{"id":113003,"date":"2015-04-23T18:07:42","date_gmt":"2015-04-24T00:07:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/legislature-advances-bill-to-study-bear-hunting\/"},"modified":"2015-04-23T18:07:42","modified_gmt":"2015-04-24T00:07:42","slug":"legislature-advances-bill-to-study-bear-hunting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/legislature-advances-bill-to-study-bear-hunting\/","title":{"rendered":"Legislature advances bill to study bear hunting"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Cyclists
Cyclists pause for a young bear along the Animas River Trail. With a growing bear population, lawmakers are exploring a study of how to manage encounters, including expanding hunting.<\/span>File photo courtesy of Brett Kelvie<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

DENVER \u2013 The Legislature may let off only a faint growl this year on any effort to expand black-bear hunting.<\/p>\n

After an attempt earlier this year stalled to allow hunting when the bears are most active, a Senate committee Tuesday backed a measure that simply would study the issue.<\/p>\n

House Bill 1304 passed the Senate Local Government committee unanimously. It already passed the House by a wide 58-6 vote. It now heads to the full Senate for consideration.<\/p>\n

The legislation would direct Parks and Wildlife to study the management of black bears to avoid bear-human conflicts.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have to remember that there\u2019s two purposes for gathering the data,\u201d said Sen. David Balmer, R-Centennial, a co-sponsor of the legislation. \u201cIt\u2019s not just to make humans\u2019 lives better, but it\u2019s also to protect bears.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Legislature has been trying to address the issue for at least four years. Rural Coloradans complain that the bear population is increasing, causing loss of livestock and dangerous encounters with the public.<\/p>\n

But the issue is a tricky one to advance. Voters in 1992 prohibited the bear-hunting season from beginning before September. Voters also banned hunting with dogs or bait or killing bears with cubs.<\/p>\n

Previous legislative attempts would have allowed an August hunt, while permitting Parks and Wildlife to authorize hunting from Sept. 1 to Oct. 31. Legislation also would have clarified that the use of scents is not baiting.<\/p>\n

But facing opposition from wildlife advocates, lawmakers defaulted to the study.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe certainly do acknowledge there are problems,\u201d said Bob Broscheid, director of Colorado Parks and Wildlife. \u201cWe have a growing bear population; we have a growing human population. That will result in new encounters.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

explored after expansion for hunting active animals stalls<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":113004,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[1332,94,13,2009,603],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-113003","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-bears","tag-colorado-state-government","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-hunting","tag-wildlife"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113003","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113003"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113003\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/113004"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113003"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=113003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}