The Colorado Senate on Friday delayed until Tuesday discussion of Gov. Jared Polis’ three newest appointees to the Colorado Parks and Wildlife commission.
One of those appointees, Gary Skiba, the wildlife program manager for the Durango-based San Juan Citizens Alliance environmental group, on Thursday removed himself from the commission.
“The voters were not there to confirm me and it was not going to be to anyone’s benefit for me to stay in there,” he said Friday morning from his home in Durango.
Skiba and Jessica Beaulieu were nominated to the CPW commission by Polis in July and have served on the commission since, with Skiba representing hunters and anglers and Beaulieu representing recreation and parks. Last week a Senate committee declined to support their appointments, with senators critical of their experience and their alignment with animal advocacy.
Beaulieu is a Denver attorney who manages the University of Denver’s Animal Law Program, which helps attorneys better protect animals. A third appointee, Jack Murphy, was approved by the Senate Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee on Feb. 29. The Colorado Senate on Friday pushed a vote on the two commissioners to March 14.
A growing chorus of recreation and hunting groups — along with commissioners in the hunter-reliant counties of Grand and Teller — expressed opposition to all three of the Polis appointees.
Skiba said he was disappointed. He told The Colorado Sun he was going to be “pretty guarded” with his comments.
“I need some time with this,” he said.
Animal advocacy groups supporting a proposed ballot measure to ban mountain lion hunting in Colorado lamented the departure of Skiba. Samantha Miller, the Colorado director of the Animal Wellness Action group, said in a statement that “a tiny minority of trophy hunters” had “harassed and demeaned” the three appointees and “were able to trick the Senate into believing there was more opposition … than in reality.”
“These anti-wildlife extremists will stop at nothing to get their way and have successfully hijacked the commission and the Senate,” Miller said. “I hope Coloradans will see their voices are being silenced by the ongoing outsized influence of the trophy hunting and trapping lobby.”
Skiba said he applied to serve on the commission because he spent 23 years with Colorado Parks and Wildlife as a wildlife biologist and “I recognized I had experience that was relevant and I felt I had a lot to offer the state of Colorado.”
He said he intended to be an advocate for hunters and anglers in Colorado. He wanted to help improve management of the state’s bighorn sheep herds. He wanted to explore options for growing Colorado’s beaver population. He was keen to study how Colorado could better protect its wild bison as the state collects federal dollars to support grassland ecosystems.
Bison are presently considered domestic livestock and Colorado Parks and Wildlife does not have authority over wild bison. The agency is studying a proposal that would shift wild bison designation over to a game animal, which would allow management of some herds as wildlife.
“The designation of bison pulls in so many aspects of the commission, with social, economic, agricultural and hunting interests,” Skiba said. “It’s really sort of a microcosm of all the issues we are facing as a commission right now. I keep saying ‘we.’ It’s not ‘we’ anymore.”