CPW Commission plagued with confusion over prairie dog petition
By Rachel Gable | November 6, 2026 | theFencePost
The Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission spent hours listening to public comment opposing and supporting a citizen petition seeking to end the shooting of prairie dogs on public land at their Nov. 3 and 4 meeting. At the October meeting, Commissioners Jessica Beaulieu, Dr. Rebecca Niemiec, Jack Murphy, Richard Reading, John Le Coq, and Chair Jay Tutchton ignored staff and CPW Director Laura Clellan’s repeated requests to allow staff additional time for stakeholder engagement and basic preparation. The six commissioners ordered staff to draft their professional recommendation in eight days. The meeting was marked by confusion and procedural inconsistencies that raised concerns from other commissioners about transparency, disenfranchising stakeholders, and unequal treatment of commissioners.
In the November meeting in Fort Morgan, the six aforementioned commissioners again ignored staff’s pleas to undertake stakeholder engagement to avoid losing the cooperation of landowners around the state and voted to consider final votes on the petition at the January meeting even after CPW counsel Jake Matter raised concerns about unclear language defining public land.
All of this occurred while multiple commissioners appeared to be actively sending and receiving text messages. At one point Commissioner Tai Jacober was compelled to tell Beaulieu and Niemiec that their smiling during commissioner comment was inappropriate.
The first elected official to comment in support of the petition was Lt. Gov. Diana Primavera. It was also reported to The Fence Post that at least one of the CPW commissioners received a call from Gov. Jared Polis urging the commissioner to vote in favor of the petition. The governor’s office has not responded as of press time. CPW’s Type 1 designation gives the commission independent rulemaking authority, separate from the Department of Natural Resources’ administrative oversight.
Last August, when activist Samantha Miller claimed in an online video that Polis directed Cats Aren’t Trophies and other groups seeking to ban mountain lion hunting via petition to not “let us be shown up in Denver” at the CPW Commission meeting, a spokesperson for his office was clear.
“While the Governor didn’t have a position on the petition and doesn’t take positions on petitions, and Colorado Parks and Wildlife staff recommended opposing the petition, we are committed to working with stakeholders to craft a rule that supports sportsmen and women while conserving and restoring furbearer species in Colorado. The governor believes that the outdoors are for everyone including hunters and anglers who are a key part of funding and benefiting from the important work of CPW.”
A CONFUSING, RUSHED PROCESS
Prior to the vote, Laura Daniels, Gunnison County Commissioner, called the rulemaking “rushed” and said it has been neither clear nor thorough.
“Just today, the commission expressed a great deal of confusion about the petition processes that you engage in,” Daniels said. “If you don’t understand the process, how can the public understand it? Also today, your staff acknowledged that development of additional regulatory alternatives typically requires a minimum of three to four months. And they acknowledged we have not had this time, and their outreach thus far was one-way communication. Additional evidence that this has been rushed and not thorough is that your staff recommended doing this rulemaking as part of the regular small game rulemaking next year, and you opted for an accelerated timeline. CPW staff had only eight days to develop the proposed rules.”
Daniels said this did not allow stakeholders, including Colorado Counties, Inc., time to compose formal comment and lacked any vetting with invested parties.
“I’m also, frankly, not sure this process has been perfectly honest,” Daniels said. “This discussion frequently talks about biology. But from where I sit, it doesn’t appear to really be about biology. Because if we’re talking about biology, prairie dog populations are stable. We heard it over and over again. On the Comanche National Grasslands, under the status quo, the colony acreage has grown. The biggest threats to them are plague and development, not recreational take. If your focus is population health, then this seems like a solution in search of a problem. From where I sit, why we’re really here feels like it’s about the morality of recreational hunting of prairie dogs, hidden in the guise of a biological argument.”
Daniels said, “durable public policy needs a durable public process.”
“Rushing this through before the normal rulemaking next year, without adequate public engagement and stakeholder engagement, without viable alternatives, it undermines the legitimacy of this commission,” Daniels said. “It undermines the legitimacy of this process and of the very rule you are considering making. Please hold off on making any new rules about prairie dog take until the time, trust, and transparency necessary for good policy have been undertaken.”
STAKEHOLDERS NOT CONSIDERED
Commissioner Niemiec was criticized for introducing a packet of 26 white papers to support her position on prairie dogs one minute prior to the beginning of the meeting, giving staff and commissioners no time to review the materials. She went on to cite one of her own studies that found the stakeholder engagement process did not reduce the indicators of social conflict with regard to wolf releases.
“Stakeholder engagement is so important, but it is not a panacea,” she said. “When there are fundamental conflicts over values, it cannot solve them. I still think it’s very important. It can often change beliefs. It can often influence trust. People need to be heard, but it should not be used as a crutch or a delay tactic. And I fear that’s what we’re doing here.”
She said staff was provided ample opportunity for stakeholder engagement and offered to volunteer hundreds of hours herself to do it. She said people have been advocating for the end of recreational shooting for years and they should have been engaged years ago.
“I’m worried this call for more time is just a tactic to delay decision making on this until a lot of us are gone,” she said. “Can we be honest about what’s happening here? I think we have an opportunity to make a difference now. We can do stakeholder engagement. Let’s do it. I’d love to see that. Let’s get it done before our final vote in January. A drawn-out decision-making process between September and January is not rushing it. It gives us plenty of time. We’ve heard from the public. We can continue to hear from the public. But we should not weaponize this concept of stakeholder engagement to run out the clock until we are gone and cannot make a difference.”
Commissioner Jacober addressed the commission about the string of unclear motions and the concern of counsel that the petition lacks a clear definition of public lands.
“Here we are,” he said. “It’s clearly apparent we’re rushing and there’s confusion. What does public lands mean? How are we supposed to make a rulemaking when we don’t even know? As commissioners, how are we supposed to vote on it? We’re rushing this because we haven’t given staff the opportunity to work through the legal parts of it, let alone the stakeholder engagement part of it. Really? Are we not humble enough to let them work out the legal language so that the rest of commissioners understand what we’re talking about? I see smiles. It’s inappropriate. Legal has concern. We don’t know what those concerns are. How am I supposed to vote on a motion that’s now been changed, not even rescinded, changed midway, with no definition?”
May then clarified with multiple motions on the floor, which motions needed to be withdrawn and asked that a clear motion be correctly put forth so the commission is clear what the vote is and the minutes are clear. Chair Tutchton did so and with the proper motion on the floor, said he wanted to respond to Commissioner Jacober’s concern about the legal definition of public lands within the motion and petition language.
“That does not bother me at this juncture because when we finally vote on this in January, we’ll know exactly what the definition of public lands that we end up voting on in January will be,” Tutchton said. “So we’re still in the sausage-making process, and the definition of public lands that currently is in the petition may or may not change as our staff looks at it. But when we ultimately would vote on a final rule in January, it has to be clear. I agree with you on that.”
Commissioner Silva Blaney responded.
“So what you’re saying is that we should vote on something and we don’t have the definition for this very important language that’s in the motion, and that we don’t need to worry about it because we’ll be doing a final vote in January,” she said. “But between now and January, we need to do stakeholder engagement without a definition for the language that’s in the motion.”
Commissioner Reading pointed out that offering flexibility to staff to clarify language is commonplace during the rulemaking process, but not at the end.
The Commission ultimately voted 6-5 to advance Alternative 2 toward final rulemaking in January, giving staff flexibility to modify the definition of public lands before the final vote.
SOURCE: theFencePost, November 6, 2026
