Animal Wellness Action says voters affirm bans on steel-jawed traps, bear baiting and hounding, contest hunts, while also preserving wildlife policy-making structures.
DENVER — Animal Wellness Action and the Center for a Humane Economy celebrated the defeat of Amendment 83, a constitutional amendment to threaten long-standing limits on bear hunting and trapping with body-gripping devices and to upend wildlife policymaking by voters, state lawmakers, and Colorado Parks and Wildlife commissioners.
“Coloradans banned steel traps and baiting three decades ago, and they didn’t take kindly to this aggressive and overreaching effort to put those policies at risk and to hijack decision-making on wildlife policy in the years and decades ahead,” said Wayne Pacelle, president of Animal Wellness Action. “Voters saw through this scheme, despite the trophy hunters outspending the No on 83 coalition more than 3 to 1.”
Trophy hunting groups spent $3.5 million, while opponents spent around $1 million. The T. Roosevelt Conservation Alliance and T. Roosevelt Action spent $1,727,000 on the Yes on 83 campaign and accounted for 51% of total spending of $3,410,787 for the Yes on 83 team. Animal Wellness Action and the Center for a Humane Economy – two related groups – spent $784,261, out of $1,058,358 spent for the No on 83 side.
Colorado voters have set important limits on cruel and unsporting practices. In 1992, nearly 70% of voters approved Amendment 10, which banned bear baiting, hunting bears with dogs, and spring bear hunting. In 1996, voters approved restrictions on steel-jawed leghold traps and snares. Opponents warned that Amendment 83’s undefined references to “traditional methods” could have encouraged lawsuits against these protections and hampered future reforms.
“Tonight, I am even more proud of my fellow Coloradans for rejecting this ballot measure, which would have brought back all those unethical and cruel methods of killing wildlife and put them into our state’s constitution,” said Eric Washburn, president of Colorado Hunters & Anglers for Sensible Wildlife Conservation. “It shows how much Coloradans reject the extreme right-wing, out of state groups that paid to put Amendment 83 on our ballot and campaigning for it. I hope, if they try to do this in other states, wildlife advocates there can use the Colorado experience as a model for how to defeat those efforts.”
The campaign to defeat Amendment 83 drew opposition from animal advocates, hunters and fishers, wildlife scientists, legal scholars, CPW commissioners, and the state’s leading elected officials, including Governor Jared Polis and Attorney General and Governor-elect Phil Weiser. Twenty-one wildlife scientists and other specialists warned in an open letter that the measure could create new avenues for challenging Colorado’s longstanding bear protections. A majority of the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission’s members also voiced opposition in their individual capacities; the commission itself did not take an official position on the ballot measure.
“We do not improve wildlife management by placing a favored method of killing animals above the evidence. Steel-jawed traps inflict serious suffering, and baiting bears or pursuing them with packs of dogs raises profound sportsmanship and hunting ethics concerns,” said Jim Keen, D.V.M., Ph.D., director of veterinary sciences at the Center for a Humane Economy. “Colorado’s voters have preserved the flexibility to evaluate practices by their biological consequences, their humaneness, and the public interest — not by whether someone labels them ‘traditional.’”
The Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission takes up a petition this week to limit target shooting of prairie dogs at its meeting in Fort Morgan. There is also a petition pending to limit the use of lead ammunition in sport hunting. There are 600 peer-reviewed studies showing adverse effects of lead poisoning on wildlife and people. Mainstream forms of hunting and fishing remain legal and regulated activities in Colorado, just as they were before the election.