When scientists become advocates during an election and tell you “just the facts,” you can be certain they are only telling you part of the facts. As Colorado’s carnivore biologist with Colorado Parks and Wildlife for almost two decades before retirement, my job applied the collective knowledge of managers and results to manage mountain lions and bobcats.
I am proud that my colleagues and I oversaw responsible and careful population increases of cougar and bobcat populations and along with several experimental research projects examining predator-prey relationships, human-lion conflicts and the effects of hunter harvest on lion population dynamics. All this despite Colorado’s population growing from 2.5 million to just under 6 million people during my tenure.
These scientific activities are funded by licensed hunters, not from any of your tax dollars. Hunters are integral partners in the management of all wildlife species in Colorado for your benefit and enjoyment, something even Gov. Jared Polis recognized in an official declaration just days ago. Hunters are the first advocates for habitat protection, for license limitations and responsible management that benefits improved biodiversity in Colorado.
Credible scientists should know better than to denigrate hunters with negative connotations like trophy hunters. Or, perhaps they weren’t informed that trophy hunting is illegal and is a vile form of poaching. Lion hunters are just like deer or elk hunters. The law requires and it is normal for hunters to care for lion meat same as for deer or elk. Failure to do so will impose stiff penalties and possible jail terms. Don’t buy these emotion-laden phrases, they don’t represent the thousands of legal and ethical hunters of Colorado.
Some folks portray a world without hunting as a nirvana where lambs lay down with lions. Puma have evolved in a natural environment, that’s true enough. But just look outside your window or around you as you drive to and from work. Is that a complete and intact natural world or a vastly fragmented, road and water development bisected, and habitat-altered landscape? When you are told that this nirvana includes perfectly balanced population stability, you should be suspicious. When severe drought reduces deer herds or disastrous noxious weeds outcompete native forage, or when severe winters decimate deer herds, cougar populations will be disrupted. As they always have, young lions will battle other lions for access to prey, space and breeding. Is lion death by claw and fang, freezing or starvation a better death than by a hunter who will gain food for family and friends?
There is truth that mountain lions, like many other predators, may kill sickly or injured deer more frequently than healthy animals. You should be suspicious of the wishful thinking that this means lions will control the spread of chronic wasting disease. These advocate scientists concealed that this idea has been tested in Colorado and Wyoming. Lion predation on deer had no effect on CWD spread or prevalence. One reason is that deer can be infected for years before dying by predation or the disease itself. During all that time infected deer are spreading the prion agent that causes the disease.
If Proposition 127 passes, property owners will no longer be eligible for compensation when lions kill their goats, a rancher’s sheep or the alpacas you might see at that organic wool producer’s farm, costing rural and exurban citizens real financial loss. There is no provision for CPW officers to kill lions that might jeopardize other wildlife. There is ample evidence that lion predation can cause decreases in native desert sheep herds and in some locations, Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep, Colorado’s state mammal. When a bighorn herd is jeopardized with extirpation why should lions be favored over the state mammal?
Wildlife science is complex and the ballot box is certainly the worst place to make decisions on topics people like me have spent a career thinking about and working on. Proof is in the abundance of wildlife we Coloradans get to enjoy. I’m voting “no” on Proposition 127 because my former employer and colleagues and our hunting partners have done a great job. It makes no sense to abolish all that.
Jerry Apker has a 38-year career with Colorado Parks and Wildlife: He served as a wildlife officer, wildlife officer supervisor and, during the last 17 years of his career, he was Colorado’s carnivore biologist, responsible for mountain lion and bobcat management matters. He retired in 2017.
