Hunting and fishing are already legal in Colorado. They are already protected in statute. Nothing on the November ballot is needed to keep them that way.
Amendment 83 is not a simple “right to hunt” measure. It would lock vague, special-interest language into the Colorado Constitution, raise the legal bar for future wildlife protections, and shift decisions away from Coloradans, biologists, and the Parks and Wildlife Commission, and toward courts and out-of-state groups.
The language is too vague to put in the Constitution The amendment creates a constitutional right to hunt, fish, and “take” wildlife by “traditional methods.” That phrase is never defined.
Opponents and even national hunting-policy manuals have pointed out that “traditional methods” can be used as a stand-in for practices Coloradans have already restricted or banned—trapping, baiting, hounding, and other methods voters have rejected as cruel or unsportsmanlike. Once those words are in the Constitution, it is lawyers and judges—not wildlife scientists or voters—who decide what they mean.
The measure also declares hunting and fishing the “preferred means” of managing wildlife, and says the state may regulate only when it is “necessary” for “sound scientific wildlife conservation and management,” public safety, or to preserve hunting and fishing. Those terms are also undefined. That is a recipe for lawsuits every time Colorado tries to use non-lethal tools, protect habitat, respond to disease, or limit a practice the public no longer supports. Constitutions should be clear. This one is written to be fought over.
It locks out Coloradans and biologists
Wildlife belongs to all Coloradans. Management should stay flexible: science first, public input, local conditions, and the full toolkit—habitat work, coexistence, vaccination, relocation, and, when appropriate, regulated hunting.
Amendment 83 would write a preference for killing into the highest law in the state. Future rules would have to clear a new constitutional test. Citizen initiatives on wildlife would face a competing constitutional right. Biologists at Colorado Parks and Wildlife would have less room to adapt when the science or the landscape changes.
That is the opposite of science-based management. It freezes one set of interests in place and makes it harder for the rest of us to have a say.
It is not a Colorado solution.
This language is part of a national campaign. Similar measures have been pushed in state after state by the same network of out-of-state organizations. The money and the model did not start on the Front Range or the Eastern Plains. They were imported.
Colorado already has its own system: statute, the Parks and Wildlife Commission, public comment, and the ballot when voters choose to use it. We do not need a one-size-fits-all amendment written elsewhere to tell us how to manage prairie dogs, predators, game, or grasslands.
What a No vote actually does
A No vote does not ban hunting or fishing. A No vote does not take anyone’s license away. A No vote keeps wildlife policy where it belongs: with Coloradans, with scientists, and with a process that can still change when the facts change.
A Yes vote puts undefined words in the Constitution that will be hard to undo. Constitutional amendments in Colorado need 55% to pass—and another 55% to fix later. That is a high price for a problem that does not exist.
Prairie Protection Colorado urges a clear No on Amendment 83. Protect hunting and fishing the way we already do: with law, science, and public debate; not with vague constitutional language that locks the rest of us out.
