The Beginning
Beginning in the mid-1970s, the threat to our outdoor heritage became so great that a group of business leaders, wildlife professionals and everyday sportsmen took it upon themselves to counter the animal-rights movement by organizing sportsmen in the fight to protect wildlife management and the opportunities, hunting, fishing and trapping, that fund the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation.
What started as the defense of an Ohio trapping issue in 1977 with national implications, soon evolved into the country’s leading advocate for sportsmen across– the Sportsmen’s Alliance and the Sportsmen’s Alliance Foundation.
For four decades, the Sportsmen’s Alliance has fought to protect and advance our outdoor heritage of hunting, fishing, trapping and recreational shooting in all 50 state legislatures, in the courts, in Congress and at the ballot box. As the Sportsmen’s Alliance continues to grow stronger, so too has the animal-rights movement.
Originally known as the Wildlife Legislative Fund of America and Wildlife Conservation Fund of America, the organization formed in 1977 after Ohio Ballot Issue 2 threatened Ohio’s trapping community. After leading the fight to successfully defeat the effort, the organizations were officially incorporated in 1978. We’ve since shortened to the Sportsmen’s Alliance in an effort to enhance brand recognition.
In those early years, the Sportsmen’s Alliance would leave its mark on the sporting and legislative community. In 1982, we supported commonsense amendments to the Endangered Species Act that would protect our outdoor heritage from coast to coast. Not slowing down, we would move on to create hunter harassment legislation that over the next decade would be implemented in all 50 states, protecting sportsmen from anti-hunters while in the field.
Under the Sportsmen’s Alliance’s leadership, a 1983 ballot issue to ban moose hunting in Maine was defeated. Out of this victory, the Sportsmen’s Alliance would create the Protect What’s Right campaign to utilize the vast network of conservation clubs to educate the public and advance our mission. At one point, as many as 1,500 conservation clubs from coast to coast united under the Protect What’s Right banner.
Shortly after, we created the Sportsmen’s Legal Defense Fund, making it the only entity with the sole purpose of defending sportsmen’s rights in the courts. The legal fund is still responsible for winning precedent-setting cases for sportsmen today.
Fighting for the Future
Over the next eight years, Sportsmen’s Alliance would continue to grow as a national organization. We would soon come to understand that not only was it important to protect current sportsmen, but also to introduce outdoor sports to the next generation.
In 2001, the Trailblazer Adventure Program was created to reach a new generation of hunters and anglers by introducing youth and their families to the outdoor lifestyle. Holding the first pilot program in Atlanta, the Trailblazer Adventure Program would develop into the nation’s leading outdoor youth education program, reaching 1 million participants in just nine years. Eventually, the program would see more than 2 million participants.
The Sportsmen’s Alliance expanded its work to get newcomers into America’s marshes and meadows through the development of the Families Afield program. This partnership with the National Shooting Sports Foundation and the National Wild Turkey Federation, and support from the National Rifle Association and the Congressional Sportsmen Foundation paved the way for millions to try hunting. The hallmark of the program was the “Apprentice Hunting License.” Utilizing a “try before you buy” approach, this license allows new hunters to hunt under the watchful eye of an experienced mentor, before taking a hunter education course.
The program has enjoyed huge success, being implemented in 40 states across the country and surpassing two million apprentice hunting licenses sold.
“Taking Students into Nature, Bringing Nature into the Classroom”
Today, the Sportsmen’s Alliance Foundation has launched an exciting education initiative called Conservation Adventures, that addresses critical gaps in education as it pertains to wildlife and habitat conservation. Through this effort, we have educated thousands of students on the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation, its impact and importance for the future of ecosystems while fulfilling educational requirements in several core and elective classes.
Students develop skills, build an understanding of science and learn scientific techniques taught through the lens of conservation with an emphasis on hands-on, real-world activities. The curriculum focuses on wildlife conservation and the outdoor recreational activities that financially support the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation – hunting, fishing, trapping, recreational shooting and boating.
Fighting on the Biggest Stages: Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow
A brief rundown of notable legislation, litigation and ballot work
The Sportsmen’s Alliance and Sportsmen’s Alliance Foundation have a long history of advocating for all sportsmen nationwide at every level and in every branch of government. No issue is too small or too big for the Sportsmen’s Alliance, as we weigh in on everything from state leash laws and ballot initiatives to federal legislation and complex court cases. Our forward thinking and precedent-setting victories have secured public access and use, standardized state and federal laws and enforcement, while also defending many states from ballot-box attacks that would have ended many hunting opportunities.
PUBLIC LANDS
We’ve long protected, and expanded, public lands across America. Many anti-hunting bills at the state level first target public-land activities, such as trapping, before pushing for an expansion to all public and private property. While we work diligently to defend against state attacks, some of our greatest public-lands victories have come at the federal level.
With the passage of the 1997 National Wildlife Refuge Improvement Act, hunting, fishing and trapping became “priority uses” on the 100-million-acre-plus system. This Congressional effort was successfully spearheaded and shepherded through the process by the Sportsmen’s Alliance, and the designation has led every President since to expand hunting and fishing opportunities on refuges throughout the country.
That law has irked animal extremists ever since, and they have repeatedly tried to overturn the designation. However, we successfully defended it in court starting in 2003, and finally secured a complete victory nearly a decade later in a 2011 ruling.
With the legal battle over priority use finally settled, animal-activists changed tactics and began attacking how hunters and anglers use refuge lands. Starting in 2001, they argued in court that lead ammunition should be banned on refuges, another case that we won. But the battle still rages with the Biden Administration passing regulations that any future expansion of hunting and fishing opportunities on individual refuges be lead-free. The Sportsmen’s Alliance led the opposition against the regulation, alerting members and rallying both senators and representatives in Congress to oppose the move, as well as testifying before a Congressional committee about the lack of science to support such a blanket rule and the financial burden, and a resulting loss of participation, to sportsmen.
