Sometimes Colorado can sound a little too sanguine in their newfound lovely for beavers. Maybe my ears are just used to conflict but this was sounding a little too good to be true for a while.

Now this is more like I’d expect;

How many beaver kills is too many?

What is the philosophy that underpins wildlife management in Colorado?

It’s not science because that’s the source of friction causing very public disagreements about how the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission should be composed.

Two of Gov. Jared Polis’ appointments to the CPW Commission withdrew their names from the Senate confirmation process this week, reinforcing the notion that Colorado is a battleground for reform, replete with divisive rhetoric.

The Colorado Wildlife Conservation Project, a group including 15 sportsman organizations opposed the appointments. In a letter, it said the commission has tilted toward “extreme animal rights and anti-hunting agendas” pushed by the Polis administration.

Now is wanting the state to kill fewer beavers about animal rights? Or is it about wanting more clean drinking water? Let’s put on our thinking caps shall we?

There’s no question that the CPW has historically focused on big-game hunting — a natural outcome of the process of confirming commission members. Rural lawmakers evaluate nominees based on constituencies that are powerful in their districts — hunters, ranchers and outfitters.

On this same page, columnist Jim Spehar outlines some of the other dynamics that have forged the agency’s management priorities. Most Coloradans don’t hunt, but they love the state’s wildlife. Hunting provides the bulk of revenue to manage the state’s species …

Feel the tension? It’s not unlike the climate change debate. If we make energy policies based on the best available climate science, we’re going to make very different decisions than just keeping the lights on using coal burning power plants.

Similarly, reform advocates want the CPW to do more than manage for deer and elk tags.

They want to fundamentally change Colorado’s wildlife management culture in a way they think better addresses the real threats to all our wildlife and our ecosystems — in a century that will be defined by climate change, habitat loss, and species extinction.

Take beavers, for example. Bag limits are so high that the state could never increase beaver populations to ecological capacity — where the real water storage and conservation benefits of the species kick in.

I hardly think beaver qualifies as big game. Do you?

“For years, the old wildlife bloc has claimed ownership of ‘science-based management.’ But the furbearer debate exposed the weak spot. Colorado does not have the same depth of population data for every species. It does not monitor every furbearer like it monitors deer or elk. It does not have clean public accounting for every pathway where animals are killed, especially when recreation, nuisance control, agricultural damage, and commercial use overlap.

“So the public keeps hearing ‘trust the science’ from a system that often cannot produce the kind of species-by-species record people assume exists,” CBN opined.

Colorado has a biodiversity crisis in the making, precisely because scientific data isn’t fully available. Some Coloradans will be OK with that — until ecosystems are so out of whack that elk and mule deer populations collapse. We all want to avoid that. If it takes a formal science-based approach, the CPW has an obligation to consider it.

I think science probably doesn’t tell us a single thing about beavers. It is dependent on the questions we ask it. Beavers mostly make things better. Humans mostly make things worse.

Is that sciency enough for you?