A way to protect wild bison making their way to Colorado has found new life through a new legislative committee tasked with addressing issues in Native communities.
A bill that would allow bison to be classified as both livestock and big game wildlife is one of top three priorities that will be brought to the 2025 legislative session by the new American Indian Affairs Interim Study Committee.
What would the bill do?
Sponsored by Sen. Jessie Danielson, D-Jefferson County, the idea for the bill was forged by a previous petition to the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission and brought to the committee this year by members of the state’s Native community.
The bipartisan committee met for the first time ever in July, hearing proposals on everything from waiving hunting and fishing fees, adding Tribal liaison positions to state departments, requiring cultural training for health providers and more.
So far, the committee selected three bills that represent its top priorities. This includes the bison bill as well as a bill to extend the committee for five more years and a third that would recognize Tribal arrest warrants and court commitment orders to state courts.
Monycka Snowbird is the program director of the Haseya Advocates Program, a Colorado Springs based nonprofit that predominantly supports Indigenous survivors of domestic and sexual violence. However, a large part of Snowbird and the organization’s work surrounds helping Native peoples take their voices back, including at the Capitol.
As such, Snowbird was engaged with this bill and others that were proposed to the committee. Snowbird said the bill is one example of a way for Colorado to rectify wrongs and do better.
“How can we do better by these animals that Native people in general have a ancestral relationship with going back tens of thousands of years?” Snowbird said. “And if doing better means they get two titles instead of one, is it really that big of a deal to keep them protected?”
If passed, the bill would reclassify bison as big game wildlife unless the bison is livestock, placing the animal under Colorado Parks and Wildlife purview, according to the bill draft.
The draft recommends appropriating $75,000 for implementation in the first year from the state’s Wildlife Cash Fund to hire a consultant and conduct aerial surveys. In subsequent years, it would budget $25,000 from the fund for ongoing surveys and study of wild bison in Colorado.
Currently, bison are considered livestock or domestic animals in Colorado. The last of the state’s wild bison were killed in in South Park in 1897, part of the systematic slaughter of the animals across the west in the 1800s.
Across the west, bison populations fell from an estimated 60 to 80 million to a few hundred animals by 1889, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife. While the federal agency is currently working to restore and conserve the animals, bison are still missing from close to 99% of their historic range with around 20,500 wild bison in the U.S.
Reestablishing the species is part of efforts to restore not only their ecological value, but also their cultural significance to Native communities.
While there are no wild herds in Colorado, there are in Utah where bison are managed as both wildlife and livestock. Periodically, bison that managed by the Ute Indian Tribe in the Book Cliffs area of eastern Utah wander into Rangely, Colorado where their protections vanish and they are typically killed. In 2022, Parks and Wildlife estimated that over the last decade 20 to 30 bison have been killed after crossing into the state.
In addition to Utah, Montana, Arizona, New Mexico and Wyoming also offer bison this dual classification.
The previous denial from Parks and Wildlife
This issue was first breached with Colorado Parks and Wildlife in August 2021 when Grasslands Unlimited, known then as the Colorado Prairie Initiative, submitted its first petition to the commission. A second petition with no substantive changes was submitted in January 2022.
The petition encouraged the same dual-classification for bison offered in the bill, sealing up this “regulatory loophole that has resulted in the state’s failure to protect bison in Colorado.”
This petition was denied in March 2022. At the time, Parks and Wildlife indicated that the need to re-classify bison wasn’t well enough established and lacked stakeholder support.
It also said it was unclear on the petition’s ultimate goal: Was it to reintroduce bison and create conservation herds in Colorado or was it to solve the issue of wild bison entering the state from Utah?
The issue at hand is a small problem, according to Trevor Pellerite, president of Grasslands Unlimited in a recent interview with the Vail Daily.
“We’re not asking to reintroduce bison, we were just asking to protect the ones that were already coming over,” Pellerite said, adding that killing them in Colorado was financially, ethically and ecologically wasteful.
In denying the ask, the agency also claimed it did not have the resources to take it on at the time.
“Classifying bison as ‘big game’ may trigger significant regulation and management responsibilities at a time when agency resources are stretched thin,” wrote Dan Prenzlow, the then Parks and Wildlife director.
