Ashe and top wildlife biologist in the West underscore consensus among best scientists that lion populations remain stable without trophy hunting
Grand Lake, CO — Dan Ashe, our nation’s former top wildlife management official, is featured in an advertisement today for Proposition 127, a ballot measure to protect Colorado wild cats from cruel and inhumane trophy hunting and fur trapping. Ashe served as director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service from 2010-2016 and had a long career at the nation’s top wildlife management agency. Before leading the multi-billion-dollar agency, he was deputy director and prior to that the director of the 570-unit National Wildlife Refuge system, with eight units in Colorado. The refuges are the world’s largest systems of lands and waters dedicated to wildlife conservation.
The ad is running statewide and can be viewed here: Dan Ash: Vote YES on 127- Cats Aren’t Trophies (youtube.com)
“Wealthy out of state trophy hunters are paying to take Colorado mountain lions and bobcats for their heads and hides, with packs of dogs and high-tech gadgetry,” argues Ashe, a sportsman who has hunted along the spine of the Rocky Mountains from New Mexico to Alaska. The cats are “shot out of a tree, it’s unsporting and cruel,” he adds.
“A YES on 127 protects mountain lions from trophy hunters while allowing management to protect people, pets and livestock. A YES on 127 preserves the balance of nature.”
Ashe is part of a larger group of wildlife professionals who report that the scientific consensus is that mountain lion populations do not ever need to be trophy hunted, because populations are checked by a number of natural factors.
Weeks ago, 22 top wildlife scientists, many of them with field experience studying lions in the West, wrote a letter to Colorado voters reminding them that lions are self-limiting and that they preserve the balance of nature, even reducing the incidence and spread of Chronic Wasting Disease in deer and elk.
The scientists also noted that trophy hunting creates chaos among lion populations, creating a population with more juveniles less experienced at killing traditional prey.
World-renowned big cat researcher Maurice Hornocker in his book “Cougars on the Cliff,” explains that mountain lions “regulate their own numbers and actually help prey animals maintain or increase their population numbers.”
Prop 127, as Ashe notes, allows control of any lion or bobcat involved in conflicts by state or federal authorities. Those exemptions cover livestock or pet protection and human safety.