Through a lawsuit filed in federal district court Monday, the industry organizations are seeking a court order to delay the release of gray wolves into Colorado by Dec. 31, a deadline required by the state’s Gray Wolf Introduction Initiative narrowly approved by voters in 2020.

The complaint alleges the two agencies violated the National Environmental Policy Act by not conducting an environmental assessment or environmental impact statement on the “environmental consequences of reintroducing gray wolves to Colorado.”

Previous environmental impact studies released this fall did not address those issues, the lawsuit states.

The Colorado Cattlemen’s Association, which represents 6,000 members, has long opposed the ballot measure to reintroduce gray wolves, with officials describing it as a threat to humans, domestic pets, livestock and wildlife.

Under the state’s reintroduction plan, up to 10 wolves will be brought to Colorado from Oregon by plane or truck and released in Summit, Eagle or Grand counties by the end of the year, where they will likely disperse by up to 70 miles.

The agency plans to bring up to 50 more wolves to Colorado over the next five years.

But despite years of planning and development, state and federal wildlife officials did not take the required steps to analyze the impact of gray wolf reintroduction as required under the National Environmental Policy Act, the lawsuit alleges.

In a statement, Gunnison County Stockgrowers’ Association President Andy Spann said concerns raised by the group during the reintroduction plan’s development were not sufficiently resolved.

“We believe that much of our input, and that of many others across Western Colorado, was diminished by the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission,” Spann said. “We regret that a course of litigation on this and other issues seems to be the only recourse left to have these concerns legitimately addressed.”

The lawsuit seeks a declaratory judgment that the federal and state wildlife agencies violated the law by renewing an Endangered Species Act agreement without preparing an environmental impact statement on the reintroduction of gray wolves and a court order to delay reintroduction until it is complete.

Colorado Parks and Wildlife and U.S. Fish and Wildlife officials could not be reached for comment late Monday night.

This is a developing story and may be updated. 

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The strike that began Sunday night was set to last through the day Monday, with some of the striking workers rallying outside DIA’s Main Terminal at 10:30 a.m.

Around three dozen of the striking workers showed up to Monday’s rally, walking around the plaza entrance by the Westin Hotel wearing SEIU sweatshirts and holding signs that read “Swissport Cargo Workers On Strike Over Unsafe Working Conditions.”

“It’s a big ask to get people to risk their job in this way, even though it’s legally protected,” said Andrew Guttman, who works as a cargo agent for Swissport. “People are nervous about it. Doing more than one day would’ve been a lot to bite off.”

Cargo workers were expected to be joined by other airport workers, community members and elected officials supporting their fight for safer working conditions, according to a Monday news release from the Service Employees International Union.

While the cargo workers are not part of the union, they reached out to it for help after their Swissport strike notice gained 80 to 90 workers’ signatures.

Swissport handles airfreight and airport ground services at DIA, and the strike only should affect Amazon packages coming in and out of the airport, not commercial flights, Guttman said.

According to Swissport’s website, the company has provided airport ground services and managed an air cargo warehouse at DIA since 2006.

The DIA media relations team confirmed airport operations are expected to remain normal during the strike in an emailed statement to the Denver Post on Monday.

“We want management to take our concerns seriously, so hopefully this is a way to get that to happen,” Guttman said. “If it’s not, we’ll keep working to get them to pay attention. We want to organize this because it matters to us.”

Guttman said the strike is an escalation of petitions that management hasn’t responded to — the first being circulated a year ago in December 2022 and the most recent being filed in August.

The petitions called out faulty and broken equipment, dangerous working temperatures at facilities, heaters not functioning during winter weather, and inadequate safety training.

“We’re trying to get their attention, and we knew we had to go bigger in some way,” Guttman said. “After the second petition was circulated in August, we gave them a deadline of the following month to respond. When that didn’t happen, we had never stopped talking to each other and this strike just felt like the next natural thing.”

Earlier this year, Swissport workers at DIA alleged a warehouse fire broke out after a loading truck struck a floor heating machine that was exposed without any protections in place, according to SEIU’s Monday release.

“I’ve just seen too many of my coworkers get hurt and be put in dangerous situations at work over the past year,” Guttman said. “We’ve delivered petitions, filed multiple OSHA complaints, and Swissport has refused to address the real safety concerns that are putting our lives at risk on the job.”

Denver workers aren’t alone in these issues.

Last December, Swissport workers at the Chicago O’Hare airport also went on strike to call out unfair labor practices. In June, Swissport workers at Boston Logan International Airport, Dulles International Airport, and LaGuardia followed.

