Social media is rife with misleading and outright false claims about the toll that wolves could take on Colorado’s elk population. To keep things real, we’ve created an accessible tool—using published science—to model the number of elk that wolves might have eaten so far this year, given a hypothetical (or real) wolf population.

The tool always starts with the known number of surviving adult wolves in Colorado, but you can change that number to help you better understand future scenarios. Input your number of wolves below, and the tool will immediately calculate the highest number of elk likely consumed by wolves so far this year. Further below, you can read more about the formula that leads to your result.

So, let’s get calculating!