Hunters are sounding the alarm on a bill out of Colorado they say is a fundamental attack on their way of life and could have dire ecological consequences.
Proposition 127, or Initiative 91, would outlaw “trophy hunting” in Colorado of mountain lions, bobcats or lynxes, adding that the practices serve “no socially acceptable or ecologically beneficial purpose,” according to the final text. However, hunters and hunting advocates told the Daily Caller News Foundation that the initiative, backed by environmental and animal rights groups, was misguided, infringing on hunters’ way of life and failing to acknowledge that hunting is ecologically essential to control animal populations.
“When it comes to wildlife conservation, it could have impact on not just the population growth of big cats, particularly mountain lions, but also the reduction of dollars that would result of crashing elk herds and deer herds, which would cause less people to buy licenses, which means less revenue coming into the state for hunting,” Mark Oliva, National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) director of public affairs and avid hunter told the DCNF. “Colorado is certainly a hunting destination for many across the area, so that’s the dollars that go along with that would be impacted … initiatives like this are driven off of emotion and not driven off of science.”
The initiative is projected to cause $4 million to $6.2 million in lost revenue for Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW), and $61.6 million in lost economic gains, according to the Common Sense Institute Colorado in August. It would also cause a revenue reduction of $410,000 for CPW strictly from hunting license sales.
“Ballot box biology is the absolute worst way you can manage wildlife,” Perry Will, a Republican Colorado state senator, told the Coloradoan in June. “Our capable wildlife professionals are put in charge to manage our wildlife. But they feel the power to do this because that’s how reintroducing wolves was passed. They would have done it with wolverines if I wouldn’t have put a bill in place, which is a better way to do these things.”
Anti-hunting legislation is becoming more widespread as New York proposed a bill that would regulate shooting sports in places near water, based on the allegedly erroneous claim that lead bullets can poison water and animals, according to the NSSF in May. In March 2024, the Rhode Island Senate took up a bill that would restrict hunting in most places in the state due to the prohibition of hunting where “man-made structures and/or natural barriers” exist, according to Sportsmen’s Alliance.
Cats Are Not Trophies, a leading conservation organization, is one of the leading organizations advocating for the Colorado initiative. Another group that has endorsed the initiative is the Center for Biological Diversity, which has advocated for human population controls for “conservation,” including advocating for abortion access, promoting male vasectomies and distributing “endangered species condoms,” according to Influence Watch.
Cats Are Not Trophies told the DCNF that the proposition would not affect predator populations, and contended that trophy hunting is unethical and that predators play an important role in curtailing the spread of chronic wasting disease in deer and elk. They also said that banning trophy hunting will not increase the depredation against cattle.
“Trophy hunting just makes the future for hunting ethically that much harder, because it gives all hunting a black eye,” Cats Aren’t Trophies told the DCNF. “If you want to promote ethical hunting in Colorado, vote YES on Prop 127.”
Myron Ebell, chairman of the American Lands Council, said that the ballot initiative and laws like it take advantage of the fact that most people do not hunt and do not understand the role that hunting plays in managing animal populations.
“I think that the states in the west [are] the most highly urbanized part of the country, and so rural people get very little understanding [about] the problems of rural life and of resource industries like livestock grazing,” Ebell told the DCNF. “There’s very little understanding of [hunting] or respect for it in the urban population, so people think of rural areas as playgrounds that should be wild and have fewer people living there, so that there’s more recreation.”
Ebell said that misunderstanding of hunting often transcends party lines, and even though the people most affected by the initiative would likely be conservative rural Republicans, the voters in urban areas who would decide whether or not the initiative passes can be influenced by advocacy
“Rural America is overwhelmingly conservative Republican, so obviously those people are opposing this ballot initiative overwhelmingly,” Ebell told the DCNF. “In urban and suburban areas, I would doubt that the partisan divide is so strong, because a lot of suburban types who are moderate Republicans and vote Republican are also very susceptible to the propaganda of the Sierra Club and the National Wildlife Federation, and the Wilderness Society, and they don’t really know much about nature.”
In September, Colorado released six gray wolves into the wild in an effort to restore the population, according to The Associated Press. Colorado ranchers opposed the measure strongly, saying that the wolves were killing their cattle.
“The truth is that wolves were already showing up on the landscape of Colorado, but now they’ve been bringing them in,” Oliva told the DCNF. “And the ranchers have now gone back to the state and said they want the state to start to use lethal means to control some of these animals, because they are attacking cattle that [are] managed by these ranchers. And then they tried non-lethal means, and that’s been ineffective in stopping wolves from feeding on those cattle herds.”
Colorado has an estimated 4,100 mountain lions, according to the Common Sense Institute Colorado in August. It is estimated that the mountain lion population would increase by 443 by the end of 2024 since they would not be hunted.
“The American public is increasingly removed from natural resources,” Rob Gordon, 30-year expert on conservation and environmental issues, told the DCNF. “We increasingly live in urban and urban areas. People don’t grow up on farms and ranches. They don’t live around large animals in the wild. They maybe see them on TV, or occasionally when they go to a national park or something. But there’s just a lot of people that have lost an instinctive understanding of how nature works.”
“As he typically does now that the ballot is finalized, the Governor is reviewing all ballot measures and will share any opinions he has on them soon,” A spokesperson for Democratic Colorado Gov. Jared Polis told the DCNF.
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