͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌To prevent cruelty to animals, we promote enacting and enforcing good public policies. To enact good laws, we must elect good lawmakers, and that’s why we remind voters which candidates care about our issues and which ones don’t. If you’d like to unsubscribe, click here. [[link removed]]

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Dear John,

There’s thrilling news from battlefront Colorado: Animal Wellness Action and its partners submitted 188,000 signatures on July 3 in support of the Cats Aren’t Trophies (CATs) ballot measure in Colorado to halt the trophy hunting and commercial trapping of mountain lions, bobcats, and lynx.

That submission puts us in a very strong position to secure a place on the November ballot and to gird for the nation’s biggest battle over trophy hunting in more than a generation.

This is the first statewide anti-cruelty ballot measure in the United States since 2018, and it marks the revival of the ballot initiative process by Animal Wellness Action and the Center for a Humane Economy. I personally launched more than 30 ballot measures in leading other animal welfare groups before forming the Center in 2018.

I’m excited to reactivate this critical process to demonstrate that a majority of Americans—in state after state—want sensible anti-cruelty policies in America. There’s no better way to show it than to put animal issues on the ballot and give people a chance to vote on them.

CATs Measure Heading to Colorado Ballot for Vote of the People in November

The CATs measure has already attracted support from nearly 100 animal welfare and wildlife conservation organizations [[link removed]] , and it is backed by hunters and humane societies, veterinarians and veterans, and all manner of Coloradans from the eastern plains to the western slope of the Rockies. There were 900 volunteers who gathered nearly two-thirds of the 188,000 signatures—almost unprecedented in the era of paid-signature collecting.

We are targeting commercial killing, with lion-hunting guides charging an $8,000 fee [[link removed]] to guarantee a “trophy” [[link removed]] and trappers selling bobcat pelts to China, said Samantha Miller, Colorado state director of the Center for a Humane Economy and Cats Aren’t Trophies campaign manager.

“When I worked for the Division of Wildlife a generation ago, I was heartened that Colorado voters banned inhumane and unsporting baiting, hounding, and spring bear hunting of black bears and, in a second ballot measure, halted the use of cruel steel-jawed leghold traps,” said Julie Marshall, a native Coloradan and now the public relations director for Animal Wellness Action and the Center for a Humane Economy. “This CATs measure deals with the unfinished business of restricting fringe hunting practices that are at odds with our understanding of ecology and animal welfare and not done for food or for management.”

Trophy hunters, including hundreds who hire professional guides using packs of dogs to offer a guaranteed kill [[link removed]] , shoot between 500-600 mountain lions during a single hunting season that stretches from the end of November through March. Of the 501 mountain lions killed for trophies and recreation last season alone, as reported by Colorado Parks and Wildlife, nearly half (47%) were female and not one was reportedly in conflict with humans. The trophy hunters randomly target lions, typically on national forests and other public lands where there are no conflicts.

Trophy Hunters Orphan Lion and Bobcat Kittens, Disrupt Balance of Nature

Mountain lions can mate at any time throughout the year, and offspring stay with their mothers for as long as 18 months. That means that lion kittens are vulnerable to orphaning during the four-month trophy hunting season.

“With trophy hunters shooting males and females on nearly a one-to-one ratio, it guarantees substantial orphaning of dependent kittens and subadults,” said retired Colonel Thomas Pool, DVM, MPH, former chief of the U.S. Army Veterinary Command and senior veterinarian with Animal Wellness Action. “Because the mother hides her offspring when chased by packs of dogs, there’s no way for a trophy hunter to determine he’s killing a mother with dependent young. Killing the family group is a tragedy that the CATs ballot measure will solve.”

The measure also addresses the needless and inhumane killing of bobcats, with trophy hunters and commercial trappers killing 1,000-2,000 bobcats a year. Canada lynx are protected under state and federal law, but if those restrictions are lifted in the future, the CATs measure would retain protections for them, granting them the same protected status as mountain lions or bobcats. Lynx are also at risk of incidental trapping [[link removed]] looking to kill bobcats.

So far, the top funders of the opposition campaign are various regional chapters of Safari Club International throughout the country. Safari Club consists of hunters who travel to states and nations to slay the world’s most beautiful and often rare animals for their heads. Safari Club has more than 30 “hunting achievement awards” that incentivize killing animals to adorn their dens and private museums with trophies.

Its best-known award is the Africa Big Five, where a trophy hunter gets into the pantheon if he kills a lion, a leopard, an elephant, a rhino, and a Cape buffalo, but there is a second award called “Cats of the World” requiring the hunter to slay a mountain lion or puma, African lion, African cheetah, African leopard, and a Canada or Eurasian lynx.

The primary spokesperson for the opposition campaign is the president of the Colorado Trappers and Predator Hunters Association. Safari Club held a raffle [[link removed]] to sell off a trophy lion of Colorado as a carnival prize to fund the opposition.

California has banned trophy hunting of lions for more than 50 years and the population is stable, with California having even more lion habitat than Colorado. Last year, there were just 10 lions killed in nuisance complaints, with a population estimate of 4,500 lions in the state.

“Colorado has long known that mountain lions are key to reducing the incidence of Chronic Wasting Disease, an always fatal brain-wasting disease that is infecting half of Colorado’s deer herds and a third of its elk herds,” said Jim Keen, DVM, Ph.D., a former infectious disease scientist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture and now director of veterinary sciences for the Center for a Humane Economy. “The North American lion targets neurologically compromised deer and elk, cleansing the population of disease and protecting these cervid populations for hunters and wildlife watchers alike. In this way, lions are protectors of long-term deer and elk hunting in Colorado.”

This ballot measure is a derivative of our collaborative work with Carole and Howard Baskin of Big Cat Rescue, Pat Craig of The Wild Animal Sanctuary, and 100 other groups. Our team on the ground is fighting to win for the native big cats in Colorado. We couldn’t have submitted an extraordinary 188,000 signatures without you.

This is going to be an enormously expensive campaign, and we need your support to conduct and to win critical campaigns like this one. We are now moving to the persuasion phase of the campaign, and we must run advertising, conduct grassroots outreach, and otherwise spread the word to convince a majority of Colorado’s 4.5 million voters to vote “YES” to stop inhumane and unsporting trophy hunting practices.

In all of our campaigns, we need you to rally behind these reforms. Please, today, I hope you’ll donate to Animal Wellness Action to give us the resources to win fights not only for mountain lions, but farm animals, barred owls, horses, and so many other animals in crisis as well. [[link removed]]

DONATE NOW [[link removed]]

For all animals,

Wayne Pacelle [[link removed]] Wayne Pacelle
President
Animal Wellness Action
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