Colorado Parks and Wildlife is preparing to take a deeper look at how it manages species like bobcats, coyotes, beavers and foxes, all of which are classified as "furbearers."
With two citizen petitions on the table, a set of stakeholder recommendations and a lot of public opinion, furbearers will take center state at the upcoming Parks and Wildlife Commission meeting on March 4.
Public sentiment around furbearers is largely divided into two groups. One, held by animal welfare and wildlife conservation advocates, includes concerns that the management of furbearers is outdated, unethical and leading to overexploitation of the species. The second, primarily represented by sportsperson and agriculture advocates, includes arguments that current management is driven by science, represents a critical part of Colorado's hunting heritage and provides critical data to the agency.
Parks and Wildlife convened a working group last year with various stakeholders from both sides to discuss how it could improve management. A report with recommendations was published in December, but has faced criticism from representatives of both sides of the issue, expressing concerns with transparency, conflicts of interest, manipulation, lack of policy changes and more.
At the upcoming commissioner meeting, the board will consider changes to its furbearer regulations, taking into consideration recommendations from the working group and from the agency's new Beaver Conservation and Management Strategy. The commission will also consider two citizen petitions on furbearers, both of which have been recommended for denial by the Parks and Wildlife director and staff.
This includes a petition, submitted by the Colorado Trappers & Predator Hunters Association in November 2024, which asks for regulation changes on bobcats, swift foxes and beavers that purport to improve data collection of the species. It also includes a petition submitted by the Center for Biological Diversity in June 2025, which asks the agency to ban the commercial sale of furs in Colorado.
Colorado Parks and Wildlife manages 16 furbearer species: bobcats, beavers, coyotes, foxes, weasels, raccoons, skunks, mink, muskrats, pine martens, badgers and more.
Colorado regulations allow the use of live traps for furbearers and require the animals be immediately released or killed by a legal method. In 1996, Colorado voters passed a ballot measure banning the use of leghold traps; instant-kill, body-gripping design traps; poisons; and snares for wildlife. The agency currently only requires hunters to submit hides for inspections on bobcats.
The only legal methods of killing furbearers include rifles, handguns, shotguns, handheld bows and crossbows, and air guns. Furbearers may be taken with the aid of baiting.
The furbearer permit is a $10 add-on option available to individuals who have also purchased a small game license. In its 2024-25 fiscal year, the agency sold 19,620 furbearer permits, generating just under $200,000 in revenue.
There are no limits on the number that a furbearer permit-holder can kill of these species. The agency reports that the number of furbearers has remained fairly consistent since 2021.
Parks and Wildlife is expected to propose new daily limits for recreational hunters and trappers targeting furbearers at its March meeting.
Colorado's furbearer working group held multiple meetings of two separate stakeholder groups, one representing the wildlife advocates and another the sportsperson and agriculture advocates. Facilitation of the group and report were led by a third-party consultant: Heather Bergman with Peak Facilitation Group.
In the final report, Bergman wrote of the challenge of finding overlapping interests between the two groups, adding that the final recommendations "do not give either focus group everything they want in terms of furbearer management or policy."
"In fact, they may not give either group most of what they want," Bergman added.
The report named four species with the highest priority for management action -- gray fox, swift fox, ringtail cats and marten -- and gave seven recommendations. This included expanded education for hunters and the general population, conducting furbearer population surveys, requiring mandatory checks for the four species, establishing annual limits for the four species, creating a coyote-friendly communities program and reconvening stakeholders in the future.
Stakeholders on both sides of the argument expressed concerns with the working group process and final recommendations.
In a press release, representatives from the Center for Biological Diversity, Colorado Nature League, Project Coyote and ColoradoWild said that the recommendations lacked meaningful policy changes despite noting the deficiencies in critical scientific data, including species' population data. In an interview, Sam Miller, the senior carnivore campaigner for the Center for Biological Diversity, said many things in the process were "managed and manipulated" to maintain the status quo.
"Stakeholder processes are inherently kind of stacked," Miller said. "They're set up in a way that the agency gets favorable outcomes or supports the status quo or the goals of the agency, and with the (furbearer) stakeholder process, they handpicked each person that sat in that room and they also controlled what they spoke about."
As an example, Miller said she was not allowed to participate in Parks and Wildlife's furbearer working group, despite her professional focus on furbearers. Miller led the campaign supporting the ban of mountain lion, bobcat and lynx hunting in Proposition 127, which was defeated by voters, and submitted the commercial fur sale ban petition on behalf of the nonprofit. A different Center for Biological Diversity representative participated in the stakeholder group. The stakeholders were also prohibited from discussing the commercial ban, reportedly with the rationale that it would be discussed as part of the submitted petition.
