Dear friend,

Just yesterday, I saw an image online of a trophy hunter standing astride a maned African lion. That American trophy hunter had traveled halfway around the world to kill a majestic creature — indeed a miracle of creation — just to mount the head and body in his den.

Even though the big cats are now threatened and endangered, several countries essentially allow commerce in lion trophies to make money. And these American trophy hunters burn their dollars with relish to slay “the king of beasts.”

Also online, I am overwhelmed with the photos of their same ilk holding up the head or body of American lions they’ve killed on our side of the Atlantic.

Colorado is a destination for them, given its wide-open public lands and a state agency that allows a 12-on-1 assault on an unsuspecting lion. It’s the fee-paying trophy hunter, three hunting guides who drive the forest roads and look for tracks, and then the eight dogs that they release to attack the lion.

Even more so than the lopsided lion hunts in Africa, the American hunts are rigged. Here, they use the dogs, with their GPS collars, to do all the hunting. The guy who flies into Denver or Grand Junction from New York or Michigan to kill a lion is walked to the base of a tree to shoot the terrified, defenseless animal.

That’s one reason why there are more wild lions shot in Colorado every year than there are African lions shot for trophies across all 20 of the African nations where they live. Shooting 500-plus mountain lions in Colorado during a four-month season that starts in late November — including hundreds of mother cats with dependent kittens — is a disgrace.

And the hounding season is set to start again in three weeks — unless voters approve Prop 127 on Tuesday.

Opponents Spending Millions and Trying to Deceive Voters

On Tuesday, our campaign in Colorado — YES on Prop 127 — culminates with the final votes being cast or delivered at polling stations throughout the state.

Thanks to you, we’ve done an impressive job of raising money to execute our campaign.

But our opponents, in this late phase, have raised more. Why? Because millionaire and billionaire trophy hunters, like Paul Tudor Jones, have financed a deceptive, reckless campaign against us.

Where our political committee has hundreds and hundreds of donors, they have a relative handful. But those few are investing huge sums to fight progress for animals and the end of the cruel, inhumane, and unsporting practice of trophy hunting.

Their funders are, almost exclusively, people and groups who participate in, or adamantly defend, the “sport” of terrorizing animals, killing them, and delivering their lifeless bodies to a taxidermist.

They pay no mind that the animals have lives and families who matter to them. And they pay no heed to the incredible array of ecological and economic services that the animals bring to Colorado, including acting as a xxxxxx against further spread of deadly Chronic Wasting Disease among beleaguered deer and elk in the state.

The campaign against Prop 127 is grounded on deception: Concocting a photo of a lion lunging at a child. Telling voters that trophy hunting is already banned and that our measure is therefore unnecessary. Claiming that lions are “decimating” mule deer, even though these species evolved together over millions of years and have lived together all of that time.

They claim to “support professional wildlife management,” but they are really “anything goes” operators who engage in the most ruthless extreme forms of trophy hunting.

The NRA, the trophy hunters at the Safari Club International, the National Shooting Sports Foundation (trade association for gun and ammo makers), the Fur Takers of America and others like them have donated millions to the opposition campaign.

The top donor is a shadowy Washington D.C.-based SuperPAC called Building America’s Future. It gave $870,937 in recent days to the No on 127 campaign. Not a person on staff has any background in wildlife science.

The second biggest donor is the Concord Fund, which also employs not a single person focused on wildlife conservation, wildlife management, or animal welfare. Whatever you may think of the Concord Fund’s goal of placing conservative lawyers on the federal bench, that mission has not a thing to do with wildlife conservation. It’s clear to me that a globe-trotting trophy hunter used the Concord Fund as a pass-through to shield his identity so people wouldn’t know what he does with his money.

Our Campaign Closes in 48 Hours

We aren’t intimidated by the big-money special interests opposing our campaign. We are not sitting idle. We are fighting them toe-to-toe. We know how much is at stake for the animals.

We’ve conducted a hard-hitting campaign that shows the cruelty built into trophy hunting and commercial trapping. “Treed” shows Colorado voters what’s truly at stake — taking us to the front row of a guided trophy hunt of a lion.

Former U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service director Dan Ashe, himself a hunter, called trophy hunting “unsporting, cruel” in the advertisement that features him.

Colonel Tom Pool, DVM, MPH, and the former leader of the U.S. Army Veterinary Command, tells Coloradans in this ad that the state needs every mountain lion in the state to do his or her work to arrest the further progression of incurable Chronic Wasting Disease, which is viewed as an existential threat to deer and elk populations in the coming decades.

We have 48 hours to get out the vote and to make our closing argument.

Will you donate to Animal Wellness Action today to allow us to be all-in on campaigns like this one?

Please give what you can today so we can fund Prop 127 and other campaigns that deliver life-saving outcomes to animals.

For the cats and all other animals,

Wayne Pacelle President Animal Wellness Action