Generally speaking, and I'm painting with a huge brush, Colorado was a rural farming ranching state. People who grew up here, went to school here, had friends or were themselves in the ag industry/ hunted/fished etc. Further, I remember in school learning about predator prey relationships/ having DOW biologist come into our science classes and talk about mountain lions/ having friends in 4H/ etc. Also anyone who grew up in the mountains, probably had some positive and some negative interactions with wildlife. Even if you didn't hunt you knew someone who had a dog killed by a lion or a friend who had wrecked a car hitting an elk. Point being your life experiences gave you a more nuanced opinion about wildlife that seemed to leave you at least open to the idea of managing through hunting and trapping.
Sure, if you moved here from WY, MT, MN, WI, or a number of other rural places you probably had similar experiences and share this view of human environmental interaction, but a huge number of the CO transplants are from California, Florida, Illinois, New York, etc. and specifically urban areas within those states. These individuals can probably give you a pretty nuanced view about urban infrastructure, whether we should add lanes to I-70 or dig up downtown and put in a subway, but the first time they are confronting wildlife issues is when they are 28 years old going to REI to buy their first sleeping bag for a backpacking trip to conundrum hot springs and some person with a clip board and a mission jumps in front of them in the parking lot and asks them if they will sign a petition to stop people from strangling bobcats.
So yes I think having 58% of a states population totally ignorant that's states flora and fauna, not to mention economy, politics, etc is not helpful. I would say the same thing about a ton of other issues as well... people who move here from Texas/Florida (states with no income tax) don't get why we need to raise taxes to build roads/why it's on the ballot/what TABOR is and why it's a nightmare, people from CA don't understand that virtually every building downtown houses an Oil/Gas related company and that banning energy development will have huge consequences on our economy, etc. etc.
Part of me wonder if the solution is to require you to have lived in a state 5 years before your allowed to vote on local issues... joking of course... but still...I mean I lived in Montana for 3 years and after that time I barely felt like I have a grasp of local issues enough to cast an informed vote on various topics.
coloradotrapper.com
. Although 4H was/is not as prevalent as CO, it still existed. My father rode his horse to HS in rural suburb of San Diego. I lived on a dirt road throughout my youth. Lots of folks had livestock, even it the surrounding counties of Los Angeles. Sadly that is fading rather quickly although I do believe the HS still has a 4H/FFA program. 
