Ballot measure banning mountain lion, bobcat hunting in Colorado, fails
Only six of Colorado’s 64 counties voted in favor of Proposition 127
Justin Angelovich/United Houndsmen of Colorado
The hunting of mountain lions and bobcats will remain legal in Colorado after voters rejected a proposition that would have banned the practice.
While election results are still unofficial, the Associated Press called the race at 8:30 a.m. Wednesday.
By midday Wednesday, Proposition 127 was falling by just over 270,000 votes with about 56% of the votes counted against it. Nearly all Colorado counties rejected the measure, aside from four on the Front Range and two in the southwest corner of the state.
The proposal would have made hunting of mountain lions, bobcats and lynx a Class 1 misdemeanor, punishable by up to a year in jail, a fine of up to $1,000, or both. Exceptions would have been made for cats endangering the lives of people or livestock and for certain accidental deaths.
Currently, Colorado Parks and Wildlife issues a certain number of hunting licenses for mountain lions. Bobcats are classified as a “furbearer” species and are also hunted. It is already illegal to hunt lynx as they are protected at the state and federal levels. With the measure voted down, the agency will continue management under this status quo.
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Casey Westbrook, a district wildlife manager for Colorado Parks and Wildlife and president of the Colorado Wildlife Employees Protective Association board, said he was feeling gratitude for the measure’s failure.
“(I’m grateful) that people understood the message that we were trying to give: that there’s complexity to this, and there’s a lot of science — both social science and biological science — that needs to be applied and that it didn’t pass just on heartstring-type pleas,” Westbrook said. “Egotistically, I think it shows some faith in the people that work for Colorado Parks and Wildlife and that are members of our organization that we actually know what we’re doing”
Parks and Wildlife was barred by state law from speaking out for or against the measure. However, the Colorado Wildlife Employees Protective Association passed the first resolution in its 77-year history in October insisting that decisions about wildlife should be left to the agency’s staff and existing processes. While the resolution addressed issues beyond Proposition 127, the ballot measure inspired the call by the group, which represents around 200 of the agency’s wildlife-related staff.
Cats Aren’t Trophies, the citizen group that petitioned to get Proposition 127 on the ballot, maintains that the current hunting methods for these wild cats are cruel, unethical, recreational and not necessary to successfully manage the species.
“It’s a devastating loss for cats,” said Sam Miller, the group’s campaign manager. “I’m really proud of the campaign we ran. I think we ran a campaign based on facts. We ran a campaign led by Coloradans. And I think if we look at the opposition’s campaign, we look at a campaign that ran on fear and a lot of confusing messaging.”
Opponents argued that the initiative undermined the authority of Colorado Parks and Wildlife and its scientific management of the species, which includes hunting. Some of the groups opposing the measure also argued that it would have a detrimental impact on deer and elk in the state.
With the main opposition under the name “Colorado’s Wildlife Deserve Better,” Miller said she felt this confused a lot of voters.
“For me, I see the difference in that recent (Colorado State University) poll that shows 88% of Coloradans opposed hound hunting,” Miller said. “That’s so different than the outcome of this vote. I think that tells us more about what messaging landed with voters rather than what their values were around the issue.”
Crystal Chick, a former Colorado Parks and Wildlife employee who opposed the measure, said she was glad voters recognized the value of Parks and Wildlife’s expertise.
“What was most inspiring to me was seeing communities come together to fight for the future of our state’s wildlife,” Chick said. “I saw people who have never hunted, and probably never will, stand up to defend others’ right to do it. I talked to a lot of people that rarely vote but they did this year because of this issue.”
Cats Aren’t Trophies raised $3 million while Colorado’s Wildlife Deserve Better, raised $1.9 million. The Western Heritage Conservation Alliance, another group opposing the measure that joined the fight late, had amassed $1.6 million as of Oct. 28.
Did Colorado’s voter-approved wolf reintroduction contribute to results?
Proposition 127’s failure comes just four years after Colorado voters waded into issues of wildlife management with Proposition 114. Passing by a margin of 2 percentage points, the measure led to the reintroduction of gray wolves in Colorado.
Since then, wolf reintroduction efforts have been heavily scrutinized, creating greater divides between urban communities and rural ones and eroding trust between Colorado Parks and Wildlife and ranchers.
Westbrook believes that individuals witnessing the “struggle that it’s taken to get that to be accomplished” changed how many approached Proposition 127.
“Some of these things that have been put on the ballot like wolves are oversimplified as to how easy it can be done or (voters) just don’t understand the full complexities,” Westbrook said. “I think that caused a lot of folks to take a moment, pause, and really research this current ballot initiative a little bit deeper and not just have a guttural reaction.”
So far, the unofficial vote tallies against Proposition 127 were slightly more decisive than the opposition against Proposition 114 in 2020.
In 2020, 114 failed by a margin of 25 percentage points or more in 33 of Colorado’s 64 counties. As of Wednesday morning when the race was called, 127 was failing by margins of 25 percentage points or more in 42 counties.
Notably, in Grand County, where a significant amount of wolf activity has occurred since reintroduction efforts kicked off, 127 is failing by a margin of 52 percentage points. In 2020, Proposition 114 failed in the county by 27 percentage points.
Thirteen counties voted affirmatively for Prop 114, including the six counties that voted in favor of 127.
For the six counties where counts are currently reported in favor of 127, the margins are much smaller than the margins in 2020. Both Broomfield and Arapahoe counties have less than 1 percentage point leads as of Wednesday at noon. In Boulder County, the lead is the greatest with nearly 19 percentage points for 127, where Proposition 114 passed by 33 percentage points in 2020.
However, among the seven other counties that approved 114 and voted against 127 this election cycle, the margins were still close in some. Adams, El Paso, Jefferson, La Plata and Pitkin counties all swung against 127 by a margin of 11 percentage points or fewer. In Summit County, it failed by around 21 percentage points, and by 13 percentage points in Larimer County.
“I think that the wolf reintroduction definitely had a big impact on us,” Miller said, noting that the opposition and media both framed and connected the issues together.
“Our question was much more about a recreational activity, whereas the question about wolves is definitely much more biology and reintroduction and a much different question than the question we asked,” she added.
What comes next?
Although Proposition 127 failed in this election cycle, Miller remained hopeful she will see “a better future for the cats.”
“We saw over a million voters vote yes,” she said. “We want to stop this practice. This shouldn’t happen. I think the voters that voted no, that was by no means an endorsement of mountain lion hound hunting or bobcat fur trapping.”
Looking ahead, Miller said that stopping these practices will rely on working with Colorado Parks and Wildlife to align the “values of voters and the best available science.”
“There’s a lot of people across the state that care about wildlife issues, and there’s a lot of investment on both sides,” Miller said. “I’m hopeful that Colorado Parks and Wildlife will start including non-consumptive use voices in their decision-making — which they’ve traditionally excluded and which is how we got here today — because I don’t think that they want another ballot measure either… I’m hopeful we can make needed reforms without this kind of big measure.”
Westbrook agreed that these processes should continue with both citizen input and the agency’s expertise. However, he noted that some of these issues, including banning hunting bobcats, have already been rejected by the wildlife agency’s commission and state legislature.
“It would be my hope that instead of constantly racing to ballot initiatives, that we try to sort these things out and then respect some of those decisions that are made,” he said.
For now, Westbrook said he has a “guarded sense of relief about what’s next.”
“This was written as a species-specific issue, but there is an underlying sentiment that the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation, which involves hunting, is not supported by a very vocal group of folks, not necessarily a majority, but a vocal group,” Westbrook said.
Reporter Elliott Wenzler contributed to this reporting.
