DENVER – Gray wolves howled across the land now known as Colorado for millennia before they were hunted out of existence. Now state residents are deciding whether to let the predators once again lift their voices in the southern Rockies.

If approved, a precedent-setting ballot measure would require state biologists to reintroduce the native carnivores to more than 17 million acres of rugged public lands in Colorado’s rural west by the end of 2023.