{"id":25072,"date":"2024-11-01T11:00:10","date_gmt":"2024-11-01T17:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/proposition-127-the-end-of-lion-hunting-in-colorado\/"},"modified":"2024-11-01T17:00:10","modified_gmt":"2024-11-01T17:00:10","slug":"proposition-127-the-end-of-lion-hunting-in-colorado","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/proposition-127-the-end-of-lion-hunting-in-colorado\/","title":{"rendered":"Proposition 127: The end of lion hunting in Colorado?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><figure class=\"wp-block-image naviga-inline-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/imengine.public.prod.dur.navigacloud.com\/?uuid=22edb0e9-63c4-5839-b2fb-a8a41ffa240a&amp;function=cover&amp;type=preview&amp;source=false&amp;width=2000\" width=\"1199\" height=\"856\" alt=\"Colorado Parks and Wildlife says a mountain lion attacked a man sitting in an in-ground hot tub with his wife on Saturday night. The agency had planned to kill about half of the mountain lions in the Upper Arkansas River Basin between Leadville and Salida, like this one, in the region of the attack. (Courtesy of the National Park Service, via The Colorado Sun)\" class=\"naviga-image\" loading=\"lazy\"><figcaption><span class=\"caption\">Colorado Parks and Wildlife says a mountain lion attacked a man sitting in an in-ground hot tub with his wife on Saturday night. The agency had planned to kill about half of the mountain lions in the Upper Arkansas River Basin between Leadville and Salida, like this one, in the region of the attack. (Courtesy of the National Park Service, via The Colorado Sun)<\/span><span class=\"credit\">cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n<p>In the early morning chill of Colorado\u2019s rugged wilderness, the rhythmic panting of hounds echoes through the trees as they close in on their elusive target, a mountain lion.<\/p>\n<p>For hunters, the video from a Durango outfitter, shows a moment steeped in tradition and survival skills, but such moments may soon disappear from the Colorado landscape. On Nov. 5, voters will decide the fate of mountain lion and bobcat hunting in Colorado, with Proposition 127 seeking to ban the practice entirely.<\/p>\n<p>The group \u201cCats Aren\u2019t Trophies\u201d gathered about 188,000 signatures to put a measure on the November ballot.<\/p>\n<p>While the group\u2019s name references \u201ctrophies,\u201d Colorado Parks and Wildlife considers trophy hunting to be illegal in Colorado. Hunters are expected to eat and use what they kill, based on a hunting brochure from the state agency.<\/p>\n<p>Public records from the state agency show a highly regulated hunting environment where 2,600 hunters killed 502 cats in 2022-2023, the most recent period for which statistics are available.<\/p>\n<p>The fourth highest number of mountain lions killed \u2013 11 \u2013 came from an area in the mountains northeast of Durango and La Plata County. The rest of the mountain lions killed around the state were in the single digits, mostly in remote, mountainous areas.<\/p>\n<div class=\"naviga-pdf-embed\"><iframe class=\"article-pdf\" src=\"https:\/\/dur-prod-public-pdfs.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com\/LUPmFkQ1rhvsi1xkZJMMaE62sDk.pdf\" style=\"width:100%;height:500px;border:1px solid #ddd\" loading=\"lazy\">\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/dur-prod-public-pdfs.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com\/LUPmFkQ1rhvsi1xkZJMMaE62sDk.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Lion GMUs.pdf (Download PDF)<\/a><\/p>\n<p><\/p><\/iframe>\n<p class=\"naviga-pdf-link\"><a href=\"https:\/\/dur-prod-public-pdfs.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com\/LUPmFkQ1rhvsi1xkZJMMaE62sDk.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Lion GMUs.pdf<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>The 21 mountain lions killed in a remote area northeast of Meeker in 2022-2023 was the largest number for any area in Colorado, based on public records provided by Kara Van Hoose, a Colorado Parks and Wildlife spokeswoman. The next largest number of mountain lions killed were in a mountainous southern part of the state near Interstate 25, where 16 were killed in one Colorado Parks and Wildlife statistical area and 15 were killed in the neighboring area. Colorado Parks and Wildlife maps do not follow county lines around the state but are numbered by region.<\/p>\n<p>Van Hoose declined to comment on specific questions related to Proposition 127 so as to remain neutral during the election period. She declined to comment on how current legal hunts affect the economy or how banning mountain lion hunts could affect wildlife and cattle, among other things. Colorado Parks and Wildlife started regulating hunting licenses for mountain lions in 1965 after the mountain lion population declined, according to information on the state agency\u2019s website.<\/p>\n<p>Van Hoose said that Colorado Parks and Wildlife surveys wildlife populations by helicopter, among other things, to decide how many licenses will be available to hunters every year.