everyone’s best interest to work towards solutions that will avoid or mitigate potential wolf-livestock conflicts. Opportunities should be available to livestock producers to implement non-lethal management tools and other proactive measures to reduce the potential for wolf-livestock conflict.

The CDOW should operate a wolf damage fund for livestock losses. Funds should not be derived from sportsmen’s dollars and should not encroach upon other game management programs. Payments should cover 100 % of confirmed losses and 50 % of probable losses.

The CDOW should, over time, bring the wolf into existing management programs and policies for other carnivores, such as mountain lions and black bears.

The CDOW should work cooperatively with other agencies, organizations, and the private sector to achieve wolf management goals in a proactive manner.

The CDOW should develop and implement an information, education and public outreach program to parallel wolf management activities in Colorado.

The Working Group recommends that the CDOW implement the management policies described in this document on behalf of the people of Colorado.

Since this Summary was written a Federal Judge has reclassified all wolves in Colorado as Endangered. When the Summary was written, wolves north of Interstate 70 were classified as protected and wolves south of Interstate 70 were classified endangered. All wolves now coming into Colorado and other states are back on the endangered list, which affords them more protection.

There are 10 more pages to this report. If you would like to review a copy you can contact the Colorado Division of Wildlife at 970-472-4300.

Volunteer Opportunities
- Part I

Wolf depends on Volunteers to accomplish its mission. Because we depend on Volunteer help for everything, you could find yourself working at the facility, doing educational programs, retail or tabling programs, building fences and so on. For those of you that are in Vet School or learning to be a vet tech, Wolf has plenty of hands on jobs such as learning to give injections, draw blood and administer medication.

In this article, the first of a series of three, I would like to discuss Program Volunteers. The program volunteers help with different types of programs.

The first type of program is the Educational Program. The Educational Program includes a Power Point presentation with different slides and content. We vary the content dependent on the age of the audience. The reason we have gone to a power point program is so that Volunteers can easily learn how to do the speaking part. This program is designed to educate everyone from pre-school children to senior citizens. We would like to get to the point where we can have enough trained volunteers to do more than one educational program in a day. Part of the educational program is hands on and a volunteer is needed to handle one of the ambassador animals. To handle an animal at a program you must be a level one trainee and accompanied by a volunteer of a higher level. In addition, you must have attended at least 2 educational programs or public event programs.

Another type of program is the public event. For a public event like New West Fest or Estes Park Elk Days, we take out our retail merchandise for sale to the public. This is a much less structured event. We hand out brochures, newsletters and answer questions. These are usually all day affairs, with animals present. We try to rotate the animals to prevent them from becoming overtired. In general animals only go out once or twice in a week. For these public events we need several volunteers. Volunteers to set up tents, merchandise and hand out Wolf brochures and information. You will need to be trained on how to answer the questions posed to you by the public. Volunteers are needed for retail sales and you will need to learn how to fill out sales and charge slips. Animals will be present and specific training is needed on how to deal with other animals that approach the wolves.

The other type of program is called a tabling. Wolf does several tablings a month. There are specific places we go, set up a table or two with merchandise, answer questions and hand out information. Occasionally we conduct the power point program at a tabling and at certain locations we do Reiki sessions.

As you can see, we have a variety of things that need to be accomplished at programs. Last year Wolf conducted over 175 educational programs. This takes considerable time and energy and at this time we have a small core group of program volunteers. More are needed. If you have any interest in doing this type of volunteering contact me, Brandy Russell at (970) 224-1295 or call Pat at the Sanctuary (970)-416-9531.

Next newsletter I will discuss volunteering at the Sanctuary.

THANK YOU