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Despite persistent calls from wildlife advocates to alter its practices around mountain lion hunting, Colorado Parks and Wildlife is staying the course. 

On Thursday, the agency’s commission followed the staff recommendation and approved a 9.6% reduction in the number of lions that can be hunted for the 2025-2026 season, but made no other changes. 

The reduction will allow for up to 610 lions to be hunted in the next season, down from 674 during the season currently underway. 

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The reduction was recommended due to one of two new thresholds put in place by Parks and Wildlife’s updated mountain lion management plans for the west and east regions of Colorado. These plans were passed in and 2024 and added caps to the number of adult female mountain lions that could be hunted as well as on the number of human-caused lion deaths not related to hunting. The goal of the caps is to maintain a stable population of mountain lions, according to the agency. 

In the most recent season, the number of adult females hunted exceeded the 22% limit, hitting 24%, in the western hunting region.

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Colorado offers mountain lion hunting during a nearly five-month period from November to March. Since 2014, the agency has been able to extend the season through April if the number of lions killed falls short of its cap. 

The state offers an unlimited number of licenses for hunting mountain lions but requires that purchasers complete a specific education course before purchase. All lions killed are required to undergo a Parks and Wildlife inspection, which enables the agency to collect data on the lion’s sex, age and location.   

This data is throughout the season so hunters can track the number of lions hunted in certain areas including the number of females who have been killed — and what the limits are in that area. 

In recent years, the agency has sold around 2,500 licenses annually, with only about 20% successfully harvesting a mountain lion, according to information presented by Mark Vieira, the carnivore and furbearer program manager for Parks and Wildlife, at Thursday’s meeting. 

Vieira said the caps on the number of lions hunted and requirements make the species “among the most tightly regulated of the state’s big-game species.”

In the last full hunting season, from 2023-2024, 500 lions — 265 male lions and 235 females (both adult and sub-adult) — were killed across the state, slightly above the three-year annual average of 491. In the current hunting season, which began in mid-November, 189 lions had been , 64 of which were females.  

Do ethics have a place in policy? 

This was the commission’s first annual review of hunting permits since voters rejected Proposition 127 in November with nearly 55% of the vote. If passed, the measure would have banned hunting mountain lions, bobcats and lynx. 

At the commission’s Wednesday and Thursday meetings, dozens of public commenters reiterated the . In addition to opposing hunting as a wildlife management tool, were raised over the use of hounds — which account for over 90% of lion hunting in Colorado — and the permitted hunting of female mountain lions. 

“This is not a sustainable management practice,” said Valerie Hunter-Goss, a Fort Collins resident. “The tradition of hounding is reckless and threatens mountain lion populations. Removing key females from their communities wreaks havoc on the species balance. We ask for more accountability and ethical hunting practices like fair chase in managing mountain lions.”

The number of female lions — both adult and young — hunted spiked in the 2023-2024 season, accounting for 47% of the total harvest. In the prior five years, it had been between 39% to 41%. 

Vieira hypothesized that the ballot measure was behind the spike.

“The only explanation I have is that last winter, when faced with the possibility of a ban on lion hunting via Proposition 127, a small but measurable portion of hunters made a different selective decision than ever before and opted to harvest the female causing this 2023 adult female harvest proportion increase,” he said. 

Per its new plans, Parks and Wildlife tracks — and limits — the number of adult females that can be hunted, but places no limits on sub-adult cats. This is because adult female mountain lions are the “biological engine of the population,” Vieira said. 

“Those adult females are out there producing kittens, propelling the population forward, and we want to protect those,” he said. “It’s not that sub-adult male lions or sub-adult female lions are not necessarily important … and we have the data to suggest that they’re very much out there in abundance in Colorado sub-adults, but we want to protect those females.” 

It is also illegal to kill mountain lion kittens — defined as those with spots — or females with kittens. 

The use of hounds to selectively hunt mountain lions, the winter-only season — which allows identifying kitten tracks in the snow — the education course and new thresholds all help protect adult female lions in Colorado, Vieira noted. 

Some of the houndsmen and hunters that spoke on Thursday reiterated this and spoke against some of the claims made about them. Kody Lostroh, vice president of the United Houndsmen of Colorado, said they were behind the reduction in quota and other thresholds. 

“It lines up with the science, and that’s what we want,” Lostroh said. “There’s nothing in us that wants these things eliminated. We love mountain lions … We want (management) to line up the best way possible for the populations and for the opportunity for us as well.”

While the commission and staff discussed some of the concerns raised by the public, it unanimously passed the regulations with no changes beyond the staff’s recommendation.  

Dallas May, the commission’s chair, backed the agency’s current management system and enforcement. 

“We cannot legislate morals and ethics,” May said. “We have a system in place, the education course that a hunter is required to carry that certificate of completion with them. And yes, we have had instances of people violating that or having illegal take, but the fact of the matter is we have a system in place that punishes that and we enforce it.”

Commissioner Jay Tutchton added that in rejecting Proposition 127, voters showed support for the agency’s current mountain lion management, which he called “advanced and sustainable and as scientifically based as any other state.” 

“A key part of democracy is that we accept the results … I think we’re struggling with that a little, but the public has spoken on both wolves and lions, and we have to accept both,” Tutchton said. “There’s some thorny ethical issues that people are in different places on and they view the world differently … but the commonality, for me, is that everyone wants those animals on the landscape and our job as (Parks and Wildlife) is to ensure that those animals remain on the landscape for future generations, whether they want to watch them or hunt them.”