In a statement, Swissport officials said the company is “unwavering” in its commitment to following operating permit requirements and labor regulations while “fostering a workplace that values the rights and well-being of our employees while maintaining operational compliance with industry standards.”

“Most of our employees fulfilled their scheduled hours and did not participate in the work stoppage,” Swissport officials said in a statement. “Swissport continues to proactively address any issues or concerns raised by our team, reinforcing our enduring commitment to cultivating a positive and supportive work environment.”

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4:36 p.m.: Westbound Interstate 70 at Golden has reopened to traffic.

Interstate 70 was closed in several places across Colorado on Friday for crashes as a winter storm moved across the mountains and into metro Denver.

Eastbound I-70 was closed at Glenwood Springs through Glenwood Canyon to exit 129 for Bair Ranch due to a pileup crash at Hanging Lake tunnel, according to the Colorado Department of Transportation. The closure was reported at 2:20 p.m.

An 18-vehicle pileup closed westbound I-70 between west Parachute and De Beque as of 11:08 a.m.

Westbound I-70 in Golden is closed at C-470 after an oversized tractor-trailer hit a bridge Friday morning, according to the Colorado State Patrol. Traffic is being diverted.

This is a developing story. 

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None of the injuries were life-threatening, said Master Trooper Gary Cutler. The crash involved 17 passenger vehicles and four semi-trucks.

CDOT reported the closure between exit 72 for west Parachute and exit 62 for De Beque at 11:08 a.m.. The highway did not reopen until 5:42 p.m., according to the agency’s website.

The highway was also closed in both directions at Glenwood Springs due to a crash, according to the agency, and westbound lanes in Golden were closed because a tractor-trailer hit a bridge.

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The highway was closed for more than five hours on Friday after the Colorado State Patrol reported the closure in Golden at 11:06 a.m. Traffic was diverted to Colorado 470.

No injuries were reported and the Colorado Department of Transportation responded to the bridge.

The truck that was wedged under the bridge was carrying an 80,000-pound load, the state patrol posted on X.

Interstate 70 was also entirely shut down for about four hours in Glenwood Springs due to a crash, and westbound lanes are closed in DeBeque due to an 18-car pileup.

The crash occurred at about 9:10 p.m. on westbound I-76 between Sable Boulevard and U.S. 85 while Commerce City police and South Adams County firefighters were investigating a suspected drunken-driving crash involving one vehicle, Colorado State Patrol Master Trooper Gary Cutler said at a news conference Friday.

A fire truck was blocking two lanes of traffic for the investigation and officers were directing traffic onto the right shoulder when a 24-year-old man driving a Toyota Tacoma drove around police barricades and to the left of the truck, hitting four first responders.

One firefighter sustained serious injuries and underwent surgery on Friday, said South Adams County Fire Chief Ken Koger. One Commerce City officer sustained moderate injuries, and a South Adams County firefighter and a Commerce City officer sustained minor injuries in the crash.

The 24-year-old was arrested on suspicion of drunken driving and booked into the Adams County jail early Friday morning. Additional information about charges in the case was not available on Friday.

Colorado State Patrol troopers responded to 214 DUI crashes in Adams County alone last year, Cutler said at the news conference.

“We are getting to a point where we absolutely need the public’s help,” he said. “We need people to actually start taking responsibility on this. When we can’t get our own people out there to help others that are in need of assistance when they have crashes or something else that’s going on the road, and we have to worry about being hit and injured or possibly killed… this cannot continue the way it’s been going.”

Koger choked up when talking about receiving the call that one of his firefighters was seriously injured on Thursday night.

“This has got to stop,” he said. “These guys are trained, they park their vehicles to protect them and it’s still not enough. Being a firefighter today and walking into burning buildings is not the danger of the job anymore, it’s being on the highways. This has got to stop. I don’t know what we have to do, but it has to change.”

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Denver Police Department officials discussed details of the Nov. 26 incident during a news conference at police headquarters Thursday.

Officers responded to Fusion Studios at 3737 Quebec St. at 9:20 a.m. on reports from a pretrial services employee that Jesse Stowers, 43, was in the area and had tampered with his ankle monitor.

Stowers had a court order barring him from the apartment complex and officers found his ankle monitor in an alleyway outside, Cmdr. Matt Clark said at the news conference Thursday.

Body camera footage shows police forced open a bathroom door where it appeared Stowers was flushing drugs down the toilet or sink, according to body camera footage and Clark.

Officers arrested Stowers and walked him outside, repeatedly asking him if he had used drugs. Stowers was also examined by paramedics before he was transported to the jail, Clark said.

