Colorado Parks and Wildlife launches potential hunting opportunity for wild bison

Colorado Parks and Wildlife is creating a roster where individuals can sign up for a bison hunting license. 

Interested hunters can apply to be added to the list, which will only be used if management action — such as preventing property of agricultural damage — is required for wild bison that enter Colorado. The state is not creating a regular hunting season for bison. 

Colorado is not home to any herds of wild bison after the species was systematically killed across the West in the 1800s. 

However, a new bill signed into law in May allowed the species to be dual-classified as livestock or wildlife. The bill’s primary goal was to protect wild bison from Utah’s Book Cliffs herds that wander into Colorado near Rangely. Prior to the law being enacted, these animals lost any protections when they entered Colorado and were typically killed. 

Parks and Wildlife estimates that the mismatch in protections has led to a dozen wild bison being killed in Colorado after leaving Utah in the last decade. It estimates that 25 have been killed in the past 20 years. 

Now, free-roaming wild bison are managed by Parks and Wildlife as a big game species, meaning they cannot be killed without a proper license or permission. Privately-owned bison will continue to be managed by the Colorado Department of Agriculture as livestock. 

In accordance with the new law, Parks and Wildlife launched a stakeholder process to create a bison management plan in October. The plan will set a bison management area and a population objective range to guide future decisions around wild bison in the area just northwest of Grand Junction, where the animals have previously entered Colorado. In the fall, the wildlife agency’s commission also passed a few regulatory changes, including building a regulatory framework for the potential hunting of wild bison to protect against disease or property damage and that covers compensation for property damages caused by the animals.  

In October, as wildlife advocates urged Parks and Wildlife not to allow hunting of bison, Brian Dreher, assistant director of the terrestrial branch at Parks and Wildlife, said the new regulatory framework merely provides the agency with management options. 

“We don’t have any intentions to hunt these animals in the near term, but we also need some flexibility to deal with any issues that arise,” Dreher said.

With the creation of the “bison roster,” which Parks and Wildlife announced on Jan. 1, hunters will be randomly selected in the event the agency needs to kill a wild bison that is causing issues. The agency reported these special licenses will be issued on a “case-by-case basis for time-sensitive management needs.” Once a hunters’ name is selected, the hunter will be granted a one-week license to kill a bison.

The application to sign up for the roster is available from Jan. 1 to 31 on the Parks and Wildlife website. If a drawing is conducted, successful applicants will be notified by phone and email. Hunters will have 24 hours to respond and accept the license.