By Eric Washburn

Recently, the Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) Commission voted to ban the commercial sale of fur and reject CPW’s proposed daily bag limits of 15 per day per person (450 per person per month!!) for harvesting 17 furbearer species.

The outcry reported in the Colorado media was deafening. One would think the sport of hunting is under siege in Colorado by CPW’s own commissioners.

Across the spectrum of science-based regulation, there is a tradition of applying the so-called “precautionary principle” — in the absence of scientific evidence that an activity is safe, regulators should proceed with caution. Look before you leap.

Until now, hunters in Colorado have been able to kill as many furbearers as they like, even though CPW does not know how the unlimited harvesting of these species affects ecological health.  

Beavers, for example, provide a wide range of important ecological services, including storing water on our increasingly hot and dry landscape, and providing firebreaks and habitat for trout and songbirds.  The ecological carrying capacity for beavers in Colorado — the number that our streams and rivers can support — is probably in the millions. And yet, Colorado has had only about 50,000 beavers since 1941 because we kill so many every year.    

So, the CPW commissioners are right to reject such high bag limits on killing furbearers. 

Hunting in Colorado likely will come to an end in this century, but not because CPW commissioners support rational regulation of furbearer hunting. It will end for three other reasons. 

First, our state’s elk, deer and moose herds will eventually die out due to always-fatal Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD).

Second, by failing to invest enough in the conservation and recovery of our rare, threatened and endangered species, the ecosystems they inhabit are likely to eventually collapse — no longer able to support wildlife populations that are large or healthy enough to allow for hunting.  

Finally, generational change likely will result in less demand for hunting in the years ahead. My sons have both shot deer and one has shot an elk. They have caught trout. But when they inherit my shotguns, rifles and fishing rods, I am not naïve enough to believe my old equipment will see much use. My sons grew up with video games and Instagram and simply don’t feel passionate about hunting and being out in the woods the way that I do.  And I imagine that is true for most of their generation.  

Eric Washburn is a fifth-generation Coloradan and big game hunter who lives in Steamboat Springs.

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