<\/p>\n\n<p>\u201cWe set licenses depending on a lot of different factors. There are environmental factors and external factors,\u201d Van Hoose said.<\/p>\n<p>The most emotional part of the hunting discussion appears to be how some Colorado outfitters use GPS-collared dogs to track and hunt mountain lions. Hound hunting is legal in Colorado.<\/p>\n<p>Some 88% of Colorado residents disapprove of hunters using dogs to help with hunting and 78% disapprove of \u201ctrophy hunting\u201d of mountain lions, according to an August Colorado State University study published in the Society for Conservation Biology journal.<\/p>\n<p>Kelly Maher, a Colorado hunter, said she teaches her children to honor the animals that the family hunts \u201cby consuming and using every part of the animal.\u201d She said proponents of Proposition 127 don\u2019t like the hound hunting, \u201cbut the cat needs to be stationary to identify its sex and status.\u201d<\/p>\n<div class=\"naviga-pdf-embed\"><iframe class=\"article-pdf\" src=\"https:\/\/dur-prod-public-pdfs.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com\/AoF2541ZT57Vk4J7KTOE6Um8HrM.pdf\" style=\"width:100%;height:500px;border:1px solid #ddd\" loading=\"lazy\">\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/dur-prod-public-pdfs.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com\/AoF2541ZT57Vk4J7KTOE6Um8HrM.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Lion Harvest 2022-2023.pdf (Download PDF)<\/a><\/p>\n<p><\/p><\/iframe>\n<p class=\"naviga-pdf-link\"><a href=\"https:\/\/dur-prod-public-pdfs.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com\/AoF2541ZT57Vk4J7KTOE6Um8HrM.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Lion Harvest 2022-2023.pdf<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>The people who gathered signatures to get Proposition 127 on the ballot feel that hunting mountain lions with GPS-equipped dogs \u201cgives our hunters a bad name for violations of fair chase,\u201d according to Mark Surls, the volunteer and outreach coordinator for the group.<\/p>\n<p>A group supporting continued mountain lion hunting is called Colorado\u2019s Wildlife Deserve Better, which includes funding help from the Colorado Cattlemen\u2019s Association and the Colorado Wool Growers Association. And the Board of Mesa County Commissioners in Grand Junction unanimously approved a resolution opposing Colorado Proposition 127 on Tuesday, Sept. 24.<\/p>\n<p>Colorado Parks and Wildlife requires hunters to take an exam and buy a license to hunt mountain lions. About 3,800 to 4,400 mountain lions live in Colorado, according to the state agency, but most people never see them because they\u2019re active at night.<\/p>\n<div class=\"naviga-scoreboard\">\n<h4 class=\"scoreboard-title\">About the Colorado Media Project<\/h4>\n<p>The University of Colorado journalism program has a $10,000 grant from the Colorado Media Project, as you know, and we\u2019re working with eight newsrooms this semester in rural and underserved communities mostly around the Western Slope, including<em id=\"emphasis-ff9c598db2f4f5c09a29757d7276549b\"> The Journal, Ark Valley Voice, Aspen Times, Bucket List Community Caf\u00e9, Colorado Newsline, Denver Urban Spectrum, Rio Blanco Herald Tribune, Sopris Sun\/Sol del Valle and Enterate Latino. <\/em>Readers can the Colorado Media Project and the class by contacting Elizabeth Potter and the students at <a href=\"mailto:elizabeth.potter@colorado.edu\">elizabeth.potter@colorado.edu<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Common Sense Institute Colorado, a nonpartisan group interested in protecting Colorado\u2019s economy, reports that Proposition 127, if passed, would cause an overall \u201c$4 million to $6.2 million in lost Colorado Parks and Wildlife revenue.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Of the total, the Common Sense group says there would be a direct loss of $410,000 from mountain lion and bobcat hunting licenses. The group estimates that Colorado Parks and Wildlife would lose a separate $3.6 to $5.8 million in elk and deer hunting permit revenue because the increased mountain lion population would keep the elk and deer population down.<\/p>\n<p><em id=\"emphasis-c2f7d32018b4465440ee8742b2a367da\">Reporting by Adair Teuton, Bella Hammond, Caniya Robinson, Jackson Jupille, Lincoln Roch and Melodie Miller.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mountains northeast of Durango brings fourth-highest harvest of mountain lions<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25073,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-25072","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25072","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=25072"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25072\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25073"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25072"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=25072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}