We are lifelong avid hunters and anglers, and because we care about our sport and that way of life, we feel the need to speak out in favor of the Cats Aren’t Trophies (CATs) ballot measure to end trophy hunting of mountain lions and fur trapping of bobcats in Colorado. Notwithstanding the scaremongering by columnist Rachel Gabel (“Bad idea would impact public safety,” Oct. 16), this ballot measure is a great idea, generated by local residents, whose time has come.
Using dogs to chase a mountain lion to exhaustion and then shooting the cornered animal as it cowers in a tree is a serious violation of fair chase principles. Trapping is likewise a dirty and underhanded method that involves bludgeoning the bobcat to death and selling its fur — often to foreign markets, which is a violation of fair chase and anti-commerce principles under the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation.
The majority of Coloradans — about 95% of our state’s citizens — do not hunt. When the state permits unethical hunters to engage in inhumane methods of killing wild cats primarily for trophies or furs for foreign customers, they hasten the day when the voting public will say “we’ve had enough with all hunting,” no matter if it is ethically defensible.
If the privilege of hunting is going to survive politically, we hunters need to police our own and stand up for the commonly recognized values that make hunting legal and noble. Trophy hunting of lions and fur trapping of bobcats cannot be defended as ethically sound practices. Other ethically indefensible practices, such as “canned hunts” and predator-killing contests must similarly be shut down for good.
We support CATs and have faith in the voters of Colorado to end the unsporting trophy hunting and trapping of wild cats, because wildlife policy is and has always been a political animal. In the end, our decision-making process for wildlife policy is controlled by politicians, not biologists, whether state legislators or wildlife commissioners.
It’s precisely these politicians who have allowed high-tech hounding, no bag limits for bobcats, sale of bobcat pelts that go to Chinese markets, and guides to offer a fee-paying client “a 100% guaranteed kill” of a trophy lion to be permitted in our state. No ethical hunter should ever want a guaranteed kill. This political system has long been rigged to benefit the special-interest groups that have big money and agendas that are not in line with the people of Colorado when it comes to ethical treatment of predators. We’ve seen that even modest reforms don’t get a fair hearing in these forums.
Take the example of high-tech hounding and baiting of bears. The biologists with the state recognized that these practices were out of alignment with Colorado citizens, but the politicians running the Wildlife Commission insisted that these practices continue. When it went to the ballot, 70 % of Coloradans — smart, no-nonsense kind of people, Republicans and Democrats alike — put the hounding and baiting of bears into the dustbin.
Research dating back to 1971 shows that sport killing mountain lions does nothing for management outcomes, meaning it fails repeatedly to increase or reduce predator or prey populations statewide, it will not prevent predation on livestock or pets, and it does not serve any role in public safety.
As hunters (one of us is a seasoned wildlife biologist), we pay attention to wildlife science and can offer proof there is no need to allow inhumane and unethical hunting. The CATs website www.catsarenttrophies.org lists the science to support our true claims, as well as the ballot language. The measure has exemptions for handling an individual lion posing a threat to livestock.
But this will not stop lion trophy hunting enthusiasts from claiming Colorado “needs” to allow their largely hidden, small set of people to get trophy kills. The gratuitous photos of “trophy” lions and the likes on social media tell us all we need to know. Many lion hunters of Colorado also post photos of dead zebras, giraffes, rhinos, or hippos, but they never claim publicly they “needed” to kill these animals.
African safaris and Colorado lion hunts cost thousands of dollars for a guide, but in our state, where a lion license is around $50, it brings in next to nothing (0.1%) to the annual budget. It’s time to relegate this gruesome practice of lion hunting and bobcat trapping to the history books and show that Coloradans value the many ecological benefits of mountain lions and bobcats on the landscape.
Brett Ochs lives in Colorado and has been hunting the majority of his life and he believes that mountain lions belong on the natural landscape and should not be hunted for sport. Charles Seymour is a passionate backcountry fly fisherman who has purchased fishing licenses and habitat stamps for 25 years here in Colorado. Erik Molvar is a lifelong hunter and wildlife biologist with published research on Alaskan moose as well as large-scale conservation planning. He has spent 23 years as a conservation professional advocating for public lands and wildlife, and is the author of 16 hiking guidebooks and backpacking techniques manuals for national parks and wilderness spanning the West. He works from his office in Laramie, Wyo.