Hard winter for wild herds now limits hunting

State slashed licenses, but towns that rely on hunters hurting

BY TRACY ROSS THE COLORADO SUN

When the storms bearing more snow than people had seen in years came to northwestern Colorado last winter, they were full of promise.

Of creeks and rivers bursting at their seams. Of reservoirs nally full again. Of ground so saturated, res like the ones that had burned the previous summers might not be able to take hold.

But the slow-moving fronts that dropped snow in four-foot increments brought no help for the deer, elk, moose and pronghorn that forage near the towns of Maybell, Meeker, Rangely, Dinosaur and Craig. For them, the precipitation that fell, the winds that blew and the temperatures that hovered below zero for weeks on end meant death in numbers not seen in decades.

Rachael Gonzales, the northwest region public information o cer for Colorado Parks and Wildlife, wrote as much in a post on the agency’s website dated March 28:

“It has been a tough winter for wildlife. … Since the start of the season the National Weather Service’s Maybell weather station has recorded over 80 inches of snow for the area. Prolonged snow combined with strong gusty winds have made an already hard time of year for wildlife even more di cult. Food has been extremely di cult for big game to nd as much of it is covered by deep, hard-packed snow. is has forced thousands of animals to migrate farther west than they typically do, burning much-needed fat and calories they likely won’t replenish.”

She then relayed a story of a bull elk she saw while on a ride-along with District Wildlife Manager Jeffrey Goncalves in the region:

“…we noticed a mature bull elk that was unable to get up after several attempts. After watching and evaluating the elk for several minutes, the decision was made to euthanize the bull so it would no longer su er from starvation.”

And she said that in addition to mortality from malnutrition, wildlife o cials had seen an increase in animals injured or killed from vehicle collisions.

With normal migration routes di cult for wildlife to navigate, they had resorted to using roadways as they searched for food. Sometimes that food was located on a narrow shoulder along a windy section of road, Gonzales wrote. On Jan. 14, a semi traveling eastbound from Utah on U.S. 40 hit 35 pronghorn on the road, and on Jan. 19, another driver hit a group of 18 near Craig. Over the course of the winter, district wildlife managers in the northwest region responded to four incidents involving vehicle collisions with groups of 10 or more of the animals.

On April 5, the Rio Blanco Herald Times, a newspaper serving the northwest region, quoted now-retired CPW wildlife manager Bill deVergie as saying deer fawn survival was in the 30% range and heading toward 20%; elk calf survival was 35% to 40% of normal; and only 10% of pronghorn fawns, the hardest hit, were surviving.

CPW said it was one of the worst winters for wildlife it had ever seen, despite massive e orts to help the animals. Area managers had dropped tons of hay for them to eat, and local ranchers had left barn doors open, welcoming them in. But in the end a catastrophic number of Colorado’s healthiest ungulate herds died.

As bad as the winter of 2023 was for wildlife in the corner of Colorado bounded by Wyoming and Utah, however, it could also be bad for thousands of people who live in the same region and rely on the big-game hunting seasons that start in mid August and run through November.

Emails from CPW started going out to hunters who put in for the draw the rst week of June. Once hunters know they’ve scored a tag, many start planning their trips. But Cody Nelson, who owns Moosehead Lodge in Rangely, 13 miles east of the Utah border, in the White River Valley, said she can “already see a dramatic decrease in bookings from previous years.”

“To be honest, there was a little bit of worry even before the reductions were announced,” she said. “I totally understand why CPW is doing what they’re doing, but I don’t know what it’ll mean for the area as a whole.”

Even over-the-counter tags, which are set by the Colorado state legislature and available in August to any hunter for a certain price after the limited draw is over, were

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SCRAMBLE

FROM and a handful of ranch-style homes, but imagine that none of the ranch homes sold in the period of data the assessor’s o ce examines.

“Maybe that model didn’t value the single-story ranches very well, and so we have to go in and adjust,” Damisch said.

Perfect storm e assessor doesn’t set the tax rate but determines the value of the property that the tax rate then gets applied to. Local government entities like counties and school districts set the tax rates. Property tax rates are o cially called “mill levies.”

County assessors’ o ces are tasked with establishing accurate values of homes and other properties to determine how much property owners will owe government entities in taxes — a process meant to ensure that the amount of taxes people pay is fair and equitable.

Counties are required by Colorado law to revalue properties every two years, according to Sakdol.

Another culprit of this year’s perfect tax storm: e recent repeal of the Gallagher Amendment, a former part of the state constitution.

Colorado voters in 2020 repealed the Gallagher Amendment, a policy that prevented residential property tax bills from getting too big. But when combined with the e ect of the Colorado Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, it strangled local government budgets, e Colorado Sun reported.

(Along with the property value and the property tax rate, a number called the “assessment rate” is another factor that helps determine how much in property taxes a person owes. With the Gallagher Amendment gone, the state legislature sets the assessment rate.)

If Colorado voters had not gotten rid of the Gallagher Amendment, the tax landscape this year would be much di erent, Sakdol said.

“We wouldn’t be in a panic of our property taxes going up substantially because the assessment (rate) would fall much lower, which would keep our property taxes somewhat in check to previous years,” Sakdol said. e rub with the Gallagher Amendment was that for rural counties, where property values haven’t gone up as much as they have been on the Front Range, the property tax equation meant rural government entities faced reduced revenue that a ected their services — a problem Sakdol acknowledged.

One proposal that has popped up in the past: having di erent assessment rates for di erent regions of Colorado.

“So you’d have the Gallagher Amendment (policy) … they would run the same numbers as Gallagher requires,” but the assessment rate might be higher in Sterling as opposed to Denver, Sakdol said.

How Colorado compares

Although homeowners are concerned in Colorado about a hike in property tax bills, Colorado is “on the low side of property taxes throughout the United States,” Sakdol noted.

Nationally, Colorado has relatively low residential property taxes, according to an analysis by the conservative Tax Foundation. Colorado ranked 47th in property taxes paid as a percentage of owner-occupied housing value in 2020, according to the foundation.

“But now that we have removed the Gallagher Amendment, I think we’re going to see that come up. I don’t think we’re going to be in that lower category anymore,” Sakdol said.

“It’ll probably be another year or two before we see” where Colorado falls in a national ranking on property taxes taking into account the Gallagher repeal, Sakdol said.

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