A state Senate committee recommended that two of three gubernatorial appointees to the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission be removed while one received unanimous support to continue her role during a confirmation hearing Wednesday.
The state Senate Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee, led by Sens. Dylan Roberts, D-Frisco, and Jessie Danielson, D-Wheat Ridge, voted 7-0 to confirm Frances Silva Blayney, a fly-fishing outfitter based in Colorado Springs, to represent hunters, anglers and outfitters.
They voted 5-2 against recommending John Emerick, a retired professor of environmental biology and a leading voice in wetland ecology from Redstone who was appointed by Gov. Jared Polis to an at-large position representing the general public.
And they voted 4-3 against recommending Christopher Sichko, a small-game bowhunter, longtime angler and former U.S. Department of Agriculture research economist from Boulder who was appointed by Polis to represent hunters and anglers.
The panel’s vote serves as a recommendation before a final vote on the Senate floor scheduled for Friday. Roberts said it is “very rare” for a candidate to get an unfavorable recommendation.
Emerick was appointed to his seat last July and voted on several issues including the commission’s decision to accept a petition to ban the sale of wild fur from 17 furbearing species in Colorado. Sichko was appointed Feb. 9 and had yet to weigh in on any commission decisions.
The move follows months of contentious debate over whether Polis placed the three appointees on the commission to represent anti-hunting and animal-rights interests or to round out a governing body that has historically been dominated by hunters and anglers.
How the appointees felt about hunting was at the crux of the questions from the seven members including Republican Sens. Byron and Rod Pelton, who live in Sterling and Cheyenne Wells, respectively. They both zeroed in on Sichko’s lack of hunting experience, with one of them asking Sichko to address a letter sent to the committee by the hunting advocacy group Colorado Wildlife Conservation Project opposing his confirmation — how he planned to build trust with hunters when he had never hunted a big game animal himself.
Sichko said he had hunted before — just small game and birds — and that he’d applied for big game hunting licenses but had never drawn one. He also said he would listen to sportspersons’ concerns and let them know he’d work with them and CPW staff when it came to hunting issues.
Sen. Nick Hinrichsen, D-Pueblo, asked Sichko about a comment he once made, in which he said he supported rewilding, or restoring ecosystems by removing human pressure and reintroducing animals like bison, wolves and beavers. Sichko said he’d used the word mistakenly after hearing his mother say it and that he doesn’t support driving people off their land in the name of conservation.
Three committee members recommended his appointment; Roberts was among the four that didn’t. Before voting, Roberts said he couldn’t justify putting Sichko in the sportspersons’ seat when “almost all” Colorado hunting groups opposed his appointment — and after learning that 12 other candidates who were not selected had big-game hunting experience.
Roberts finished by saying he was sorry Gov. Polis appointed Sichko to be the sportspersons’ representative, because he probably would have been a better fit for the at-large commissioner position.
Nothing contentious came up in the committee’s questioning of Silva Blayney, who said her commission decisions are made with guidance from the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation. The model emphasizes science-based management and establishes that fish and wildlife are public resources, managed by the government for the benefit of all citizens.
But the committee had several questions for Emerick, most notably from Roberts.
He wanted to know if Emerick had signed a citizen’s petition in 2025 that asked the commission to make ranchers prove they used nonlethal mitigation tools before they could collect payment for livestock losses from wolf predation.
Roberts indicated he believed Emerick signedthe petition but Emerick said he couldn’t remember signing it. Emerick also voted yes on a highly controversial ballot measure to prohibit the trophy hunting of mountain lions and a citizens petition to ban the commercial sale of wild fur in Colorado. Roberts said the most important position on the CPW commission is the at-large position and asked Emerick how he would square those votes “both before and after being on the commission” with representing the entire state.
“At the time, I was looking at what I thought was the most defensible position regarding science,” Emerick said.
But Roberts pressed: “You’re not a hunter, you’re not a fisherman, you advocated soundly against those petitions. So how will you move away from your activism in the animal space?”
Emerick: “Again, I look at the facts before me and the best available science.”
When it came time to vote, Roberts said he lauded Emerick’s willingness and desire to serve the state of Colorado, “at a period where there had been a lot of controversy, a lot of turmoil, a lot of disagreement and attention to decisions the commission makes,” but he wasn’t able to vote for Emerick because of his history of activism, the fact that he didn’t “recall a petition he had or had not signed,” and because it was clear to him that Emerick had been appointed by Polis “in what I think is a clear attempt to move the commission in a direction that is not within the mainstream of Colorado.”
Eric Washburn, a hunter, natural resources policy advisor and founding director of the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, said he was disappointed neither Emerick nor Sichko were recommended for seats on the commission.
“If CPW is going to have any chance of rebooting the culture that has led to the epidemic of Chronic Wasting Disease in our elk, deer and moose herds, recovering the native species that have declined dramatically — many of which are headed toward extinction — and rebuilding our ecosystems so they are diverse, healthy and resilient, then we will need commissioners like them who are committed to the science-based management of wildlife,” he said in a text to The Colorado Sun.