Jeff Davis, who resigned as director of Colorado Parks and Wildlife late last month, will continue to receive the same salary in his new role as a senior policy adviser to the Department of Natural Resources, according to the department.

Davis will continue to make $186,470 annually.

Davis chose to step down rather than be fired, according to 9News, which reported that he signed a settlement agreement on Nov. 22 that also stated he would not sue the department. No reason was provided in the settlement agreement for why Davis would be fired.

According to the agreement, Davis’s new role as senior policy adviser for strategic priorities began on Dec. 1 and will continue until May 15, 2026.

According to the leadership list for the executive director’s office, the position did not exist until Davis was appointed to it. Davis is not currently listed as an employee in the executive director’s office.

Davis’s new position is despite an August order from Gov. Jared Polis for a hiring freeze that would last until the end of the year, intended to help address budget cuts in the 2025-26 budget.

The CPW director’s position is not yet listed on the state’s job opportunities website, and despite the hiring freeze, more than state 450 jobs are currently posted. That includes 24 positions in DNR, although all but a few are temporary.

Davis became CPW director in May 2023, coming to Colorado after almost 23 years with Washington’s Department of Fish and Wildlife, including as its deputy assistant director and assistant director of the agency’s habitat program.

His biggest job was managing the state’s wolf reintroduction program, narrowly approved by Front Range voters in 2020, which would call for wolves to be on the ground in Western Slope counties by late 2023.

The ballot measure did not specify how many would be necessary to sustain the population; that came from a wolf management plan that calls for 30 to 50 wolves to be brought to Colorado. To date, 25 were brought in from Oregon (10) and British Columbia (15), although 10 of the original 25 have since died from a variety of causes.

While wolves aren’t the only thing that Colorado Parks and Wildlife manages — the state has 43 parks, manages 960 species and 350 wildlife areas — the wolf reintroduction program has dominated CPW’s board meetings and visits by Davis to the state legislature.

Lawmakers have heavily criticized Davis for the program’s problems, including dead wolves and a cost to taxpayers that is, so far, five times the estimate provided to voters in 2020.

Dozens of livestock have also been killed in seven counties, costing the state more than $600,000 in compensation for ranchers, far exceeding the amount of money set aside for those expenses. Ranchers have also complained that CPW failed to provide deterrents for wolves until after the slaughters began, both in 2024 and 2025.

The Copper Creek pack, a mating pair and four of five offspring born in 2024, were captured in September 2024 after multiple claims that the male of the mating pair was killing livestock in Grand County.

The male died shortly after being captured due to a gunshot wound. The female and four offspring were released in Pitkin County in January and, within a few months, began killing livestock. Two of the yearlings, including the fifth, which was uncollared, were killed by CPW staff because they were killing livestock in Pitkin and Rio Blanco counties.

One of the Copper Creek yearlings killed a heifer in eastern Gunnison County two weeks ago.

Major General Laura Clellan, a retired adjutant general and executive director of the Colorado Department of Military and Veterans Affairs, has been appointed acting head of CPW while a search is underway.