The sounds of howling swirl out into the mountain air. They are spine-tingling, almost mournful tones, like faraway train whistles on a rainy night. In the right weather and terrain, a wolf’s howl can be heard for miles.

Humans like to typecast these animals. They are big and bad above all; they are lone, predatory and fearsome. But here at Colorado Wolf & Wildlife Center in Divide, a host of staff members, volunteers and thousands of visitors a year see them differently: as creatures in need of saving.

On this afternoon, Annie Kosman radios for a refill on kibble as a tour group gathers in anticipation of a visit to the center’s 20 residents, which include not only wolves but foxes, coyotes and two New Guinea Singing Dogs that look like dingos and whose unique call is sonically closest to whale song.

Kosman points to a dry-eraser map depicting the historic range of America’s three wolf species, then flips the whiteboard to reveal their current status. Highly successful extermination efforts by European settlers and the animal’s on-again, off-again inclusion on the endangered species list have diminished the wolf population in the lower 48 states by almost 99%.

We don’t need to trap wolves for fur or food anymore, Kosman points out, but fur farms are still legal, poaching proliferates in states that don’t have strict penalties and trapping is allowed on 11 million acres of National Wildlife Refuge land.

“If there’s one thing you take from my tour today, it’s that your voice matters,” she says.

* * *

Saving wolves was not even remotely on Darlene Kobobel’s to-do list when she moved to Green Mountain Falls in the early 1990s and figured she could meet people by volunteering at a nearby animal shelter.

She’d only been helping for a few days when she was asked to drive three surrendered dogs to PetSmart in hopes of getting them adopted. But when Kobobel popped back inside for some forgotten water bowls, she came face-to-face with a silvery wolf dog.

“Absolutely stunningly gorgeous,” she recalls. “She looked at me and I looked at her, and she starts jumping up and down like, ‘Get me out of here!’”

Kobobel guessed she could take the wolf dog for adoption as well, but the animal control officer at the shelter knew otherwise. Any dog with wolf DNA could not be adopted out. Chinook, as the 2-year-old had been called by the family that surrendered her, would be killed that afternoon.

“Guilty because she had wolf in her name,” Kobobel said.

When Kobobel rushed back to the shelter that afternoon, the wolf dog was being led into a back room to be euthanized.

Kobobel wondered how, when she got back to her teeny cabin and her own three dogs, she would tell her husband they were now adoptive parents to a wolf.

* * *

The one wolf dog living at Colorado Wolf & Wildlife Center is giving Kosman open-mouthed kisses, sticking her head through the wires of the enclosure to vigorously lick her face as tour group members laugh and hold up their phones.

Luna’s tail wags in a way the other wolves’ don’t, and she rolls over for a belly rub in the cutest canine way.

Many who buy wolf dogs are attracted to their looks. People assume they can handle any lupine shenanigans. But Kosman says discounting the wolf part of a wolf dog sets everyone up for failure and leads a huge percentage of them to be surrendered and killed by their third birthdays.

One reason is wolves are actually quite fearful by nature; they develop intense neophobia — a fear of new things — by the time they are 3 but often earlier, and it can make their behavior much harder to manage.

Take, for example, Keyni, an 11-year-old grey wolf with piercing yellow eyes that was brought to the center from a Florida sanctuary. He’s afraid of chickens, the resident peacocks and the bubbles that staff blew his way as part of an enrichment activity.

Kosman tells the group that one staff member who had a wolf dog once ran out to the store and came home to find her pet on the roof of the house. The animal had somehow chewed through the drywall on the ceiling.

Clearly, they’re not the kind of pet you take on the family road trip or dress in a costume for your Instagram feed.

Nevertheless, most Coloradans can own one with no special licensing requirements no matter how much wolf DNA is in the mix.

* * *

When Kobobel found herself suddenly caring for Chinook and realized how many wolf dogs don’t get a second chance, she decided to open a rescue. She had moved to Lake George and owned 8.5 acres down a long dirt road. An artist friend painted a sign for her that read: “Wolf hybrid rescue center.”

By the end of the first week, she had 17 animals. And people kept calling.

“I never had a clue about what I was getting myself into,” she said.

But there was no going back. She got a second job, then a third, to afford their food, fencing and care. And she started to learn more, to educate herself about wolf dogs and wolves. She started to take Chinook, who was happy to walk on a leash and meet new people, to elementary schools in order to teach about wolves and their importance to the ecosystem.

After the Hayman fire destroyed the center in 2002, she leased a ranch in Florissant that she believed would be a permanent home for her and the animals. But three years later, the owner changed her mind and Kobobel was on the hunt for land again.

Desperate and practically broke, she went from bank to bank, begging for a loan that would allow her to purchase a 35-acre former llama farm. She was about to sign a deal with a loan shark when she got the call that a bank had finally approved her loan. She cried with relief.

There was no house on the property. No running water, no utilities, no fences for the animals. She’d have to be her own general contractor. She sat outside one night with a glass of wine and a cocktail napkin and sketched out where the enclosures would be.

A few weeks later, Kobobel found herself outside staring at the moon. It was coming up on full.

“I’m going to do a full moon tour,” she thought, and that week she hung flyers around town. She bought a plastic table, a cash register and an extension cord and set them up under a temporary power pole.

She filled that first tour, garnering enough to pay the first month’s mortgage. “And I was like, ‘I can do this,’” she said.

* * *

Thousands now visit Colorado Wolf & Wildlife Center each year. It’s accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums — the gold standard for institutions that care for wild animals and focus at least part on conservation.

Kobobel looks back and wonders how she did it, how she created this place. But she knows the answer is passion.

“It’s looking in their eyes and saying, ‘I will help you. I’ll do whatever I can,’” she said.

Kobobel still offers that original full moon tour each month on a Saturday night. She takes the hushed group to the highest spot on the property and then leads everyone in a group howl at the moon. The sounds swirl out into the mountain air. And the wolves always howl back.