10/22/2024
Voters Please Take 2 minutes to read and learn a bit more before voting on Proposition 127
Prop 127 is proposing a ban on mountain lion and bobcat hunting under the umbrella of “trophy hunting”. This poses a few problems:
1. Removing the most effective form of management (regulated hunting) eliminates the ability to balance populations. Colorado Parks and Wildlife has stood beside and advocated FOR hunting for decades and still does as the MOST EFFECTIVE form of management. Unfortunately, ballot box biology has become a reoccurring theme here in CO (wolves). Ignoring the advice of CPW and getting these on the ballot is undercutting the science and research that they have done.
2. By proposing this under the umbrella of “trophy hunting”, we are opening Pandora’s box and subjecting all hunting to a ban. After all, who’s to say that elk or deer or even turkey hunting isn’t trophy hunting? It’s just too subjective and the language used in the prop is extremely dangerous.
3. When we eliminate hunting as a tool to manage populations, we not only eliminate the revenue generated by hunting licenses, but we also rely on government contract killers to remove problem animals. These contracted hunters are not required to keep or use any part of the animal and can literally throw it all away. Hunters are not only legally required to keep the meat, but it is actually very good. Long story short, managing animal populations, regardless of how it is done, is required in our day and age. “Well why don’t we just let nature take its course?” Unfortunately with the increase in our human population and the decrease in habitat due to expanding development, that is no longer an option. There is only so much food to go around and once that balance is upset, all the animals suffer, predator and prey.
Mountain lion and bobcat hunting is HIGHLY regulated. It is the only animal that requires the hunter to take a class and test prior to even being able to go. There are strictly enforced quotas of animals that, once taken, the season closes. Long story short, the biologists literally have it down to a science. Over the past 30 years in CO, the lion and bobcat populations have GROWN, not decreased. This is with hunting. There is something called the North American Conservation Model that has been responsible for the growth and restoration of ALL game animal populations over the past 100 years. It works, and as long as these issues stay off the ballots and don’t force the hands of people who have spent their lives studying and doing the work building this system, it will continue to work.
02/03/2024