Senate Agriculture & Natural Resources
The Senate Agriculture & Natural Resources Committee advanced two wildlife bills over Republican objections late Thursday — a measure lowering the standard for citing people who lure bears with trash and feeders, and a bill directing state agencies to favor native, pollinator-friendly plants on state lands.
Key Actions
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Notable Quotes
“The number of citations on the current law that's been issued in the last two years was zero. The current intent standard is a significant barrier to our effectiveness as it is a nearly impossible standard to meet and prove that someone intended for a bear to enter into their trash or waste.”
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Votes
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Sign in to subscribeShortly. Welcome to Bears and Bees Day, everybody. Thank you for your patience as we waited for the Finance Committee to conclude their work. We're going to start with House Bill 1342 by Senator Marchman who is before us. Please go ahead. Thank you Mr. Chair and good evening members of the committee. I am pleased to be here presenting House Bill 1342. This is a bill brought forward in partnership with CPW and DNR currently. That sounds cool. I'm good. I'm actually listening to it. I'll stop. Currently, Colorado is facing a record number of human bear interactions. We have a high volume of tourism and are seeing increased development which also exacerbates things. These conflicts are increasing as our wildland urban interface is expanding and people continue to push into historical bear habitat. In 2024, there were over 5,000 statewide reports of human bear conflict, which are interactions where bears encountered human inhabitated areas that resulted in property damage, safety risks or intervention by CPW. Of the 5,000 reports, over 50% were linked to trash. So this puts an immense strain on cpw, which has had to dedicate an increasing amount of time and resources in response to…
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