Cats Aren't Trophies

[Oak]

I need to know one thing from you Colorado fellas. Where's the best place to donate in your opinion to have a impact on this cat hunting ban?

CRWM

Support Us - Coloradans for Responsible Wildlife Management

All contributions to the Coloradans for Responsible Wildlife Management (CRWM) help fund the educational efforts and lobbying efforts.

savethehuntcolorado.com

 

[Big Fin]

I just finished a podcast with Dan Gates from CRWM today. He was in Bozeman so I picked him up at the airport and we spent most the day scheming, comparing notes, and doing a podcast.

He was kind enough to invite me to some of their strategy meetings, starting last December. I am impressed with the Colorado team that has been put together from many groups. This group has a strategy for winning.

I hope folks donate. It will take $3-5million of media buy on the Front Range to win. I think they have the plan and the ability to pull it off. And if they do, they will have a road map for other states to look at as a strategy for their state.

@Oak has the link where you can donate. As a non-resident of CO, I'll be donating, both cash and use of our platforms. If every non-resident who applied for just elk in CO were to donate $20, they'd cover the budget for the media buy that is needed to win.

 

[rtraverdavis]

Sure hope folks can see past the resident vs nonresident bs on this one. It’s too important to lose.

 

[Southern Elk]

Just sent $100 plus $3 to cover the CC fees. Hopefully a whole lot of us hunters chip in.

 

[OpenCountry]

Now we're needed? 10 percent of allocated tags back please!

Big picture > 10% of any tags

 

[MtnElk]

Now we're needed? 10 percent of allocated tags back please!

You still have 10-15% more than you do in any other state plus otc. Troll another thread, not this one.

 

[Sytes]

Sure hope folks can see past the resident vs nonresident bs on this one. It’s too important to lose.

Would hope we've learned from the last epic city slicker, metro market ballot signature box "biology" used to force CPW's hand. This is a growing threat to all States. Considering we lost the last by 0.91% due to a lack of quality funding...

 

[perma]

Now we're needed? 10 percent of allocated tags back please!

Would you rather have 0%? That’s what will happen if this is ignored when deer is next.

 

[Southern Elk]

Now we're needed? 10 percent of allocated tags back please!

I would still donate even if I never planned to hunt Colorado again. I would donate so that my children and their children have an opportunity. This is bigger than me or you.

 

[MtnElk]

Well maybe the "big picture" resiident hunters should think about the big picture all the time.

We do. Also, I dare you to find a single thread re: CO where I don't say that if there are changes to the R / NR matrix in our state, then I am more than happy to help pick up the slack financially.

Also, if the residents are so awful here, then stop hunting here.

Luckily my resident donation to this cause covered more than a few of the whiny NR hunters who want to turn this into a bitch fest rather than trying to solve the problem in front of us.

 

[Dave N]

Aaaand 3!

 

[WildWill]

Well maybe the "big picture" resiident hunters should think about the big picture all the time.

We have different ideas on what the "big picture" is. To me the "big picture" is uniting as hunter's to stop the anti's slow steady march to take away the NAM of conservation that's already infected places like CA and WA. Not fighting over who gets to shoot what and how much of it. I have no plans of ever hunting mountain lion's in CO didn't stop me from donating.

 

[TOGIE]

Now we're needed? 10 percent of allocated tags back please!

you were never needed or wanted anyway.

 

[MtnElk]

Lmao. Name calling now huh? Don't tell me what to do. Who are you? Let me take away your opportunities and then ask you for money to help me. WTF. Idk sounds mentally challenged to me.

1. they were never YOUR opportunities, it was hunter opportunities - of which you threw your name in the hat

2. Last year, as of October, November, even December there were still leftover elk tags in CO (Bull / Cow), MT (cow), ID (cow), WY (cow), and even NV (cow). The bitching that happens on here makes it sound like all the tags are gone. NO ONE (resident or NR) is ever going to be able to bank on high quality tags every year. But don't act like there are no opportunities left.

3. CO has OTC... so you had a chance, you just didn't want it

4. In 5 years, I have yet to draw the turkey tag I want in WI. Do you see me on every @Treeshark (or other wisconsinite) thread bitching about NR opportunity in WI? No... because that would be dumb and derail the purpose of the actual thread.

