Dixon: Amendment 83 and the inheritance Colorado owes the next generation 

By Brittany Dixon | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice

I have been fortunate enough to have three remarkable places shape my understanding of the outdoors: calling North Dakota home, spending every minute of summer at the Minnesota lakes and now building a home in Colorado. The landscapes are different, but what connects all three for me is our relationship with the land and water, and the responsibility that comes with loving them. That is why Colorado’s Amendment 83, which would establish the constitutional right to hunt and fish, matters to me. It is about more than two outdoor activities. It is about stewardship and what we choose to pass on.

When I was growing up spending summers in Minnesota, fishing was simply part of life. You didn’t need to call it “conservation” to understand there was something meaningful about casting a line or watching one generation teach the next how to fish. Those experiences make you care whether the water is clean, the fish are healthy, and whether that experience will still be there for the next kid standing at the end of a dock with a fishing pole.

North Dakota deepened that understanding for me. There, stewardship is written into the landscape through hunting and a conservation legacy shaped in no small part by Theodore Roosevelt’s time in the West.

Now, living in Colorado, I see those same values reflected in a state with deep traditions of hunting, fishing and caring for the outdoors.

Hunters and anglers have long put that stewardship into practice through licenses and longstanding federal excise taxes on firearms, ammunition, archery equipment, fishing equipment and related sporting goods. These dollars help fund wildlife restoration, habitat, research, management and outdoor access.

Colorado has more than 873,000 fishing license holders and more than 378,000 hunting license holders. Their contributions help sustain a conservation model in which those who participate directly invest in ensuring wildlife and habitat remain healthy for generations to come. Hunting and fishing generate more than $3.25 billion for Colorado’s economy annually and support more than 25,000 jobs statewide. In many rural communities, natural resources aren’t merely a backdrop to the economy. They are a part of its foundation.

But the contribution to conservation goes beyond funding.

Science-based hunting is itself a wildlife management tool. Colorado Parks and Wildlife uses regulated harvest to help manage big-game populations toward established objectives. Hunters also play a critical role in monitoring and managing chronic wasting disease, a fatal disease affecting deer, elk and moose. Protecting hunting and protecting science-based wildlife management are not competing goals. They reinforce one another.

That distinction matters now.

In 2024, Coloradans were asked to prohibit hunting mountain lions and bobcats through Proposition 127. Voters rejected it, but the debate showed how quickly decisions traditionally informed by wildlife biology and professional management can become statewide political questions.

Amendment 83 does not eliminate wildlife regulations. It preserves the state’s authority to regulate hunting, fishing and wildlife management when necessary for sound scientific conservation, public safety and the future of sportsmanship. It also preserves private property and trespass laws.

That balance matters: protect the tradition while preserving the science necessary to manage it responsibly.

Recently, I had the opportunity to spend time at the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library in North Dakota. Standing in the landscape that helped shape Roosevelt’s conservation ethic reinforced an idea that remains relevant more than a century later: America’s natural resources are an inheritance. We can use them and enjoy them, but we also have an obligation to leave something behind.

The landscapes are different. The responsibility isn’t.

You don’t have to hunt to appreciate what hunters have contributed to conservation. You don’t have to fish to understand why a child’s first catch matters. These traditions cultivate something policy alone cannot: people who feel personally responsible for the future of the places and wildlife they love.

Minnesota taught me to love the water. North Dakota taught me the enduring value of stewardship. Colorado has given me a place to carry both lessons forward.

Our landscapes will change. Our communities will grow. Good policy will evolve with them. But the principle underneath it all should endure.

Amendment 83 asks whether those traditions, and the science-based conservation model they support, deserve lasting protection in Colorado. I believe they are worth preserving.

We inherited something extraordinary. Our responsibility is to make sure the next generation does too.

Brittany Dixon is the state policy manager for the American Conservation Coalition. She lives in Grand Junction.

Editor’s note: Opinions expressed in commentary pieces are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the management of the Rocky Mountain Voice, but even so we support the constitutional right of the author to express those opinions.