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Colorado Reduces Cap on Mountain Lion Hunting

The Realblog with Stephanie Mallory

Colorado Reduces Cap on Mountain Lion Hunting

Posted 2025-01-27  by  Stephanie Mallory

Hunters will be allowed to take fewer female lions during the upcoming season

Image: mountain_lion_colorado

CPW has added caps to the number of adult female mountain lions that can be hunted. (Photo by Karel Bock)

Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) has approved a 9.6% reduction in the number of mountain lions that hunters can take during the 2025-2026 season.

According to Summit Daily, the reduction will allow for up to 610 lions to be hunted in the next season, down from 674 during the previous season.

The reduction comes after CPW updated mountain lion management plans for the west and east regions of Colorado. Passed in 2021 and 2024, these plans added caps to the number of adult female mountain lions that could be hunted as well as on the number of human-caused lion deaths not related to hunting. The caps are designed to maintain a stable population of mountain lions, according to the agency.

During the most recent season, the number of adult females taken hit 24%, exceeding the 22% limit, in the western hunting region.

Colorado’s mountain lion season runs from November to March. Since 2014, the agency has been able to extend the season through April if the number of lions killed falls short of its cap.

The state offers an unlimited number of mountain lion licenses but requires that purchasers complete a specific education course before purchase. Hunters must submit harvested lions to a CPW inspection, which enables the agency to collect data on the lion’s sex, age and location.

The Parks and Wildlife website provides daily data reports throughout the season so hunters can track the number of lions hunted in certain areas including the number of females that have been killed — and what the limits are in that area.

During a recent meeting Mark Vieira, the carnivore and furbearer program manager for Parks and Wildlife, said the agency has sold around 2,500 licenses annually, with an approximate 20% success rate. Vieira said the caps and requirements make the species “among the most tightly regulated of the state’s big-game species.”

In the last full hunting season, from 2023-2024, hunters killed 500 lions including 265 males and 235 females, slightly above the three-year annual average of 491. One hundred eighty nine lions have been taken so far this season, 64 of which have been females.

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