Judge: US agency illegally paid for Colorado predator hunt
Source: Associated Press
Judge: US agency illegally paid for Colorado predator hunt
By JAMES ANDERSON
March 31, 2021
DENVER (AP) — The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service illegally helped pay for a Colorado program to kill dozens of mountain lions and black bears in an experiment to determine if the predators were partly responsible for declining mule deer populations, a federal judge has ruled.
U.S. District Court Chief Judge Marcia Krieger in Denver found that Fish and Wildlife failed to do a required analysis of the program’s environmental effects, possibly so it could fast-track federal funding for most of the $4 million program.
Tuesday’s decision stops that funding for state-authorized kills of mountain lions and black bears in southern Colorado’s Upper Arkansas River Valley. A second Colorado Parks and Wildlife program in northwestern Colorado’s Piceance Basin has been completed.
Concerned about declining populations of mule deer, which help sustain Colorado’s nearly $1 billion hunting industry, Colorado Parks and Wildlife decided in 2016 to conduct an experiment to see if limited killing of mountain lions and black bears would have an impact on deer numbers.
The plan would test whether removing some lions and bears, which also prey on deer, would produce higher deer survival rates. As many as 15 lions and 25 black bears would be killed each year for three years in one area near Rifle, in northwestern Colorado. About 60 lions could be killed over three years in southern Colorado in a study lasting nine years.
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Read more: https://apnews.com/article/fish-wildlife-service-illegally-paid-colorado-predator-hunt-622b30d0c9abf1421e1241fffa38d61e
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