Steel-jaw trapsdon’t know thedifference.

Traps can inflict severe suffering and capture animals indiscriminately, including family pets.

I’m really worried about putting things in the constitution that create mischief and invitation to litigation. The ballot measures about the right to hunt and the right to natural gas are an invitation to litigation, to uncertainty and confusion.

Denver Audubon urges you to vote “No” on Amendment 83. This amendment would restrict the ability of the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission and the Colorado General Assembly to protect bird populations and manage state lands for conservation purposes.

Amendment 83 would put vague and unnecessary language into our state constitution and could invite years of litigation and uncertainty over how wildlife policies are made.

…with the real goal of taking wildlife decisions away from scientists.

Amendment 83 is a dangerous overreach that Coloradans don’t need.

Some traditional hunting methods, such as leghold traps, poison, and snares can endanger dogs, cats, and other companion animals using trails, fields, and open spaces. Unintended trapping of companion animals can result in severe injury or death.

Amendment 83 … could even jeopardize our state law restricting steel-jawed traps and snares that would put wildlife and pets at risk.

We will have years of uncertainty until we actually know what’s going to happen, and that uncertainty will get resolved one lawsuit at a time. It’ll be a lawyer bonanza, basically, which is a very ineffective way to manage wildlife.

Spring hunting can kill females with dependent cubs, leaving the young to starve.

I urge Coloradans to join me in voting No on Amendment 83 and, in doing so, to preserve the possibility of future public health measures that would reduce lead exposure among hunters and their families…

This amendment is a lawsuit waiting to happen every time CPW officials make a decision that the hunting community disagrees with.

Amendment 83: No. State law already makes hunting and fishing primary tools of wildlife management. An undefined right to “traditional methods” puts bans on bear baiting and leghold traps at risk.

The bar for tinkering with our foundational document should be high — and most of this year’s efforts do not meet that threshold. … Vote “no” on amendments 82 and 83.

The text of Amendment 83, for example, protects hunting via “traditional methods,” but doesn’t define them. Methods that voters have already outlawed could be ripe for legal challenges to reinstate them.

…hunting and fishing are already legal under state law. This is part of a national agenda by wealthy out-of-state groups, like the International Order of T. Roosevelt, that have pushed similar measures in other states.

…this amendment is so vague that it could conceivably generate a new lawsuit every time Colorado Parks and Wildlife issues hunting or fishing regulations. Vote No.

The wording of 83 would protect “traditional methods” of hunting and trapping that have been banned in the state.

Hunting is, and has always been, a privilege, not a right…

It is incredibly destructive and disingenuous when it comes to wildlife management.

As a constitutional law scholar, I find Amendment 83 an unsuitable use of a state constitutional amendment.

I see Amendment 83 as an attempt to … hijack future wildlife management decisions from the people of Colorado.

…the terms it uses are so open-ended that no one can predict how courts will apply them.

Colorado is a hunting and fishing paradise, yet this … measure does not seem necessary or appropriate in our state constitution.

Hunting and fishing in Colorado should be regulated by the state legislature and governor and not granted state constitutional legal status…

You could probably ask 10 different people what ‘traditional methods’ are, and you’d get 10 different answers.

If hunting is a constitutional right⁠—on par with the right to speech⁠—courts might OK what are, essentially, canned hunts. Is that what Coloradans want?

Amendment 83 ignores what science tells us.

Humans have gotten caught in [steel leg-hold traps], pets have gotten caught in them.

Wildlife belongs to all of us.

Amendment 83 asks Coloradans to trade away flexibility, science and an established democratic process for a constitutional guarantee that nobody — including its own drafters — can fully define.

As a hunter, conservationist and citizen, I find fatal flaws in Amendment 83 … With Amendment 83, we’re shooting ourselves in the foot.

I urge anyone who cares about Colorado wildlife — hunters and nonhunters alike — to vote no.