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A controversial member of the Colorado Veterinary Board has resigned after taking heat for a comment she made accusing ranchers of using cattle to bait wolves.
Ellen Kessler submitted her letter of resignation late Monday afternoon, admitting she had “caused anger and discomfort and that I was unprofessional in my judgment.”
Early Monday evening Gov. Jared Polis’ office notified the Journal-Advocate of Kessler’s resignation and included a statement from the governor’s office.
“The Governor appreciates that Ms. Kessler has taken responsibility for the impact of her hurtful words,” the statement said. “He looks forward to selecting a veterinary board member that better shares his strong respect for Colorado’s hard working ranchers and helps build confidence in the practice of veterinary medicine across our state.”
Kessler, who is a devout opponent of livestock agriculture, was appointed to the board in 2019. Her appointment has been decried by the agricultural community and even by the Colorado Veterinary Medicine Association since she was first appointed. Kessler managed to offend all of rural Colorado with one of her posts, which accused 4-H of teaching children how to abuse animals.
Kessler came under fire again last Friday during the Voices of Rural Colorado Conference in Denver. Near the end of the conference, Gov. Polis delivered remarks and then took questions. Two attendees asked him how he could justify keeping Kessler on that board after she publicly accused ranchers in Colorado of using cattle as “wolf bait” to scam reimbursement from state coffers.
That post was actually a comment Kessler posted on a Jan. 19 thread started by Reis about ranchers launching a new program to help them co-exist with bears and using nature to minimize or eliminate losses to natural predators. The tone of Reis’ original post was positive and laudatory of the ranchers involved in the program. Kessler’s comment, however, was anything but positive. Referencing a recent spate of cattle losses to wolves near Walden in north central Colorado, Kessler accused ranchers of faking wolf attacks to get reimbursement from the government for cattle that died.
“Would our lazy and nasty ranchers/cattlemen even raise a finger to make something like this work, or is using a cow to bait the wolves their solution?” Kessler posted in a now-deleted comment. “A living cow doesn’t make money for them. Only a dead cow does. If the slaughterhouse doesn’t pay them for the carcass, they’ll blame the predators so the State (sic) will pay them for livestock lost from predators. What a racket. What a scam.”
To be fair, that board has little to do with looking after the welfare of livestock animals in Colorado. That’s the purview of the Colorado Department of Agriculture and its State Veterinarian, Dr. Maggie Baldwin. The CVB is under the Department of Regulatory Agencies and is primarily tasked with making sure veterinarians in Colorado are properly credentialed, trained and make the best decisions they can for the animals under their care.
Polis took pains to point out this subtle but significant distinction, to reiterate his commitment to having a wide variety of voices on state boards and commissions, and his reluctance to trample anyone’s freedom of speech. He added that anyone who had an issue with any state official’s conduct should register a complaint through proper channels. One of the attendees fired back, “We’re filing that complaint now with the governor.”
Minutes later the governor’s office notified the conference that their concerns had been forwarded to DORA.
Monday morning the heat continued when Colorado Republican Party Chair Kristi Burton Brown tweeted her demand that Kessler be removed from the CVB.
“Today I’m joining Colorado’s farmers and ranchers in demanding that @jaredpolis remove Ellen Kessler as his appointee on the Veterinary Board,” Brown tweeted. “Her comments about our agricultural community are disgraceful & unacceptable.”
Brown’s tweet included a link to an online petition demanding that Kessler be removed.
By mid-afternoon Monday, Polis had Kessler’s resignation in hand.
“I realize that some of my actions have caused anger and discomfort and that I was unprofessional in my judgment,” Kessler wrote. “I apologize to you and the citizens of our great State and wish you the best of luck as you continue to make Colorado the best in the nation.”
Kessler’s resignation is effective at close of business Feb. 22.
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