Prenzlow listed wolf restoration, wolverine reintroduction and launching the Keep Colorado Wildlife as priorities taking precedence over re-classifying bison.
In reclassifying bison as big game, Parks and Wildlife would need to develop a management plan for the species, formulate population objectives as well as create and fund game damage prevention and compensation strategies, Prenzlow adds.
This would be similar to other big game wildlife like elk, mule deer, bighorn sheep, black bear, mountain lions and more.
Jay Tutchton, a Colorado Parks and Wildlife commissioner who works as the preserve manager at the Southern Plains Land Trust in Lamar and oversees its bison herd, has been supportive of the idea this whole time.
“It would be more work for the agency,” Tutchton said. “But I just don’t think dealing with the immediate problem of one or two bison wandering across the border (at a time) and getting shot by somebody without any regulation of any kind is that big a deal. Finding a place where you could have a new population of bison, that’s probably more work, but we’re not there yet.”
Tutchton said he personally supports the idea because there’s a lot of potential upside. This includes solving the current challenge and giving the bison coming over a chance at survival. Looking further ahead, he said there’s a lot of benefits of environmental and habitat-related benefits to wild bison.
Even after the petition failed, the idea didn’t die entirely. Parks and Wildlife hosted a few stakeholder sessions on the Western Slope to gauge community support and interest.
In January, the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel reported that locals had a less than friendly reception to the idea at a meeting in Rangely. Some of the concerns from ranchers and livestock trade associations were that the re-classification could lead to disease transmission and hybridization with cattle. The Sentinel reported that ranchers the re-classification could pile challenges onto ranchers at a time when they were dealing with the reintroduction of wolves.
Pellerite said he felt that a lot of the opposition was rooted in “incorrect science and fear mongering” as well as a desire to maintain the status quo. The exception being concerns about a lack of natural forage availability, which he acknowledged would need to be examined but wasn’t an “unsolvable” challenges.
Finding a new life at the Capitol
Now, the American Indian Affairs Interim Study Committee is breathing new life into the idea, bringing in another perspective to the issue at hand.
Tutchton said he does not fault the legislative for stepping in and filling the “void” left by Parks and Wildlife.
While the draft for the bison bill took cues from the petition, it also has ties to a series of reports issued this year by the Truth, Restoration and Education Commission of Colorado in collaboration with the People of the Sacred Land, according to Snowbird.
These three reports examine the history of Native peoples in Colorado, providing an in-depth look at the damage relating to their forced relocation, illegal seizure of land, violations of human rights and more. The widespread destruction of bison herds in Colorado is just one of many issues the report examines, also granting recommendations for restoration, reparations and reconciliation.
To quantify this, the report estimates that the killing of an estimated 16 million buffalo between 1860 and 1889 by settlers equates to an economic loss of around $48 billion in modern value. This does not include the value of the animals’ bones, which could add an additional $40 million in value.
The impacts of the destruction of bison on Native peoples are still manifesting today, the report claims.
While the bison coming over from Utah spurred the concern and bill draft, Williams said there are greater challenges illuminated by the report.
“Among the Lakota, we have a sacred relationship with the Buffalo,” Williams said. “We believe we came from another world and emerged from the Black Hills with them and they agreed to provide for us when we came on top of the earth. We have a kinship, sacred relationship with them.”
The bill represents a small step toward broader thinking about protecting bison’s status as a wild animal, encouraging significant restoration of the species in Native homelands and co-management of the animals with Tribes, Williams said.
However, simply re-classifying the species does not mean Colorado will be required to reintroduce bison nor that a wild herd would establish itself.
“Maybe someday Colorado would have a wild herd — and that would be amazing — but that’s not going to happen because of this bill,” Snowbird said, adding that what it would do is add a safety net for bison.
“We’re saying if any wild bison get here, you can’t poach them, that’s literally it,” Snowbird said.
Plus, they would like Native voices and consultation to be involved future management and changes, Snowbird added.
Pellerite said it was “heartening and inspiring” that the idea is being picked back up and pursued.
“Humans have had an incredibly negative impact on our environment and on the ecosystems around us,” Pellerite said. “It’s the right thing to do ethically. Bison were driven almost to the brink of extinction, and we have an obligation as stewards of the land and as stewards of Colorado to help bring the bison home.”
