Grand Lake, CO — Opponents of Prop 127 are revealing their true colors on wildlife management as voters make their decisions on the measure to halt the killing of mountain lions and bobcats for their heads, hides, and beautiful fur coats.
It is the proponents of Prop 127 that have an extraordinary array of scientists, cited research and evidence, supporting the measure. They include Dan Ashe, former director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service; Elaine Leslie, former chief of biological resources for the National Park Service a Durango resident who has conducted Colorado lion studies; and Rich Reading, a PhD wildlife biologist and current vice chairman the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission just to name a few prominent supporters. Twenty-one other wildlife scientists, most of them with field work experience with native wild cats, also endorsed the ballot measure, along with 119 Colorado veterinarians.
“If you embrace the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation, which guides wildlife agencies across the U.S. and Canada, you must vote yes on Proposition 127, CPW Commissioner Richard Reading wrote in a personal letter published recently. “That model, much heralded for its conservation successes, clearly states that hunting must involve “fair chase,” and that wildlife cannot be commodified.”
Opponents are attacking nearly all of these scientists, along with the three other Colorado Wildlife Commissioners who announced their public support for the ballot measure.
What’s more, there is just a cascade of false claims.
- Opponents are claiming in a television ad that mountain lions dropped mule deer numbers from 600,000 to 350,000. CPW researchers long ago in the 1990s disputed this false contention.
- They are also claiming lion populations will surge even though there is a scientific consensus that as apex predators, their numbers will remain the stable. As they have in California, not increasing.
- They trot out the false notion that California kills as many lions by damage control as it did when the state was hunting the lions. During the last three years, the state had an average of 9 lions killed a year in conflicts with livestock, pets, or human safety. California’s stable lion population is estimated to be larger than Colorado’s, so if a Colorado-style hunt were allowed, the state would be killing at least 600 lions a year.
- Opponents say that lions hurt deer and elk even though they evolved with them. And just last year, CPW lion researcher, Mat Alldredge told the commission that when you kill hundreds of lions “deer survival is high, and (today) we’re not seeing this huge impact of lions.”
- What’s more, they dispute the widely accepted notion that lions preferentially remove cervids afflicted by Chronic Wasting Disease. Scientists affiliated with CATs developed a detailed scientific analysis demonstrating that where there are no lions, infections rates for deer and elk are extraordinarily high, but where lions thrive, CWD rates are low level or non-existent.
It’s the exact same playbook by outside extreme predator hating organizations and they’ve brazenly used it before, successfully in Colorado over a mountain lion bill and to trash one of the most qualified CPW commissioner confirmations.
“The opponents hide behind the term ‘science’ but they pay honest science no heed,” said Sam Miller, campaign director for Prop 127, Cats Aren’t Trophies. “They make baseless claims, try to frighten the public, and attack scientists if they do not hew to their trophy hunting orthodoxy. It’s time for the public to see through their baseless claims.”
The Prop 127 campaign has painstakingly consulted with the best leading lion researchers in the field and looked carefully at the role that native predators play in controlled deadly and incurable Chronic Wasting Disease.
Among the leaders attacking commissioners this week are the notorious HOWL, a national anti-predator group based in California that has dedicated its main website to an anti-127 message. HOWL and the NRA have both been sending out alerts to voters from outside Colorado.