Have wolves returned to Colorado?

This story from the Feb. 5, 2010 issue of High Country News says they may have.

And the Denver Post says that biologists are looking for them.

Gray wolves were extirpated from Colorado in the first half of the 20th century and the last confirmed sighting of an individual in the state was in 1943.

However, since reintroduction of the species to Yellowstone National Park in the 1990s populations of the animal have begun to pop around the Rocky Mountain region.

The gray wolf was listed as an endangered species for more than three decades before the administration of President George W. Bush removed it from the list of those species protected by the Endangered Species Act. Current Interior Secretary Ken Salazar re-affirmed that decision in spring 2009.

Environmentalists have challenged it but, in September 2009, a federal judge ruled that hunting of the species in the northern Rockies could continue.