Animals Have a Safe Haven in Divide, at the Colorado Wolf and Wildlife Center

Fri  Jan 01, 2016

By: Jessica Leicht

Colorado Wolf and Wildlife Center

If you take Highway 24 West, past the North Pole, and into the town of Divide, you'll come across a winter wonderland.

The Colorado Wolf and Wildlife Center is a sanctuary for wolves, coyotes and foxes.
As dawn breaks, you can hear them howling.

In the mid 1800's, there were 450,000 wolves across the country.

Today, there are just more than 5,000 wolves left.

"Definitely a misconception about these guys. They are shy, very elusive creatures, but they still have that big bad wolf stigma about them,” Employee Kacey Hampf said.

The safe haven started in 1993 when Darlene Kobobel adopted a wolf-dog hybrid, Chinook, who was going to be euthanized.

"Darlene was like – please let me have her, please let me have her. So she had to get a special permit and put a sign in the yard saying wolf dog rescue within a few weeks she had 17 wolf dogs,” Catherine, an Office Manager at the center said.

Darlene's rescue has evolved into much more, with the goal of educating people about these four legged creatures and their importance to our eco-system.

"I love Darlene's goal and voice and I want to help her with her mission not to just speak up for wolves but for other animals domestic and wild. It’s very important to us to be a voice for the animals,” Catherine said.

The Colorado Wolf and Wildlife Center has their Association of Zoos and Aquariums Certification for their conservation efforts.

It's one of only 20 in the country, and allows them to have endangered species to help teach the public.

For a list of their tours, go to http://www.wolfeducation.org/.

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