Colorado's sporting community is celebrating after a high profile anti-hunting bill died in committee. House Bill 1258 would have struck down a provision that requires the Colorado Parks & Wildlife Department (CPW) to use hunting, fishing, and trapping as its primary means for managing wildlife in the Centennial State. The 12-3 vote that stopped it was cast on Thursday, March 6, 2025.
Representatives Tammy Story and Elizabeth Velasco summarized their bill with the following introduction:
In Colorado's wildlife statutes, the legislative declaration commits the state to use hunting, trapping, and fishing as the primary methods of effecting wildlife harvests. The bill requires the parks and wildlife commission to use the best available wildlife and ecological science to adopt rules that benefit wildlife, whole ecosystem health, and all Coloradans.
Velasco and Story's bill would have replaced the phrase "shall utilize hunting, trapping, and fishing" with "may authorize hunting, fishing, and trapping" in the legislative declaration that governs CPW. It also would have deleted a 9-word phrase in the declaration that ensures that hunting, fishing, and trapping are the "primary methods" by which CPW manages fish and game in the state.
"This language change would have been detrimental to CPW's ability to mange wildlife," Dan Gates, founder of Coloradans for Responsible Wildlife Management (CRWM), a group that advocates for the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation in the Centennial State, told Field & Stream. "By voting this down in the House Ag Committee, the legislature signaled its support for the professional, science-based management that CPW has exhibited for more than 125 years."
Gates' CRWM was instrumental in defeating the bill, along with other pro-hunting groups like the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation (RMEF). In a press release issued on March 7, RMEF said it distributed a call-to-action email to its Colorado-based membership which then sent nearly 600 messages to lawmakers urging them to defeat the bill.
“The very nature of the bill suggests that CPW is intentionally dismissing the application of best available science, which is an assertion that I am sure the hundreds of scientists and wildlife biologists at CPW would contest,” said RMEF representative and Colorado hunter Gaspar Perricone. “Because best available science is often subjective, and is not defined in the bill, it likely would expose the agency to frivolous lawsuits from third-party entities on the occasion that particular scientific reports were not incorporated in CPW decision-making. HB 1258 ... is a bit of a social solution in search of a scientific problem that doesn’t appear to exist within CPW.”
According to RMEF volunteer and Colorado fly shop owner Justin Nolan, the bill would have been bad for the angling community as well. He said he sells about 1,000 fishing licenses each year that generate $40,000 in revenue for CPW. “What’s lost in these numbers that shops like mine provide is the additional funds that are afforded to CPW through Pittman-Robertson dollars,” said Nolan. “Those dollars are calculated based on the number of hunting and fishing licenses and it’s an exponential factor. According to the 2023 fiscal year, $32 million through excise taxes were provided to Colorado Parks and Wildlife through Pittman-Robertson dollars. This bill seeks to upend the funding.”
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RMEF was joined in its opposition to HB1258 by other pro-hunting groups like Backcounty Hunters and Anglers, the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, and HOWL for Wildlife. According to HOWL founder Charles Whitwam, 15,820 people used his action call-to-action platform to send opposition emails to Colorado state legislators.
