DENVER (AP) — Wildlife activists want Colorado voters to decide next year if the endangered gray wolf should be reintroduced in the state decades after it disappeared.
Backers of a ballot initiative delivered thousands of voter signatures on Tuesday to the secretary of state’s office in hopes of getting their proposal on the 2020 ballot.
Officials have 30 days to determine if enough signatures are valid to qualify the initiative.
The gray wolf has been successfully restored in a number of U.S. states but was hunted to extinction in Colorado in the 1940s. Colorado ranchers and other interests strongly oppose the initiative, saying it would threaten livestock.