Less than two years after Colorado voters rejected Proposition 127, a measure that would have banned the hunting of mountain lions and bobcats, the war on hunting in the Centennial State has returned. This time, the target is the commercial sale of fur. While supporters present the proposal as a modest wildlife-policy adjustment, it is part of a broader campaign to sever Americans from hunting, trapping, property rights, and the self-reliant outdoor traditions that help fund conservation itself.
On March 4, the Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) Commission voted 6-4 to accept a petition by the Center for Biological Diversity to prohibit the commercial sale of fur from 17 furbearing species. The vote did not immediately impose a ban; it advanced the petition into the rulemaking process, directing CPW staff to draft proposed rules and exceptions. Even so, the decision was significant, especially because both CPW staff and Director Laura Clellan had recommended denying the petition.
The petition seeks to outlaw the commercial sale, barter, or trade of wildlife fur in Colorado, while potentially carving out exceptions for items such as pre-tied fishing flies, certain felt hats, and scientific or educational uses. This is not merely a narrow regulatory update. It is an attempt to redefine how citizens may use wildlife and to elevate ideological hostility toward hunting and trapping over responsible stewardship — traditions that have sustained mankind for centuries.
New Front, Same Fight
Colorado’s sportsmen and rural communities have seen this before. In November 2024, voters rejected Proposition 127 by a margin of 55 to 45 percent. That initiative would have prohibited the hunting of mountain lions, bobcats, and lynx (lynx are already protected under the Endangered Species Act), eroding hunting opportunities and violating a God-given right by imposing the tyrannical will of the majority. It was a clear attempt by urban activists and well-funded outside groups to impose “ballot-box biology” that reflect the evils of democracy rather than the constitutional safeguards of a republican form of government. As The New American noted in “The God-given Right to Hunt,” the measure was never just about a single species. It represented a direct attack on the very culture of hunting.
This latest attempt picks up where Proposition 127 failed. When anti-hunting campaigns lose at the ballot box, they shift their strategy, pressuring bureaucratic commissions to do by rule what voters refused to do by referendum. If activists cannot ban hunting outright, they will work to undermine its economic and cultural foundations. Today the target is fur sales; tomorrow it will be the consumption of game meat, trapping licenses, or any other activity that sustains lawful harvest and stewardship.
Science or Emotion?
Critics of the commission’s action argue that it was not grounded in science-based wildlife management. Reports from the meeting described heavy public opposition, procedural confusion, and frustration that commissioners advanced the petition despite staff recommendations to reject it. Wildlife policy should be rooted in data and transparency, not emotional rhetoric or ideological activism.
Supporters of the proposal claim wildlife should not be managed “for-profit,” and suggest the measure aligns with “modern” conservation “values.” Yet the petition itself admits that it would not ban taking furbearers outright. If regulated trapping remains legal, why prohibit the lawful sale of the byproduct? Is it just a step in that direction? Such a policy does not protect animals; it only ensures that their hides go to waste, making lawful harvest less economically viable and more politically vulnerable. This directly violates the principle — and God‑given right — of the pursuit of happiness.
As the MeatEater news show observed, Colorado’s approach is incoherent — it allows the harvest of lawful furbearers while banning their sale. Commentator Brody Henderson described the matter as “almost a story of a rogue wildlife commission as much as anything else.” Such a policy would undermine trappers, fly-tying businesses, and taxidermists, while creating arbitrary distinctions over which fur products the government deems “acceptable.” In effect, bureaucrats would be picking winners and losers. The ban would also hurt fishermen and related businesses. Henderson noted that fly shops commonly sell fly-tying materials made from muskrat, beaver, rabbit, and other fur-bearing animals. Even wildlife-control work could become absurdly wasteful, since a trapper called to remove depredating animals could be forced to discard usable hides rather than lawfully sell or repurpose them. That is not stewardship of the environment. It is ideological posturing disguised as policy.
MeatEater founder and host Steven Rinella likewise highlighted the irrationality of the proposed rule by pointing to the contradictory treatment of beaver fur in hat-making. Under the proposal, processed beaver underfur used in certain felt cowboy hats could remain acceptable, even though the same animal’s hide could not be sold or used more directly in a visible fur product. In other words, the state would not object to the use of the animal itself, but only to disfavored forms of that use. Such a distinction is arbitrary, wasteful, and unworthy of a serious wildlife-policy regime. Rinella stated about the rule, “The problem now is they can’t figure out how to write the rule. It’s so chaotic and full of contradictions.”
Who Really Funds Conservation?
Despite the narrative pushed by animal‑rights groups, America’s conservation system is funded largely by the very hunters, trappers, and anglers they disdain. Licensing revenues and excise taxes on firearms and ammunition — established under the Pittman‑Robertson Act of 1937, which is itself unconstitutional under Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution — finance wildlife agencies, habitat restoration, and research (tasks that, constitutionally, should be managed by states and the private sector). Without sportsmen, state conservation programs that environmentalists and animal‑rights activists benefit from would collapse into bureaucratic dependency on taxpayers rather than users.
The irony is unmistakable: Those accused of harming wildlife are the ones paying to preserve it. Eliminating hunting and trapping does not protect nature — it cripples the funding that sustains wildlife management, and leads to overpopulation, starvation, and the spread of animal diseases.
The Right to Hunt
Hunting and trapping are not privileges dispensed by bureaucrats. They are expressions of self-reliance and God-given rights. From the earliest days of the Republic, Americans understood that the right to harvest game and provide food for one’s family is part of the Creator-endowed right to life and property. The Ninth Amendment recognizes that the people retain unenumerated rights beyond those listed in the Constitution — rights grounded in natural and common law, given by God, and recorded by thinkers such as English jurist and devout Christian William Blackstone.
The Founding Fathers designed the Constitution to limit the powers of government, not to grant it authority over every aspect of human life. The 10th Amendment reserves undelegated powers to the states and the people, underscoring that liberty flows from God to the individual — not from government to the governed. When officials treat hunting or property use as a mere privilege to be restricted at will, they turn the American order upside down.
Not every hunter traps, and not every trapper sells fur. But freedom is eroded one regulation at a time. If government can destroy the livelihood of one lawful group today, it can target another tomorrow. Colorado’s situation is a reminder that liberty requires constant defense.
A Warning for Other States
What is happening in Colorado will not stop there. When wildlife policy is driven by urban activism instead of science, property rights, and constitutional restraint, rural Americans lose their voice in managing the land they know best.
Lawmakers in every state should take notice. They should defend the God-given right to hunt, fish, and trap, protect lawful commerce in wildlife products, and reject ideologically driven attempts to curtail those rights through administrative power. Twenty-four states have constitutional provisions protecting the right to hunt and fish, underscoring that Colorado’s anti-trapping and anti-hunting trajectory is out of step with a broader national recognition that these traditions are worthy of constitutional protection. Colorado’s voters have already spoken once against anti-hunting extremism; regulators must not achieve by bureaucracy what activists failed to achieve through “ballot-box biology.” Thankfully, we live in a constitutional Republic.
Hunting and trapping embody the spirit of independence and responsibility at the core of the American experiment. They remind us that liberty and stewardship can thrive together — and that rights endowed by God must never depend on the permission of the state.
