The Colorado Senate will consider appointing two members of the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission today, March 12, with a third appointee having already resigned amid political opposition and turmoil.
Jessica Beaulieu, Gary Skiba and Jack Murphy were tapped in July by Governor Jared Polis to serve on the volunteer board that helps regulate Colorado's state parks and wildlife programs. Beaulieu and Skiba received a rare unfavorable recommendation from the Senate Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee, which voted on February 29 to recommend that they not be confirmed by a 5-4 margin.
Beaulieu and Murphy were sent to represent outdoor recreation, and parks utilization and Skiba was designated as a representative of sportsmen. The trio has faced opposition since being appointed by Polis in July, with most of the pushback from Colorado outfitters and hunters who believed that the nominees were anti-hunting and did not fit the qualifications for the job. However, Murphy ended up overcoming those concerns during the February 29 committee hearing, while Beaulieu and Skiba did not.
Skiba resigned from the commission and withdrew his nomination on March 8, telling the Colorado Sun that his rejection by the state Senate was inevitable and that he didn't want to waste time. Polis will have to nominate another board appointee in his place.
“We don't know of anything in the past ten years where a commission appointment hasn’t gone through,” says Lindsay Larris, wildlife program director for WildEarth Guardians, a conservation nonprofit that works in Colorado. “This seems weirdly personal — potentially somewhat about wolf reintroduction not being done in a way that they liked.”
In 2020, voters passed Proposition 144, directing CPW to reintroduce wolves by the end of 2023. The measure was successful among urban and Front Range voters, but people in rural and mountain areas of the state weren’t enthusiastic.
Democratic Senator Dylan Roberts chairs the Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee and voted with his Republican colleagues against Beaulieu and Skiba’s nominations. Last legislative session, Polis vetoed his successful bill that would have delayed wolf reintroduction until the state secured a federal plan that allows potentially injurious control of wolves despite their federally protected status under the Endangered Species Act.
Roberts, whose district includes towns such as Steamboat Springs, Edwards, Craig, Gypsum and Eagle, has repeatedly contended that wolf reintroduction would harm his district. During the February 29 hearing, he called December 18, 2023 — the day wolves were officially reintroduced in the state — “a tough day.” Since then, there have been no reported wolf depredations on livestock.
Skiba, who supported wolf reintroduction in Colorado, served on the state’s Stakeholder Advisory Group of people from geographic areas that could be impacted by wolf reintroduction. The Durango resident was then appointed to the CPW Commission by Polis to represent sportspersons and those west of the Continental Divide. His professional career was mostly spent as a wildlife biologist in Colorado; he told the Senate committee that he has long held a hunting license in Colorado and paid for an out-of-state resident license while briefly living in New Mexico.
Should Animal Rights Be Part of the Conversation?
Skiba’s affiliation with sportsmen came as a surprise to some members of that group, according to longtime CPW volunteer and hunter Dan Gates. A chair of the Colorado Wildlife Council and a member of several wildlife organizations, Gates says that Skiba is invested in “animal rights as opposed to animal welfare" because of Skiba’s membership in Defenders of Wildlife, a nonprofit committed to protecting imperiled habitats and wildlife.“I sat with Commissioner Skiba for sixteen to eighteen months on the Stakeholder Advisory Group for the wolf management plan,” Gates says. “To my recollection, and most of my counterparts, he never, ever represented himself as a sportsman.”
Conversely, Larris says Skiba is much more conservative than WildEarth Guardians or other conservation groups like the Sierra Club or Center for Biological Diversity, though they all recommended that he be approved.
State Senator Dylan Roberts
Colorado General Assembly
“He's quite a good representative of 'Yes, we're going to reintroduce wolves, but there are all of these considerations,'” she says. “He was very much wanting to make sure it was done in the right way and to make sure that there was compensation for ranchers.”
The Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation and Northwest Colorado Outfitters Association both critiqued Skiba’s role in wolf reintroduction, and urged their members to oppose the appointment of all three commissioners. During the committee hearing, Roberts pressed the appointees about letting ballot measures direct CPW actions as opposed to science.
“In your future, if you’re on the commission and you all make a scientific decision, you’re okay if a different process occurs that completely goes the opposite direction?” Roberts asked Skiba. He then pointed out that CPW had decided not to reintroduce wolves before the ballot measure passed in 2020.
“I do not feel that the commission regularly makes decisions based solely on science. We always make decisions that are influenced by social and economic concerns as well,” Skiba responded. “Science should be the basis of our decisions, should inform our decisions — but science is not appropriate to make decisions for us; it just isn’t. I’m a scientist, and I know that.”
Roberts also specifically brought up Skiba’s testimony against his vetoed bill, which Skiba clarified was due to a poison pill that prevented reintroduction until all litigation potentially associated with the 10(j) was over, and not the principle of the bill itself.
Neither Skiba nor Roberts returned requests for comment.
Roberts asked Beaulieu, too, about how she reasoned supporting wolf reintroduction with the idea that wildlife management should be done scientifically. Beaulieu said that she wasn’t involved in pushing the measure but prefers the legislative route over the ballot box.
“I’ve seen how this [has] gone and how we can improve,” she said.
Beaulieu manages the University of Denver’s Animal Law Program, which trains attorneys on how to better protect animals, and has degrees in wildlife ecology and environmental law. She testified that she is an avid birdwatcher and moved to Colorado specifically because of its outdoor spaces.
However, Beaulieu said she hadn’t owned a Keep Colorado Wild pass to enter state parks until it became part of the state’s car registration process last year; she said she paid individual fees instead. Those who oppose her nomination argue that she doesn’t have enough engagement with Colorado’s parks to represent them on the commission. And according to Gates, hunters are concerned that Polis’s appointees seem to be more pro-animal rights than pro-hunting as a form of animal stewardship.
But those who supported her nomination argue that special interests have taken over what should be a nonpartisan process.
“Senator Roberts is really doing us a disservice by not advancing all three nominees for work when they are clearly exceptionally talented,” Samantha Miller, Colorado director of the Animal Wellness Action group, says. “It's always frustrating to see when special interests or single issues will deter the course of really important wildlife conservation.”
During the last hearing, Roberts said broader issues concern him: “I am concerned about the direction of CPW right now."
Larris, who listened to the hearing, says her impression was that the Republican members and Roberts weren’t interested in allowing the commission to evolve and reflect the growing progressive views in the state. She points out that only about 5 percent of people in the state hunt, while many enjoy casual recreation or the outdoors.
“The way that that committee hearing went, it was sort of like, '[If] you don't have this knowledge of hunting or these deep roots and ties to hunting, you shouldn't be on this commission at all,'” Larris argues. “My understanding of the mission of CPW is, yes, there's a sportsperson part of it, but it's also to preserve wildlife for future generations, and I think that the Senate Ag Committee was ignoring that part of the obligation of the agency.”
She questions why there can’t be differing points of view on the commission, particularly in parks seats like Beaulieu’s, which aren’t meant to represent sportsmen. Gates sees it differently.
“I don't think that they have to all be pro-hunting, but when they're signing up to work within an agency that has statutory requirements — that has a mission that specifically says it's managed by hunting, trapping and fishing by statute — they have to acknowledge the fact that that’s why they are there,” he says. “They can't come in from an ‘anti-’ perspective.”
This article was updated at 4:40 p.m. on Tuesday, March 12, to include the Colorado Senate's confirmation voting results of Jessica Beaulieu and Jack Murphy, and then again on Monday, March 18, to remove an error stating that Dan Gates was a representative of the National Rife Association.