While Stowers was in the back of a police car being transported he began having a medical event, Clark said.

Body camera footage shows officers removed Stowers from the vehicle near 29th and Champa streets, and he leaned against an officer and then a police car while he appeared to be shaking and struggling to breathe.

Officers repeatedly asked him what he took so they could get him medical help, but he did not respond, according to the footage.

The officers lowered him to the ground and administered naloxone, which is used to treat opioid overdoses, which did not appear to have an impact, Clark said. Stowers stopped breathing, and officers removed his handcuffs and started CPR.

He was transported to the hospital and pronounced dead later that day, Clark said.

The Denver Office of the Medical Examiner is investigating the cause and nature of Stowers’ death, but preliminary information shows narcotics may have been a factor, Clark said. Toxicology reports are still pending in the case.

The officers involved have returned to normal duty, Clark said.

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Snow showers in Denver will likely start after 4 p.m. Friday with a 60 percent chance of precipitation and less than half an inch of accumulation, according to the National Weather Service’s Boulder office.

Up to 1 inch of snow could fall in Denver on Friday night before tapering off Saturday.

Between 1 and 2 inches of snow are forecasted for most of the Interstate 25 corridor, though up to 6 inches of snow are possible in parts of Douglas, Arapahoe and Jefferson counties, according to the agency.

Most mountain communities are forecasted to see 4 to 10 inches of snow, with Vail and Aspen getting up to a foot.

Drivers should expect snowy and slick roads starting Friday night when temperatures drop below freezing, forecasters wrote in a Hazardous Weather Outlook on Thursday.

Wildlife officers responded to a call about a ram stuck on the roof of a house in unincorporated Boulder County on Tuesday, said spokesperson Kara Van Hoos​e. The ram likely became stuck in the morning.

“We were hoping he would come down on his own because he’s on the roof and realizes this is not a great spot for him to be,” Van Hoose said.

The ram made it down to the deck of the house at some point and officers hoped he might be able to make it all the way down on his own, Van Hoose said. But after a day and a half, the ram wasn’t showing signs he could get out, so an officer cut out a portion of the deck railing to give him a clear path.

It’s not clear how or why the ram got on the roof, Van Hoose said.

“That’s one of the mysteries of bighorn sheep,” she said. “We’re in mating season for sheep right now and rams just act strange. They get really weird, their whole behavior changes and they do anything they can to find females to mate.”

Bighorn sheep are good climbers and like being up high, Van Hoose said, so it’s possible he thought it was the best place to look for eligible ewes.

While it’s a little early in December for the sound of hooves clattering on rooftops, the Colorado Parks and Wildlife could not confirm or deny if the ram’s activities were related to the holiday season.

“I can’t speak on behalf of Santa Claus – he has his own public information officer – but this is not how we would recommend delivering gifts for Christmas,” Van Hoose said.

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The 32-year-old man was shot twice by police and has since been released from the hospital, Cmdr. Matt Clark said at a Thursday news conference intended to update the public on the investigation. The man is charged with unlawfully carrying a firearm and carrying a prohibited high-capacity magazine.

Police were patrolling the Cedar Run apartment complex at 888 South Oneida St. at 1:40 p.m. on Nov. 27 when they noticed the man moving boxes outside of his vehicle and saw he had a handgun between his belt and pants on the back side of his waistband, Clark said.

Loud music can be heard blaring from a black truck in body-worn camera footage as officers ordered the man to put his hands on his head and get on his knees.

Officers told the man it’s illegal to open carry in Denver as they ordered him to put his hands on his head, according to the footage.

The man refused to comply and told officers he didn’t “want to live in this world” and that they “have no idea how bad it is.”

The man also told officers he doesn’t trust them because he’s been betrayed by cops before.

Officers repeatedly told the man they didn’t want to shoot him and to comply so they could take his gun and be done with it, according to the footage.

Approximately five minutes into the encounter, the man appeared to reach for something behind his back and two officers fired at him five times, causing him to fall to the ground. Officers handcuffed him and began medical aid, according to the footage and Clark.

The man was shot in the upper neck and had a graze wound to his arm, Clark said. Police recovered a Glock 17 9mm handgun loaded with 17 bullets from the scene. Colorado law prohibits magazines that hold more than 15 rounds.

Police Chief Ron Thomas said Thursday he was pleased with how the officers reacted to the situation.

“I think they took a significant amount of time to de-escalate that situation,” Thomas said. “I don’t believe any officer wanted to fire in this particular case.”

The officers who fired their guns have been placed on modified duty while they undergo a department reintegration program, Clark said.

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