CBD wants to sneak through what voters soundly rejected. Monied interest groups circumventing voters to put in their policy. The ends do not justify the means.
Center for Biological Diversity wants to sneak through what voters soundly rejected.
By a 15% margin Denver voters last November soundly rejected an initiative to ban any new fur sales (among other things like display or trades) in the city.
If you thought that this would be enough to convince animal rights activists to rethink their strategy, you're right.
They did rethink it. According to the Complete Colorado article linked first below, a citizen petition for rulemaking (which is linked second below) has recently been filed with Colorado Parks and Wildlife to effectively do what voters in Denver clearly and obviously rejected.
The difference? This petition, if it goes through, would be statewide and would be decided upon by the 12 CPW commissioners that Polis appointed.
Let me run that past you again. 12 unelected commissioners, appointed by a governor who has a nasty habit ignoring whole swaths of the state with his appointees, will decide for the entire state.
As of this writing, I haven't seen or heard of this showing up on any CPW agendas. If it does, I'll update. If you hear and don't see it on my page, give me a heads up.
Whatever your thoughts on fur, this by rights needs to be something voters or their elected representatives decide. Not something done in an end run around them by a monied out of state group and a board of Governor Polis cronies.
https://completecolorado.com/2025/06/23/animal-activists-push-colorado-ban-fur-sales/
https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/programs/carnivore-conservation/pdfs/Commercial-Sale-of-Wildlife-Fur-Rulemaking_Final-06.13.25.pdf
Related:
An article by someone from the Center for Biological Diversity (the group behind the effort to do an end run around voters via CPW I cover above).
This one's not about fur, rather it's about how the wolf is key to rewilding the American West. If you didn't have a handle on what the Center was about, give it a read. It'll give you a hint.
https://medium.com/center-for-biological-diversity/wolves-are-key-to-rewilding-the-american-west-b0eda7119eb0
Monied interest groups circumventing voters to put in their policy.
In the previous post, I talked about how the Center for Biological Diversity is trying an end run around voters. They're trying to do by a CPW rulemaking what voters (at least in Denver our most populist and leftist city) rejected. They essentially want to ban fur in Colorado.
When I first read about this, it struck me as yet another example of how well-funded and sometimes out of state (The Center is out of AZ for example) groups have learned to work Colorado's system of unelected boards to do what likely has little chance of passing when done in more democratic means, via, say, the ballot.
This is not how our state ought to run.
Whether planned in advance or not, our state has exploded with unaccountable boards in the last four years, boards which our governor has stuffed with his cronies.
Advocacy and interest groups know how to work those boards and get done what they'd like, whether voters like it or not.
I wrote an op ed decrying this recently, which I link to below if you'd like to read more (and see yet another example of this dynamic in action).
I'll end this post the same way I ended my op ed:
"Perhaps it’s time we as citizens start contacting those representatives, senators, Gov. Jared Polis and the unelected boards to do what I have been doing for the last couple years or so: instead of (or in addition to) your thoughts on any particular issue, tell them that you object to policy made by those who you’ve never met, who’ve never darkened a doorway in your town, and who you didn’t get to vote for."
https://www.coloradopolitics.com/opinion/bypassing-voters-will-via-unelected-boards-isnt-democracy-podium/article_50afffb1-ce97-4420-ad12-032a6c0ad29c.html
The ends do not justify the means.
Long time readers of this site will recognize the name Flock. It's a camera system that governments contract with to take pictures of license plates.
Not people breaking the law like a speeding camera, nor running red lights. Flock casts a net far and wide, taking license plate pictures which governments or HOAs can then read.
If you go look at Flock's own words about what they do you will see repeated assurances from them about how secure their system is and how they take privacy seriously.
I'm sure they do, but kind of like no method of birth control is ever 100% preventative, there is no security system that is 100% secure. Any data that is captured, no matter what system is used to collect, transport, or secure such data is data that has the possibility to be exploited.
Such is the case in Loveland. Their Flock system was accessed by someone from the ATF using the name (no, not making this up, see the article linked first below) "A. Bro". The subject line was "ICE".
According to the 9News article linked second below, the Loveland Police Chief gave ATF access. Quoting the article with links intact:
"Loveland Police chooses to share Flock camera data with other agencies across the country. In return, LPD receives access to a database that allows it to search nationwide data."
Flock, for their part, claim they have now put in a special filter that would be used to prevent their cameras from being accessed for immigration purposes. Quoting again from the same article:
"Flock said it is adjusting the way searches are flagged in Colorado, and a new guardrail would have prevented the Loveland account's 'ICE' searches. [Flock representative Holly] Beilin stated. Beilin says every search in the Flock system requires a search reason. 'We have turned on an immigration filter in Colorado, where if any user conducts a search, and that search reason is "immigration" or "ICE," that search will be automatically flagged and then blocked from being conducted on Colorado LPR cameras.'"
I am in support of many of Trump's efforts to enforce immigration laws and make our country more secure. I'm also glad that Flock has put in a filter. Not a permanent fix, but not nothing.
None of that makes what happened here okay, and it skirts the larger issue.
Using cameras that monitor us all, Big Brother-style, is not okay. I don't care if it's for a cause I support, it's not okay. I don't care what filters are put in place, they'll never prevent every single problem. I don't care what fixes Flock puts in, what they're doing is not okay.
Plain and simple, the ends do not justify the means. We have to have some limits on what we'll tolerate to enforce laws, and this is where my boundary is.
https://kdvr.com/news/local/loveland-police-chief-discusses-atf-search-of-license-plate-cameras-with-ice-subject-line/
https://www.9news.com/article/news/local/next/loveland-police-colorado-ice-search/73-ec0ec084-e8c6-4c2e-a99b-68bceeedcaa1