Colorado Officials Considering a Reduction in Mountain Lion Licenses for Next Season

Despite voting down an outright ban on mountain lion and bobcat hunting last November, Colorado officials aren’t done toying with the big cats hunting regs as of yet. In a memo for this week’s meeting, Colorado Parks and Wildlife has said that they are leaning towards trimming down tags by nearly 10 percent for the next mountain lion hunting season.

With this season already under way, the new regs would not affect those currently those afield but would be in place in time for the 2025/26 season. 

As of right now, officials are recommending an adjustment from the currently available 674 tags to a reduced number of 610 tags for the following season. In an effort to keep lion numbers in balance, the reduction will come from both the northwest and eastern management units.

Parks and Wildlife staff is also tabling a recommendation that the state axe the additional April hunting season all together, despite it being a successful portion of the hunt since 2014.

Colorado is home to one of the healthiest populations of big cats with officials pegging the current population at somewhere between 3,800 and 4,400 lions, so why the sudden reduction?

While CPW did release 674 licenses to the public, it’s worth noting that of those allocated tags, only 500 of them were punched during the last full hunting season. For the three years prior to that, the agency reported that the average take was slightly below that at 491 mountain lions.

The question I, and many others have is, why then, after voting on the issue a mere two months ago, are we already meddling with a system that is seemingly working quite smoothly? Despite tag allocations, the numbers reveal that the hunter success rate is below 75%, leaving tags on the table each and every year for the past three seasons.

The new plan seems to ignore that data and aims to set new and aggressive thresholds that are set to only impact the number of available hunting licenses. One of the new thresholds is aimed at limiting the number of adult female lions to be hunted each year at 22% of the population, a move Mark Vieira, the agency’s carnivore and furbearer program manager called an “effective safeguard against excessive removal against the part of the population that contributes to growth” at a meeting in November.

Additionally, a cap on human-caused mortality (deaths outside of hunting) that cannot exceed 17% of the population over a three-year average was also proposed. According to officials, if either of these thresholds are met, that would immediately trigger the associated reduction in tags for the following year.

I am forever in favor of guardrails for effective wildlife management and support the good people at Colorado Parks and Wildlife in their decision to reduce tags if they truly feel that such a reduction is beneficial to the animals. A fear I believe we all share is that, in some cases, aggressive moves such as this can be viewed as a tool at appeasing those who still vehemently oppose hunting in every form.

And that is something we all ought to watch out for.