Colorado Parks & Wildlife staff briefed Chaffee County commissioners on park operations, river flows, campground upgrades and wildlife monitoring during the meeting.

A CPW representative said Southeastern Colorado Water Conservancy District agreed to allow an additional 7,000 acre‑feet for the Arkansas headwaters this season, enabling the district to target flows of 600 cubic feet per second through Aug. 15. “We are very, very bold for Southeastern for the additional water to make this happen,” the staff member said.

Park projects: CPW said small‑cap projects (under $150,000) will include an outdoor cook station for the Slide East yurt to reduce indoor cooking risk; a near‑systemwide swap of picnic tables — described in the presentation as about $1.499 million of picnic‑table replacement across the Arkansas Headwaters Recreation Area — and a prototype for off‑grid camp‑host power and water so volunteer hosts can be recruited and retained at Slide East, Paonia and Ruby campgrounds.

Staff said seasonal rangers and campground hosts begin leaving after Labor Day and CPW will rely on full‑time staff for fall facility maintenance. The agency thanked the county for vehicle transfers and joked that one of the new vehicles had been nicknamed the “Exploder.”

Wildlife monitoring: a CPW wildlife staff member provided an update on wolves and big‑game management. Wolves have been intermittently present in county backcountry during the past year; a collared male was tracked near the Buffalo Peaks Wilderness and staff said wolves tend to transit through busier recreation corridors quickly and spend more time in less‑recreated eastern and southeastern country. The staffer asked how often commissioners wanted formal updates and said they would notify the board promptly if wolves interacted with people or livestock.

CPW also said it is updating herd management plans and soliciting public input; the agency will consider both population objectives and buck‑to‑doe ratios in those updates, and emphasized town‑habituated deer are managed under separate criteria.

No decisions were required during the briefing; CPW staff said they would continue field work and community outreach and would provide follow‑up materials and maps to commissioners on request.

Speakers in this article were identified in the meeting as CPW staff; specific job titles were not always given in the transcript. Quotes are attributed to CPW staff who presented the parks and wildlife updates.