Look man, I don't know you... but you came here to talk shit and start something. go to the NR opportunity thread and do it there... you'll find some friends that think as shallowly as you do

 

[TOGIE]

fyi, since i paid for my turkey tag that's another 35 bucks i just threw at CRWF this morning.

 

[COEngineer]

fyi, since i paid for my turkey tag that's another 35 bucks i just threw at CRWFM this morning.

CRWM , but I know what you meant
savethehuntcolorado.com

 

[COEngineer]

Gazette article on Ballot Box Biology

 

[Oak]

Gazette article on Ballot Box Biology

Subscriber only.

 

[Bambistew]

Subscriber only.

EDITORIAL: Ballot-box biology will backfire on Colorado​

• The Gazette editorial board
• Feb 26, 2024

Critics denounced Colorado’s 2020 ballot proposal to release wolves in the wilds as “ballot box biology.” It was more than a catchy phrase; it underscored the folly of expecting voters to weigh in on the science of wildlife.

Proposition 114 barely passed statewide that year. But it won the overwhelming support of Front Range voters, who only have seen wolves on Animal Planet. And few of them ever had to make ends meet as financially strapped ranchers whose livestock would become wolves’ prey.

A big selling point pitched to Colorado’s urban and suburban voters at the time was that reintroducing wolves would restore balance to the state’s ecosystem. Animal and plant life would flourish — the food chain would be nudged back into synch — the way it supposedly was when wolves are said to have abounded here.

Voting “yes” was like hitting a reset button, right?

If only.

To say the least, an ecosystem is a lot more complicated, as Coloradans now will discover following the first release of wolves last December. An enlightening news report in The Gazette recently made that clear. It turns out Exhibit A for wolf reintroduction doesn’t quite hold up.

The Gazette reported that research at Colorado State University is challenging a popular narrative that wolf reintroduction in Wyoming’s Yellowstone National Park in the 1990s restored habitat that had degraded after wolves were removed from the park a century ago.

The research, drawing from a 20-year study, concluded that the development of a stable grassland ecosystem in recent decades — after generations of overgrazing by elk in the absence of wolves — was not due to the return of the wolves after all.

“I think we showed pretty conclusively that for the riparian areas of the small stream network of the (Yellowstone) northern range … very little has changed since wolves were reintroduced,” Emeritus Prof. N. Thompson Hobbs told The Gazette. He added, “…we can't really know the extent to which the decline in elk populations was due to wolves or to other carnivores. We do absolutely know this — that during the 10 years after wolves were reintroduced, so from about 1995 to 2005, wolves had very little to do with it.” As for the needed decline in the elk herd, Hobbs attributed much of it to hunting following shifts in policy by wildlife managers.

In fact, seasoned wildlife managers in Colorado contend hunting is one of the most effective tools for managing overgrazing by elk or other species.


“Colorado has wisely managed their elk herd magnificently through the use of the North American model of big game management, which is much more highly regulated than packs of wolves wandering willy-nilly all over the state,” said former Colorado Wildlife Commissioner Rick Enstrom.

Hobbs warned against drawing sweeping conclusions from his findings — and we won’t. The takeaway for policymakers isn’t that the research disproves the value of wolves in restoring habitat but rather that such issues are so complex they should be left to the experts.

The Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission consists of key stakeholders who have tracked wildlife- and land-management issues much of their lives. And they preside over a staff of highly trained wildlife biologists and other technical experts whose entire careers are spent on such issues. If there is a case to be made for introducing a species, they are the ones to vet it — not voters.

Prop. 114 usurped and undermined that role, turning a complex consideration into feel-good politics with potentially disastrous results.

Without a doubt, ballot box biology will cost the state’s cattle and sheep ranchers. They put dinner on the table for city slickers — who thank them by sending in the wolves.

EDITORIAL: Ballot-box biology will backfire on Colorado

Critics denounced Colorado’s 2020 ballot proposal to release wolves in the wilds as “ballot box biology.” It was more than a catchy phrase; it underscored the folly of expecting voters

gazette.com

 

[perma]

Clean-up on isle 9.