Amendment 83 Defeated in Colorado, Maintaining Restrictions on Steel Traps, Bear Baiting

On November 3, Coloradans voted down Amendment 83, a ballot initiative that would have elevated hunting and trapping, above all other outdoor recreation, to a constitutional “right,” ensured “traditional methods” of hunting and trapping, required Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) to make hunting and trapping the “preferred means” of wildlife management, and prevented it from promulgating regulations that were not “necessary for sound scientific wildlife conservation and management, public safety, or to preserve the future of hunting and fishing opportunities for all species statewide.”

What were these “traditional methods”? The text didn’t say. What were these “necessary” wildlife regulations? The text didn’t say.

In July, a poll reported that 62% of voters favored Amendment 83, only 23% opposed, and 15% were undecided. But when the votes were tallied on November 3, Amendment 83 wasn’t just defeated. It was vaporized. Because it was a constitutional amendment, it needed at least 55% of the votes to pass. But 55% of voters opposed it.

This from Wayne Pacelle, president and founder of Animal Wellness Action and Center for a Humane Economy, groups that led the opposition and invested three-quarters of the money gathered to fight Amendment 83 ($784,261 of the total $1,058,358): “When I decided that Animal Wellness Action and the Center for a Humane Economy would push forward with an aggressive ‘No on 83’ campaign 50 days in advance of election day, we knew we had a steep climb due to their favorable framing of the ballot language. In the end, we peeled off 20 points even though national hunting groups had amassed a war chest of more than $3.5 million. We did two key things: we settled on a simple message (“83 brings back steel traps, bear baiting”), and we very strategically delivered 30 million impressions to our target audiences in our digital ads. In the end, we dominated the vote in the six major counties in and around Denver, but we also held them to a draw on the western slope. We ended up winning by ten percentage points. It wasn’t close and I declared a ‘win’ just an hour after polls closed and saw our high performance in key counties.”

It’s important for the public to understand why it wasn’t close. For one thing, “traditional methods” of hunting and trapping included baiting bears with garbage so they could be shot at point-blank range and torturing animals in steel-jawed traps, both anathema to most Coloradans and Americans. Amendment 83 would likely have reinstated both these traditional methods. Colorado voters overwhelmingly banned them in 1992 and 1996, respectively.

The Big Money Behind Amendment 83

But what turned off Colorado voters even more was the abject perfidy of groups pushing Amendment 83 together with the fact that they were funded by a radical-right, out-of-state special interest outfit — the T. Roosevelt Conservation Alliance — that pumped $1,677,000 into promotion of Amendment 83 (almost half the total coughed up by six-figure gifts from 20 hunting trade associations and individuals).

Consider the myriad verbal convulsions and untruths issuing from Dan Gates, the loudest barker for Amendment 83 and founder and executive director of the Orwellian-named Coloradans for Responsible Wildlife Management.

Throughout the campaign, Gates harped about the alleged evils of “ballot box biology.” For example, in a podcast hosted by the Salida Gun Shop, he stated: “Public process should be part of it, but not by checking a box. Sportsmen and women have never ever ever attempted to turn around or alter things CPW was doing through a ballot initiative… . We always put a lot of faith and value in the biologists and scientists … . I’d rather turn around and micromanage it down to that than turn around and let six million people decide what we’re gonna do with Preble’s jumping mice or boreal toads and bighorn sheep.”

And yet, Amendment 83 was Exhibit A for “ballot box biology.” The hypocrisy was mind-numbing.

In the same podcast, Gates offered this lament about the 1992 ballot initiative that banned traditional methods of killing bears when they had their heads in a bag or can of garbage and in spring when sows are nursing cubs: “CPW has to deal [with the ban] because of voters that voted on it, and now CPW is having to deal with this giant cluster of expansive growing bear population with things out of their control because of a ballot initiative… CPW has to kill more bears.”

CPW estimates that there are between 17,000 and 20,000 black bears in the state. Grizzlies were extirpated before 1980. In no way is the Colorado black bear population “giant,” “expansive,” or in need of “killing.” According to CPW, it’s stable and healthy.

Gates continued: “People who are advocating for the opposition to this [amendment], they’re anti-hunters. They’re extremists. They don’t care about process.” He went on to claim the opposition is composed entirely of “animal rights” groups.

The opposition leaders — Animal Wellness Action and the Center for a Humane Economy — are not “anti-hunting” groups and have no record of pushing legislation or regulations to limit mainstream, accepted hunting practices. The organizations have staff and board members who are hunters, but hunters who abhor bear baiting, hounding, trapping, wildlife killing contests, canned hunts, and other unsporting, inhumane practices and are willing to confront them. During the campaign, Pacelle repeatedly expressed support for ethical, fair-chase hunting and utilization of the animals in a society where meat is standard table fare. A key ally of Animal Wellness Action, and an opponent of Amendment 83, is Dan Ashe, former director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, who hunts big game all across North America.

