Colorado To Kill “Ballot Box Biology”

Photo Credit: Kjekol_Evato

If you follow what’s happening in Colorado, you know the last two presidential ballots have included wildlife votes, the first to reintroduce wolves passed, and the second to ban the hunting of mountain lions, bobcats and lynx failed. 

The Colorado Wildlife Employees Protective Association (CWEPA), a fraternal organization whose membership dates back to 1947 and represents hundreds of current and former CPW employees, hopes this trend stops. The organization is not merely a bystander to CPW’s activities. It represents 230 agency employees, past and present, including wildlife biologists, administrators, and officers. They want wildlife management to be left to the professionals at CPW, rather than voters creating animal-related laws. 

Some call voting on wildlife management “ballot box biology” and CWEPA board president Casey Westbrook just calls it like he sees it. “I don’t try to tell my surgeons how to do surgery on me, right? I think there’s a reason that we put people in place to do specialized jobs and that’s what we are, we’re a specialized field,” Westbrook said in an interview with Denver’s “9NEWS”. 

In addition to his role with CWEPA, Westbrook is a district manager for CPW.  “Try to work within the existing system rather than go to a ballot,” Westbrook said.

In 2016, the CPW Commission passed a resolution opposing “the intentional release of any wolves into Colorado.” However, the commission did not have the final say. In 2020, 50.9% of Coloradans voted to reintroduce wolves. Most of the “Yes” votes came from just 13 counties. 

“So, they’ll come to the parks and wildlife commission, and if they don’t get the results they seek there, then it’s been moved to a legislative action, and if they don’t get the result they seek there, then it becomes a ballot initiative,” Westbrook said. He explained these votes don’t necessarily lead to the best laws.

Westbrook believes, “The further you move toward the ballot initiative process, the further you move away from the ability of the experts in the field to have their input.” 

To illustrate this point, CWEPA has penned a resolution supporting “science-based wildlife conservation.”

The resolution, approved by the association’s board on Oct. 9, said it is “self-evident that all wildlife in Colorado is best protected, enhanced, and managed via the science-based wildlife management professionals employed by the State of Colorado for such purposes.”

In particular, the group said that science-based approach is “pursuant to the mission of Colorado Parks and Wildlife” and as prescribed by the tenets of the “North American Model of Wildlife Conservation.”

This is the group’s effort to demonstrate its preference for “science-based wildlife conservation” against recent efforts to hand over major decisions on wildlife management to voters, instead of letting the wildlife agency’s staffers do that task.

“If this is going to be a trend, we’d like to get in front of it,” Westbrook told “Colorado Politics”.