The Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission oversaw a tense public meeting in Denver on Wednesday, where it considered a citizen petition to ban the commercial sale of wildlife fur. Although Colorado Parks and Wildlife staff made a recommendation against the petition, and the majority of Coloradans who provided public comment asked commissioners to deny it, the Commission ultimately voted 6-4 to move the proposal forward.
This means the petition, which has been broadly referred to as a “fur ban,” will move into the rule-making phase. It will be brought back before the Commission in May. In its current form, the proposal would outlaw the sale, barter, or trade of wildlife furs and furbearer parts statewide.
Wednesday’s meeting was overwhelmingly well-attended and contentious, to the point where CPW increased the security at the hotel where it was held, according to the Colorado Sun. This level of tension isn’t surprising due to the controversial nature of modern predator management in Colorado. In recent years gray wolf reintroduction and a petition (and subsequent ballot measure that didn’t pass) to ban big cat hunting in the state have divided conservationists of different stripes.
Among the most well-represented groups at the public meeting were hunters, anglers, and supporters of science-based wildlife management. Several ranchers and county commissioners were also present. The majority of people who spoke during the public comment period did so in opposition to the proposed fur ban.
Many opponents said they were there to defend CPW, since the agency’s director had already recommended the petition be denied. Several commenters also shared their view that the petition was part of a broader agenda by animal-rights proponents to chip away at Coloradan’s hunting and trapping rights.
“I strongly oppose the fur ban petition,” said Jerry Apker, a retired CPW wildlife biologist. “No matter how it’s dressed up, this is [based on] ideology and not science.”
Apker also cautioned commissioners that a “yes” vote would go directly against state policy. And that, in his opinion, they would be overriding the will of the people, who voted down similar proposals just 15 months ago.
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Supporters of the ban argued that it wouldn’t prohibit regulated hunting and trapping in Colorado — only the commercial sale of furs and other wildlife parts from furbearing species harvested in the state. Many claimed that this commercialization of furbearer harvest goes against the North American Model of Wildlife Management, which prohibits commercial hunting and the sale of wildlife.
Other supporters contended in their comments that CPW’s data — including population estimates of furbearer species — was lacking. Some even recommended the Commission go a step further by placing a five-year moratorium on all trapping in the state.
The proposal, which would outlaw the sale, barter, or trade of wildlife furs and furbearer parts statewide, is similar to Ordinance 308, which would have banned the sale of new fur products in Denver. Voters rejected that ban in 2024, with roughly 58 percent of the county voting against it. (A similar fur ban narrowly passed Boulder County by 51 percent in 2001.)
The petition was also authored by Samantha Miller, a senior carnivore campaign manager for the Center for Biological Diversity and the same person who led the push to get Proposition 207 on the ballot in 2024. That ballot measure would have banned the hunting and trapping of mountain lions and bobcats in Colorado, and it was also soundly rejected by the state’s voters.
“It’s obvious to me that certain powers that be want certain things to go away, and it’s on us as sportsmen and -women and ag producers to make sure that doesn’t happen,” says Dan Gates, executive director of Coloradans for Responsible Wildlife Management. “We beat [Prop. 127] by ten-and-a-half points, and Ordinance 308, which is now dead and gone, would have done the same thing that’s being attempted now.”
Gates tells Outdoor Life that Miller’s citizen petition was introduced to the CPW Commission in June, just a day before a furbearer working group commenced to provide recommendations on furbearer harvest.
“This is a travesty to the democratic process that guides wildlife management,” Gates says. “And it shows a complete disregard for science-based wildlife management.”
He also points to a letter that CPW director Laura Clellan sent to the Commission in February, in which she recommended the fur-ban petition be denied. Clellan noted in her recommendation that the petition was overly vague, and that it was based on the faulty assumption that regulated trapping is significantly impacting furbearer populations.
“The petition relies heavily on uncertainty about these species’ population trends and the possibility that the commercial sale market is driving harvest past sustainable population limits,” Clellan wrote in her letter. “But the petition lacks solid evidence that commercial fur sales drive harvest levels in Colorado.”
The current proposal includes exemptions for
- “hand-tied fishing flies sold as a finished product”
- “felted fur Western hats, provided that such hats are crafted using heritage techniques”
- “fur and fur-derived materials” sold “for the purposes of scientific research, education, or museum collections”
As Clellan noted in her recommendation, however, these exemptions “suffer from vagueness concerns that will make them either ineffective or impossible to enforce.”
She explained that in the case of flies, for example, the ban would still prohibit the sale of certain raw materials commonly used to tie flies, such as deer and elk hair. And throughout her letter, Clellan urged commissioners to follow the available science.
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“Even if the petition supported the claim that commercial fur markets have a significant relationship to Colorado harvest levels, the Division does not have data that indicates [this],” Clellan wrote. “While the Division does not have perfect data on furbearer harvest levels, it has good information collected through the furbearer harvest report. This more recent information collected by the Division stands in contrast to the petition’s claims.”
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