Colorado Parks and Wildlife settles with hunting groups that sued claiming commissioners violated open meetings rules

Two influential hunting organizations that sued members of the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission claiming they violated Colorado Open Meetings Law and spread false information about mountain lion hunting say they agreed to a small cash payment and the promise that commissioners would be trained in open meetings law and the agency’s rules around hunting lions, lynx and bobcats.  

CPW spokesperson Travis Duncan confirmed the groups had reached a settlement but said once the state proved the commissioners had never communicated outside of an official meeting, the hunting groups decided to settle for “a modest amount of $2,332 to avoid the expense of litigation.”

Commissioners did participate in an open meetings training, he said, which “was also agreed to in order to expedite the settlement of the case.” He would not say if the commissioners received training in hunting regulations. 

Safari Club International and The Sportsmens Alliance Foundation in December sued Jessica Beaulieu, Jack Murphy and James Pribyl over an opinion piece published in The Durango Herald on Oct. 12 that supported Proposition 127, which would have banned the hunting and trapping of mountain lions, lynx and bobcats. 

Beaulieu and Murphy both represent outdoor recreation and parks utilization on the commission and Pribyl is a former commissioner.  

The piece criticized lion hunting as a “highly unpopular, unscientific and unwarranted abuse and exploitation” of wildlife that “in no way contributes” to the “bright future of ethical outdoor recreation” in Colorado. It ran just weeks before the Nov. 5 election. Proposition 127 failed by 9.4 percentage points marking the first time since 1992 that Colorado voters rejected a wildlife ballot proposal.

The Safari Club and the Sportsmen’s Alliance in December alleged Beaulieu and Murphy violated Colorado’s Open Meetings Law because the column was written while the commission was actively considering a revised mountain lion management plan for the Eastern Slope. 

In a press release announcing the settlement, the clubs maintained the commissioners had “serial communications, often referred to as ‘daisy chains,'” to reach consensus on the op-ed. This is a method for skirting open meetings laws by individual members contacting one and then another and another outside of a public meeting to discuss a matter privately. 

Colorado’s open-meetings law requires any meeting between two or more public officials where public business is discussed to be open to the public after notice of such a meeting is provided. The law’s purpose is to promote open and informed discussions, which leads to better decision making.

Beaulieu and Murphy said in opening remarks at the Nov. 14 commissioners meeting in Lamar that they had no part in writing the op-ed. 

They said it was written by a third-party and they merely signed off on it, separately and without ever communicating with one another. 

“At no point did I communicate with commissioner Murphy about writing the op-ed or pending commission business, including the East Slope Mountain Lion Plan,” Beaulieu said. 

“There was no collusion. We simply signed off on a letter. We did not talk about it at all. Not one single word was written by either one of us,” Murphy added.  

A third party wrote the letter 

Ellen Stein, opinion editor at The Durango Herald, later confirmed to The Colorado Sun the op-ed had come from Julie Marshall, public relations director for Animal Wellness Action, the group behind Proposition 127. 

Marshall in a Dec. 13 email to The Sun said it was the result of “the science, data from our expert team, and writing chops from the campaign” along with “expert and wise” editing from former commissioner Jim Pribyl, “who made it better and steered it toward what was needed.” 

Duncan, the CPW spokesperson, had said commissioners didn’t violate open-meetings laws for multiple reasons: “The Commission has developed its own procedures which help the Commission in its rulemaking and processes. As the Commissioners were speaking as private citizens, this subject was not before the Commission as an item of business and no open meeting law violation occurred.”

But the hunting groups say they sued “to hold the commissioners accountable” for violating the law and for “making blatantly false statements about state hunting regulations in a failed attempt to persuade voters.” 

The errors they say Beaulieu and Murphy made included that lion hunters can use drones, which is prohibited by the commission’s own regulations; that mountain lion hunts guarantee “success at 100%,” when the success rate is closer to 20%; and that wild cats are “not involved in any human conflict,” when CPW has shown mountain lions and humans are interacting more than ever on the Front Range and numerous other press releases show this.  

In an email to The Sun following news that the groups were suing, Dan Gates, executive director of Coloradans for Responsible Wildlife Management, said his group hopes “all appointed individuals adhere to the requirements of public process and procedures and protocols” because “while having a personal opinion is one thing, how one conveys or represents that opinion or how it was worked on with others, might be another matter.” 

But Marshall said the commissioners “were right and behaved properly in independently speaking out about a measure to stop trophy hunting of lions and bobcats,” and that they shouldn’t have settled out of court. 

“The trophy-hunting clan cannot stomach the idea of any challenge to its worldview, especially not from commissioners,” she said. “This is a classic intimidation tactic, and the state had no business reaching an agreement with parties who want to chill debate and promote inhumane, unsportsmanlike treatment of wildlife.” 

Sportsmen’s Alliance Foundation did not respond to a request for comment but said in the press release that “CPW made the correct decision to settle instead of dragging this out and wasting time and resources.”