Considering that the debate likely will continue to rage deep into the 2006 session of the Colorado General Assembly, it perhaps comes as no surprise that the Wildlife Commission still hasn’t made up its collective mind on how the state’s big game licenses get divvied up.
Meeting on Thursday in Lamar, the commission took no position either on the split of draw licenses for deer and elk among residents and nonresidents or the even thornier matter of landowner preference.
After months of meetings and recommendations by a special advisory committee and a separate proposal from Division of Wildlife staff, the policy-making body hasn’t spoken on any of the key issues.
Stay tuned for the policy- making body’s workshop Oct. 4-5 in Salida. Or maybe not.
The commission has outright authority to rule on three major proposals: resident-nonresident allotment, preference point reform and a special fee for unredeemed landowner vouchers.
It needs legislative approval for any changes in the landowner voucher mix, extension of youth hunting ages and adjustment to game damage eligibility.
Hot-button issues are whether residents get 80 percent of the deer and elk draw in units requiring five or more preference points, along with a landowner bid for a boost in the current 15 percent off-the-top allotment of preference tags for the state’s most desirable permits.
The Lamar meeting was spiced by a harangue from T. Wright Dickinson, a Moffat County rancher and politician who has made a career of bullying DOW over wildlife-related matters. Dickinson threw his weight around as a landowner representative on the License Allocation Working Group and Thursday decided to test his act on the Wildlife Commission.
With veiled threats of some form of wildlife Armageddon should landowners not get their way, Dickinson demanded to revisit a proposal that would have given ranchers 25 percent of the state’s most coveted tags in the extreme northwest where he operates, a blatant display of greedy self-interest. To its credit, DOW staff rejected all voucher increases in favor of a 10 percent hike in family-only tags for the Eastern plains.
Whether the commission heeds Dickinson’s rant remains to be seen. The same holds for a similar sermon by landowner representative Jim Idema opposing the 80 percent resident allotment, a split that would limit the access of commercial hunting interests to high-rolling nonresidents.
Idema, a lackey for big-money outdoor interests, pops up regularly to rail against public access to the state’s streams and now to represent the hunt-for-cash crowd that seeks to diminish the average hunter’s share of hunting licenses in favor of those who would sell them to the highest bidder.
Dickinson’s dire predictions about what might happen to deer and elk if landowners don’t get their way with the license process gives lie to the standard rancher mantra of dedicated wildlife stewardship. Instead, it reflects what may be the more accurate connection in this era of rampant commercialization, that of bucks and bulls as $5,000 bills on four legs.
It’s now up to the commission, and perhaps the legislature, to decide whether Colorado wildlife management sinks inextricably into the commercial bog. Let’s hope the right decision comes soon.