The Hunters Who Fought Back

In Colorado, a highly visible and active opposition group to Amendment 83 was Colorado Hunters and Anglers for Sensible Wildlife Conservation, a coalition defined by its ethical, fair-chase sportsmen. I caught up with its president and founder, Eric Washburn, on November 5. According to Gates and other promoters of Amendment 83, Washburn and all members of his group are “anti-hunters.” Here’s what Washburn had to say:

“I love waterfowl hunting, but I’m more of a big game hunter. Every year I put in for a pronghorn tag, a deer tag, a moose tag, an elk tag, and a bighorn sheep tag. I shot a moose a month ago, after I got back home from a fishing trip to Alaska. I cofounded the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership (TRCP), a big coalition of hunting and fishing groups, and I was its first executive director, then served on its board. I’m a life member of Trout Unlimited and Pheasants Forever, a professional member of the Boone and Crockett Club.

“Backcountry Hunters & Anglers, Pheasants Forever and TRCP came out in favor of the amendment. Colorado Trout Unlimited’s advocacy committee recommended that the Colorado TU board oppose it. But the board did not have the courage to do the right thing. This came on the heels earlier this year when Colorado TU inexplicably opposed state legislation to recover our beaver population, a move that would have been extraordinarily beneficial for Colorado’s trout. These groups don’t want to be criticized for being too woke, so they just go along with this crazy right-to-hunt stuff.

During the Amendment 83 campaign, when I got attacked for being an anti-hunter, I went on our website and put all my hunting stuff in my bio, which includes the fact that in 1999 I came up with the idea for the Forest Service’s ‘roadless rule’ to protect our public lands and successfully lobbied the Department of Agriculture to write and issue it.

Now it’s under attack by Trump’s U.S. Department of Agriculture and special interest groups that hold sway with it and want to degrade our public lands and hurt sportsmen. I wanted to contrast my conservation credentials, ideals and vision with guys like Dan Gates, who only seems to care about promoting the unlimited killing of ecologically critical species like beavers and other furbearers, as well as the ongoing killing of mountain lions even though science has shown that they disproportionately kill Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD)-infected deer. In fact, hunters should understand that recovering apex predators like mountain lions and gray wolves is our only hope of reversing the spread of CWD throughout our deer, elk and moose herds.”

A mantra from Gates and his allies was that Amendment 83 wouldn’t and couldn’t bring back bear baiting or spring bear hunting or steel-jawed leghold traps. Coloradans weren’t buying it because, without exception, promoters maintained that predators like bears had to be killed in order to generate more game. Not only has this never worked, it has devastated game populations.

For example, in 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt established the Grand Canyon Federal Game Preserve on Arizona’s Kaibab Plateau. To increase mule deer numbers for hunters, his federal “wolfers” and bounty hunters eradicated some 300 wolves, 600 mountain lions, and thousands of bobcats and coyotes. It worked — for a while. Deer numbers surged from an estimated 4,000 in 1906 to perhaps as many as 100,000 in 1924. Then the deer wiped out their browse, destroyed all wildlife habitat, their own included, and, as Aldo Leopold would later put it, all died “of its own too-much.”

Wildlife Experts Sound the Alarm

The Sierra Club, Prairie Protection Colorado, and Audubon organizations throughout Colorado also opposed putting constitutional protections for hunting and trapping in the state constitution. If Amendment 83 was so salubrious for wildlife and CPW, why did so many trained wildlife professionals and CPW wildlife commissioners strongly oppose it?

And if Gates and his allies were correct in their mantra that Amendment 83 couldn’t possibly reinstate the “traditional method” of bear baiting, why did 21 of North America’s top bear authorities see fit to sign and post an open letter to the American public, warning that Amendment 83 would probably do exactly that? Another 10 wildlife scientists and human health scientists warned that passing Amendment 83 would stop a petition to phase out lead ammunition in its tracks, even though 600 peer-reviewed studies show its adverse effects on wildlife and human health.

On November 5, I also caught up with Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, who has appointed hunters, wildlife scientists, farmers, conservationists, and even a wildlife rehabilitation expert to the Parks and Wildlife Commission. He told me this: “We really built a great coalition of sportsmen and people who enjoy outdoor recreation, who all agree that, while hunting is part of our great outdoors tradition, it shouldn’t be placed above other uses of the outdoors or threaten the humane and fair-chase practices that have been built into the culture of hunting here in Colorado in the last few decades. The support from Animal Wellness Action and others helped educate voters about what was really at stake. So voters overwhelmingly rejected this special-interest attempt to manipulate our constitution for the benefit of some at the expense of all. I appreciated working with a broad coalition to get this defeated. And I hope it sends a message to other states.”

Ted Williams, a lifelong angler and fair-chase hunter, writes exclusively about fish and wildlife. He serves on the Circle of Chiefs of the Outdoor Writers Association of America and is a former information officer for the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife.