Why It Matters: The use of ballot initiatives to ban hunting circumvents the legislative and regulatory process that provides the opportunity for input by professionals, for revisions, and considerations of broader impacts within the Colorado’s overall science-based management plan. These initiatives can allow wildlife management decisions to be made based on emotion rather than scientific principles, tying the hands of professional wildlife managers by restricting adaptive tools and methods necessary to achieve balanced and thriving ecosystems. Defeating this ballot initiative keeps the authority to manage Colorado’s wildlife in the hands of the state’s professionals where it belongs.
Highlights:
- Earlier this year, anti-hunting groups in Colorado filed a petition to place an initiative on the Colorado ballot this November that would prohibit large cat hunting.
- This ballot initiative is the result of the Colorado legislature voting down Senate Bill 22-031 (SB22-031), which also aimed to restrict predator management, circumvent the authority of Colorado Parks and Wildlife, and erode the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation.
- The Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation (CSF) strongly opposed these efforts during the 2023 legislative session and are currently working with national and in-state partners to support legal appeals to the initiative, and oppose it should it qualify for the 2024 ballot.
- The deadline for the anti-hunting groups to submit their signatures to qualify for the ballot was July 5th, and we are now waiting for the Colorado Secretary of State’s ruling on the quantity and validity of their signatures.
Even though July 5th was the deadline for signatures to place the anti-cat hunting initiative on the Colorado ballot this November, the anti-hunting group running the campaign met at the Colorado Secretary of State’s office on Wednesday, July 3rd and submitted early due to the Independence Day holiday. The group claimed that they submitted 188,000 signatures, and seemed confident in their press release that they crossed the required approximate 150,000 valid signature threshold.
The sporting-conservation community had an observer on hand to witness the submissions, reporting a lower-than-average amount of boxes of ballots, as well as many boxes that appeared light, indicating that they may not have been full. We do know that the anti-hunting group primarily utilized volunteers for signature gathering, and professional signature gathering companies for a much smaller percentage. This is important because the signature validity rate for volunteers is typically lower than that for signatures collected by professionals.
The Secretary of State will conduct random checks of a portion of the submitted signatures, and using a formula, determine whether or not the anti-hunting group has met the legal threshold necessary to place the initiative on the ballot in November. We expect the Secretary of State’s office to report their findings within the next few days. In the meantime, the sporting-conservation community is preparing to challenge the validity of the signatures if necessary—an effort which will consume further financial resources. If you are interested in contributing to the effort to stop this ballot initiative, please visit Colorado’s Wildlife Deserve Better, the organization created by our in-state coalition to oppose this attack, and make a donation.
CSF will continue to monitor and support this rapidly evolving situation in Colorado.
