Editor,
Readers will remember Colorado Division of Wildlife’s Tom Beck, our state bear biologist working at the time citizens voted to no longer send dog packs out to chase bears in spring, sparing cubs and Colorado from unfair, unethical practices.
“Most hunting can be ethically defended. Some cannot. Change, where necessary, is our only hope of survival,” Beck was quoted in Colorado Outdoors.
The bear measure passed but didn’t end all hunting; neither did the voter-approved ban on indiscriminate leghold traps. CATs also carves out specific, unethical practices and in the widely marketed trophy lion hunting of Colorado, where outfitters charge upward of $8,000 and a 100% guaranteed head, alongside commercialized fur trapping that lures bobcats with bait to skin them for fur coats on the Chinese market.
Lynx are included because as Colorado Parks and Wildlife reports, bobcats and lynx share habitat, are similar in appearance, and attracted to the same bait.
A vote “YES” in November will uphold those principles of the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation, to not allow unfair chase and unsightly commercialization of wildlife.
CPW states on its website it will enforce the “will of the voters” as it always has done so well on moral issues for basic standards and ethics. Our trusted agency is here for the citizens as wildlife is a public trust, not private property of the fur trappers-and-lion-trophy-hunters-only club.
CATs held a press conference last weekend, where Erik Molvar, a published wildlife conservation biologists who is also an avid hunter of deer and elk, had this to say:
“Hunting for big cats is trophy hunting, pure and simple. It’s not to fill the freezer, it’s to bring home a trophy…many hunters are like me, they subscribe to hunting ethics, like the fair-chase principle. Running mountain lions for miles with multiple dogs until they climb into a tree, and then shooting them out of the tree at point-blank range, that’s not fair chase. The prey animal doesn’t have a fair chance to escape, and hunters aren’t taking the quarry using their own skill and knowledge.”
A yes vote on cats is a vote for the best of Colorado and to weed out what is nothing to be proud of. Visit www.catsarenttrophies.org to learn more.
Julie Marshall is a former public information officer for Colorado Division of Wildlife working as Communications Director for the Cats Aren’t Trophies campaign headquartered in Grand County, Colorado
Julie Marshall
Communications Director for Cats Aren’t Trophies
