House Agriculture, Water & Natural Resources

Monday, April 13, 2026·1h 9m·▶ Watch / Listen

Colorado wildlife officers who've written zero citations in two years for baiting bears would gain a real enforcement tool under HB26-1342, which cleared House Agriculture on a party-line 8-4 vote after emotional testimony about euthanized bears and Eastern Plains lawmakers' worries over hummingbird feeders. The committee separately sent a technical bond-timing fix for beginning farmers to Finance without dissent.

Key Actions

·Colorado Agricultural Development Authority Bond Allocation Service PeriodPassed

+ 1 more action

Notable Quotes

“Given all that, the number of citations, however, in the last two years was zero. And that's because the current intent standard is a significant barrier to our efficiency as officers, as it is nearly impossible standard to prove as an individual.”
Frank McGee (Colorado Parks and Wildlife) · witness — CPW's core justification for the bill: the existing intent-to-lure standard is so hard to prove that officers issue no citations at all.

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Votes

Referred to Committee on FinanceAction

Yes (13)Lori Garcia Sander, Lori Goldstein, Dusty Johnson, Mandy Lindsay, Meghan Lukens, Matthew Martinez, Lesley Smith, Katie Stewart, Tammy Story, Larry Don Suckla, Ty Winter, Tisha Mauro, Karen McCormick

Referred to Committee of the WholeAction

Yes (8)Lori Goldstein, Meghan Lukens, Matthew Martinez, Lesley Smith, Katie Stewart, Tammy Story, Tisha Mauro, Karen McCormick

No (4)Lori Garcia Sander, Dusty Johnson, Larry Don Suckla, Ty Winter

Excused (1)Mandy Lindsay

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TranscriptPreview

House Agriculture, Water, Natural Resources Committee will come to order. Ms. Kelly, please call the roll. Representatives Garcia, Sander. Present. Goldstein. Here. Johnson. Here. Lindsey. Here. Lukens. Here. Martinez. Here. Smith. Here. Stewart. Here. Story. Excused. Sukla. Here. Winter. Here. Morrow. Madam Chair. Here. Thank you all for joining today. On our agenda today are three bills, but we will be laying over the first one, Senate Bill 26062 until next week. So we're moving on to House Bill 2613 42. We do have our our bill sponsors here in front of us. Representative Stewart. Thank you, Madam Chair. And good afternoon members of the committee. I am pleased to be here presenting House Bill 1342 with my colleague, Representative Lukens. This is a bill that we brought forward in partnership with Colorado Parks and Wildlife and the Department of Natural Resources. Currently, Colorado is facing record number of preventable interactions with the bear population. In 2024, there were over 5,000 statewide reports of human bear conflict or interactions where bears encountered human inhabited areas that resulted in property damage, safety risks or intervention by wildlife officers. Of the 5,000 reports, over 50% were linked to trash. This is an…

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