Colorado will now limit trappers in the number of beavers, foxes and other furbearer species they can kill in a day — the latest controversial discussion around hunting in the state.
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After hours of deliberation, Colorado Parks and Wildlife commissioners on Thursday night voted to limit hunters to killing two individuals per day from each of the 17 furbearer species in the state. Until now, state regulations have not imposed a limit on the number of furbearers hunters could take in a day.
The commission voted 6-5 to impose the limit, which is stricter than the options presented by Colorado Parks and Wildlife staff. Agency staff members told commissioners that they did not believe a daily trapping limit — called a bag limit — was necessary because there was no evidence that trapping levels were high enough to impact the species’ population.
But after the commission asked the staff to present potential limits, CPW put forth two possible alternatives.
During the discussion, commissioners noted that it was unlikely that a bag limit would change the number of animals killed or trappers’ behavior, as most trappers take only a few animals per year.
Instead, they said, the conversation was necessary to address what some might see as a regulatory loophole that allowed unlimited trapping, while balancing the needs of trappers themselves.
“All of this comes down to values,” Commissioner Becky Niemiec said. “There is no biological reason for a high bag limit, and there is no biological reason for a low bag limit. It’s about whose values do we uphold?”
The changes to furbearer trapping come amid a broader conversation about hunting in the state, including an ongoing rulemaking process about a potential ban on the sale of fur from hunted furbearers. Wildlife advocacy groups in recent years have pursued several restrictions, including a failed attempt to ban mountain lion and bobcat hunting through a ballot initiative.
The trend has prompted some hunting groups to pursue a new ballot measure that would ask voters in November to enshrine the right to hunt and fish in the state constitution and better protect those practices from further challenges.
Coloradans who spoke in opposition to bag limits at the commission’s meeting Thursday said they didn’t understand the need for a regulation they saw as needless. If the commission needed to adopt a bag limit, they urged it to select one of the options presented by CPW staff.
“I don’t know why we continue to consider very radical changes to systems and science that has worked for decades in our state,” said Reece Melton, the natural resources director for Rio Blanco County in northwest Colorado.
Commissioners at their March meeting requested that CPW staff compile information about the rules regulating how many furbearers could be hunted on a single day. The wildlife agency lists 17 species as huntable furbearers: badgers, bobcats, beavers, coyotes, gray foxes, swift foxes, red foxes, mink, muskrats, opossums, pine martens, ring-tailed cats, striped skunks, western spotted skunks, raccoons, long-tailed weasels and short-tailed weasels.
CPW staff members on said Thursday that their preferred option was a daily limit of 15 animals of each species per hunter. They also presented a stricter option, which would allow a daily bag limit of eight for some species and four for others.
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Agency staff said CPW had never imposed a bag limit on furbearers because its leaders never saw it as necessary.
The number of animals hunted each year is small compared to the species’ overall populations, and CPW is not concerned about hunting impacting species’ populations, said Matt Eckert, the deputy assistant director for the agency’s Terrestrial Branch.
“Annual harvest estimates, even without a bag limit, have been low — and far below the sustainable level,” he said, noting that disease, habitat changes, weather and car collisions play a much larger role in species’ population sizes.
A 1996 change in hunting regulations that banned the use of all traps — except for live traps — greatly reduced furbearer hunters’ success, reducing the need for a limit on daily take, Eckert said.
With the exception of bobcats, CPW does not require that hunters report how many furbearers they’ve killed. The agency instead conducts a voluntary survey of furbearer hunters and extrapolates likely harvest rates from those responses.
For example, CPW estimates that at least 53,000 beavers live in Colorado. On average, hunters trap and kill about 1,300 beavers every year — far less than the 10,600 kills CPW considers the maximum limit for the species’ sustainability.
CPW tracks more precise data on bobcat trapping, since the state requires hunters to report every bobcat they kill. Between 2022 and 2024, hunters killed an average of 968 bobcats annually — far less than the 3,521 that CPW considers the upper limit of hunting. The agency estimates that more than 20,700 bobcats live in Colorado.
Most trappers kill very few animals every year — an average of two or less, according to CPW data about six species.
A few trappers, however, are killing dozens of animals every year. One hunter killed 128 beavers one year and another harvested 63 gray foxes, data shows.
Several commissioners expressed concerns about those trappers and the impacts they could have on their hunting grounds, especially as wild animals weather drought and climate change.
Commissioners on Friday heard CPW staff present on the implications of from hunted furbearers. A wildlife advocacy group, the Center for Biological Diversity, last year submitted a petition asking the commission to ban the practice.
Although CPW staff recommended denying the petition and maintaining the status quo, the commissioners in March rejected that recommendation. They are expected to decide whether to implement a ban at their September meeting.
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