Despite the significant loss at the ballot box and previous efforts at the Colorado state legislature and Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission, proponents of the measure to ban lion hunting have pivoted their focus back to the CPW and Thursday’s CPW Commission meeting in Lamar, Colo.

The CPW Commission, the governing body for wildlife management decisions in the state, unanimously passed the East-Slope Mountain Lion Management Plan on Friday. Former CPW Commissioner Gaspar Perricone noted the plan has been years in the making through stakeholder engagement.

“The electoral outcome demonstrates the public’s commitment to ensuring wildlife management decisions continue to be developed and administered by wildlife professionals at Colorado Parks and Wildlife,” Perricone said. “In concert with that, the people have spoken and we certainly stand with them and have every intention through the Colorado Wildlife Conservation Project to continue to be a front line of defense ensuring that the standards of holistic wildlife management continue into the future.”

PROP 114

The lion ban proposed by Cats Aren’t Trophies (CATS) passed only in six counties. Prop 114, which mandated the release of wolves in the state, passed by a significantly higher margin, passing in 13 counties, though both were primarily in urban and suburban areas.

“It is a bit of an ironic reality that the outcome that didn’t go their way seems not to carry the same weight that the outcome of Proposition 114 did,” Perricone said. “Regardless, an 11-point win, I think, is a rather definitive measure and by all accounts offers the wildlife conservation community a mandate to continue to pursue science-based wildlife management both in practice and in principle.”

Julie Marshall, communications director for CATS said in a release that CPW “operates at its peril by stonewalling on obvious reforms to protect wild cats. The vote was anything but a mandate on baiting, trapping and hounding — it was a vote of deference to the agency to take action itself.”