The appointments Gov. Jared Polis made to the Colorado Beef Council and State Board of Stock Inspection were solid. Others, though, followed his pattern of appointing individuals to boards and commissions they have no business serving on.

Ellen Kessler once described me as one of her most ardent followers and she’s not wrong. I followed the news – and her “vegan AF” social posts – closely when she was appointed to the State Board of Veterinary Medicine. It’s the board tasked with handling complaints and disciplinary matters filed against the state’s licensed veterinary practitioners. She was qualified. She sat on the board as a non-veterinarian who lived in Colorado, but there was great concern within both the agriculture industry and the veterinary community given her status as a vocal animal rights extremist.

In the folder where we file the stories you just can’t make up, she resigned her board position after she was charged in Jefferson County with multiple counts of animal abuse after a tipster reported exotic birds in her care housed in filthy conditions among the carcasses of birds that died and were never removed. I followed the court docket casually though I never saw the outcome. If I were a betting woman, I would assume the charges were dropped.

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Polis’s newest appointment to the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission was met with the same brand of concern and anger within the hunting and angling communities as Kessler’s received.

The Parks and Wildlife Commission is responsible for perpetuating the wildlife resources of the state, providing a quality state parks system and providing enjoyable and sustainable outdoor recreation opportunities that educate and inspire current and future generations to serve as active stewards of Colorado’s natural resources.

Gary Skiba of Durango was appointed to serve as a representative of sportspersons, and a member west of the Continental Divide. The state’s sportsmen groups said Skiba is certainly no sportsman. He does, however, have ties to the group responsible for ramrodding the wolf wreck to the ballot and past voters.

He worked as a wildlife biologist for the Colorado Division of Wildlife for 23-plus years, focusing on threatened and endangered species management. He retired from CDOW in 2010 and has since held positions with Great Old Broads for Wilderness, the La Plata County Humane Society and New Mexico State Parks. He is currently the wildlife program manager for the San Juan Citizens Alliance, a Durango-based environmental advocacy organization. His role there, according to his biography, is the development of a new program focusing on wildlife issues and support of wolf reintroduction in the state.

Following suit, Jess Beaulieu of Denver was appointed to serve as a representative of outdoor recreation and parks utilization. She is an active attorney and the manager of the University of Denver’s Animal Law Program. She is also a board member of the Colorado Environmental Film Festival, and an executive council member of the Colorado Bar Association Environmental Law Section. She studied wildlife ecology and conservation at the University of Florida and spent time in Australia studying the impact of species such as dingoes and cane toads on ecosystems.

John (Jack) Murphy of Aurora was appointed to serve as a representative of outdoor recreation and parks utilization. He is a co-founder and president of Urban Wildlife Rescue, which provides humane solutions to wildlife conflicts, wildlife education and wildlife rehabilitation. He has also served on the Colorado Nongame Conservation and Wildlife Restoration board and the board of Colorado Animal Protectors.

I won’t speculate about Polis’s intentions, but filling boards and commissions with people who don’t appear to be qualified to be there representing a defined group, save for sharing the governor’s way of thinking, is the move of an emboldened man. My heartburn is not with that way of thinking, but with the apparent disregard for the actual purpose and goals of the boards and commissions. It feels a bit like appointing someone opposed to the slaughter of “non-human animals” to the Colorado Beef Council and charging them with promotion of beef.

Rachel Gabel writes about agriculture and rural issues. She is assistant editor of The Fence Post Magazine, the region’s preeminent agriculture publication. Gabel is a daughter of the state’s oil and gas industry and a member of one of the state’s 12,000 cattle-raising families, and she has authored children’s books used in hundreds of classrooms to teach students about agriculture.