Amid all the responses to your Sept. 8 article (“Sierra Club conservation chairman updates community on gray wolf reintroduction initiative”), an important point is being overlooked: No matter how you feel about wolves, all Colorado citizens should agree that wildlife management decisions such as wolf reintroduction should be based on the best available science. We have an excellent state wildlife agency, Colorado Parks and Wildlife, staffed with professional biologists whose job is to study these issues and do what’s best for Colorado’s environment and citizens. The proposed initiative would force Parks and Wildlife to do something that its own research has determined is not feasible or advisable at the present time.

Wildlife management decisions are rarely easy. Nature is complex, and every decision involves many variables and has a web of wide-ranging effects — that’s why it’s so important that the process remain science-based. The place to make these determinations is not at the ballot box. Please, let the professionals do their jobs and ensure our wildlife management decisions are based on sound, supportable science, not on emotion and political rhetoric. Don’t sign this petition, or any petition, that bypasses science in favor of ballot-box biology.