According to Joey Livingston, a spokesperson for Parks and Wildlife, a list of potential stakeholders was provided to the facilitator by agency staff. The facilitator "solely led the development and screening of the potential list of stakeholder(s)" based on criteria from the agency. This included requirements of the individuals' ability to compromise, state their desires and contribute expertise.
A group of eight agriculture and sportsperson individual stakeholders also had concerns surrounding how the process was handled, which was articulated in a letter to the Parks and Wildlife commission and leadership. The group wrote that the "effort fell short of the standards of transparency, balance and science-based decision-making that are essential to effective wildlife management."
The stakeholders expressed concerns that the working group lacked a scientific focus, excluded beavers and had an "unexpected emphasis" on coyotes at the last minute. The group also expressed concerns that there was an imbalance of stakeholders, including a conflict of interest with the inclusion of the Center for Biological Diversity, and external/political pressures that led to the facilitator being placed in an "untenable position."
"We view public input and scrutiny as part of our responsibility as the public agency managing wildlife in Colorado," Livingston said when asked about the stakeholders' concerns. "There has been a growing interest in wildlife management regarding these species by the public in recent years. At CPW, our role is to listen carefully to our diverse stakeholders and technical experts to develop recommendations for the Parks and Wildlife Commission."
Both stakeholder groups expressed concerns over how science and values were reported and handled throughout the working group process and final report.
Miller said the final report "did not look at climate and biodiversity as hard science, and it looked rather to find middle ground between two sets of values, automatically making both values equal."
"Climate change wasn't reported as a fact," Miller said. "That was reported as a values assumption, whereas harvest levels were reported as fact, even though they're self-reported and it's not mandatory."
While the report identified a need for more population data for some of the furbearer species, Miller said it was concerning that the recommendations did not "suggest a full moratorium on those species until they got the data."
This speaks to Miller's broader concerns that the 16 diverse furbearer species are being managed as one, despite having different needs and threats, and that the lack of limits of harvest leads to overexploitation of the species, which serve vital ecosystem roles.
Jenny Burbey, president of the Colorado Outfitters Association, said she came "into (the working group) with a relatively open mind and heart," looking for scientific evidence that there were adjustments needed to how the agency manages furbearers.
"There was nothing brought to the table to tell me that I needed to be worried about any of the furbearer species, period,"Burbey said.
Burbey added that it felt like arguments were "being driven by emotional needs, not scientific ones," especially over the use of the word, "unlimited," which some used to suggest the system was "being bastardized and over-utilized."
"Their perception is that people who do hunt and trap, especially furbearers, are less than, ethically immoral and would always over take," she said. "When really what's happening is it's unlimited because the amount of take has no need for limitations.... in the process, it was very clear that only 2% to 3% of the (furbearer) population is actually hunted and taken. The populations are doing just fine."
Miller, however, said that without science and data about each furbearer species, there's no way to tell how the populations are doing.
"All of those different little guys can be imperil, and we don't even know because we don't have population data," Miller said.
Burbey also raised concern that the report has a lot of recommendations that will cost the agency money at a time when its budget is already stretched thin and that furbearer changes are being driven by outside groups, rather than by Parks and Wildlife biologists.
"Reality has to come into some of these processes at some point," Burbey said, adding that the amount the furbearer process program brings in is "not enough to pay for all of the different bells and whistles that really anybody would want."
"I'm not going to say any of the programs are bad because they're not," she said. "The wants are good. The desires could be good. But they're not coming to the table to pay for those."
Parks and Wildlife has recommended denial of both citizen furbearer petitions.
Miller said that of all the furbearer management changes she'd like to see, the commercial fur sale ban petition represents a "low bar that most folks should be able to get behind."
"Right now, we don't allow for commercialization of big game in Colorado wildlife management, so why should we allow for that for these different little carnivores that all have entirely different ecosystem functions?" she said. "We've seen historic declines and species tied to commercial exploitation ... so let's remove that market incentive and then CPW can work with us, others and scientists on setting limits on looking at species-specific recommendations."
In her recommendation to the commission, Laura Clellan, the newly-appointed Parks and Wildlife director, writes that the agency's main rationale for denying the commercial fur sale ban is that the petition "lacks solid evidence that commercial fur sales drive harvest levels in Colorado."
In recommending denial of the other furbearer petition -- which would add check and sealing requirements for swift foxes, beavers and bobcats -- Clellan writes that some recommendations will already be considered by the agency at its March meeting, and that for some, the benefits don't outweigh the cost.
"Additional harvest data is the most useful in setting particular harvest limits or levels for a species. However, for these species and other furbearers, the division does not intend to set specific harvest limits," Clellan wrote. "Rather, at the March 4-5, 2026, Commission meeting, the Division will be presenting its recommendation to adopt daily bag limits for all avocationally-taken furbearers."
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