Long-range goals and stamina in protracted fights are a hallmark of the Sportsmen’s Alliance. Almost since our inception, we have lobbied for “Open Until Closed” language in federal bills. In 2019, after more than four decades, the language was included in the Natural Resources Management Act of 2019. “Open Until Closed” requires lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service to be open for hunting, fishing and recreational shooting unless specifically closed for cause.
Likewise, since 2015, animal-extremist organizations and their political allies have attempted to usurp states’ rights when it comes to the management of wildlife, particularly predators, on federal lands within the borders of a state. Traditionally, states, and not the federal government, dictate management decisions (such as season dates, methods and means of hunting and bag limits) within state boundaries, even on federal land, using accepted scientific wildlife management principles and in accordance with local customs and tolerances. The Sportsmen’s Alliance Foundation has fought two legal cases out of Alaska over this principle, including filing an amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court.
ENDANGERED SPECIES ACT BATTLES
Using pseudo-science, procedural red tape and abusing the Equal Access to Justice Act, groups like Humane Society of the United States, Center for Biological Diversity, Defenders of Wildlife and others, continually attempt to stymie states’ rights and scientific wildlife management.
Wolves: For nearly 20 years, the Sportsmen’s Alliance has fought court battle after court battle over the delisting of Western Great Lakes wolves from the Endangered Species Act. We have delisted the apex predator three times, only to have activists secure relisting on procedural claims. We supported the Trump Administration’s delisting of all Lower 48 wolves, which was overturned in court, and supported the Biden Administration’s appeal of that ruling.
In 2023, the Sportsmen’s Alliance submitted two petitions, giving the Biden Administration a playbook that would satisfy all court rulings while protecting populations of wolves expanding into new areas but would give states management of wolves where they had recovered.
Grizzly Bears: Like Great Lakes’ wolves, Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem grizzly bears have surpassed all legal and biological thresholds for delisting under the Endangered Species Act. But that hasn’t stopped extremist organizations from questioning the science with red herring claims and obstructing delisting with legal claims that stretched for more than four years starting in 2016. The Sportsmen’s Alliance was there every step of the way, and has stepped into the Biden Administration’s plan to reintroduce the massive bruins into Washington state’s North Cascades Ecosystem, which could potentially hand animal-rights organizations legal leverage to keep the grizzly populations in Montana, Idaho and Wyoming listed permanently.
BALLOT ISSUES
The Sportsmen’s Alliance started because of a ballot-issue campaign to end trapping in Ohio. Since then, we’ve been heavily involved in 18 state ballot campaigns to protect hunting. Our record in those 18 contests is 13-5. When the Sportsmen’s Alliance isn’t heavily involved, the result is only three victories for sportsmen and 14 losses that forwarded the goals of the animal-rights movement.
In 2014, Maine voters rejected a ballot initiative that would have banned the use of bait, hounds and traps for bear hunting. It was the second time in 10 years that the Humane Society of the United States attacked Maine and bankrolled (to the tune of $2.7 million) the exact same initiative in the state. Both times the Sportsmen’s Alliance led the campaign to repel the Washington, D.C.,-based organization.
More recently, Montana saw ballot campaign to end the trapping of wolves on public land. The Sportsmen’s Alliance led the resistance against the ballot-box biology subversion, as it has for nearly 50 years.
Meeting Tomorrow’s Challenges Today
As the political landscape changes, a new strategy is required
Partisanship and single-party super majorities in state legislatures has made it nearly impossible to work in many states, especially on the East and West coasts. At the same time, urbanization has produced conservative legislators who support anti-hunting legislation to appeal to suburban districts. This trend has forced sportsmen into legislative battles in states previously regarded as safe havens. Throw a White House administrations that are often friendly to extreme animal and environmental activists into the mix and the days of simple lobbying are gone.
Today we’re seeing fish and game commissions openly reject the historical conservation successes of hunters, as well as the financial contributions they provide today. Animal-rights extremists and preservationists have infiltrated these commissions, rejecting sound science from their own biologists and regulating entire hunting seasons out of existence based on nothing but personal biases and talking points from activist organizations. At the same time, single-party super majorities have passed unconstitutional laws as it pertains to the Second Amendment, and as states jockey for legal high ground in a post Breun decision by the U.S. Supreme Court.
In short, yesterday’s tactics have become less effective, and to survive we must evolve to match the aggressiveness of those who wish to end our way of life by corrupting the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation. To meet this changing landscape, we must employ a new strategy to be successful long-term – and that requires turning to the third branch of government, the courts, more often and with greater speed. The Sportsmen’s Alliance is prepared to do that with the launch of an in-house legal team and the goal of protecting our entire hunting, fishing and trapping for future generations.
The Sportsmen’s Alliance & The Second Amendment
The Sportsmen’s Alliance fully supports the Second Amendment and believes that it is one of the key underpinnings of hunting in this country, and moreover, it is the bedrock upon which our country was founded and why we retain our freedoms today.
We fully understand that without the Second Amendment, and the personal right to possess and use firearms, there would be no hunting in America. And without hunting, there would be no wildlife conservation. But beyond that, the Second Amendment protects the very freedoms we live under in this country and ensures that the constitutionally guaranteed rights of all Americans are protected.
We do not support gun-control legislation of any type. We never have, and we never will.
We are an organization made up of hunters, anglers, trappers, gun owners and shooting sports enthusiasts. And while we work primarily on hunting, fishing and trapping issues, we do not support the notion that law-abiding citizens should be held responsible, or punished, for the acts of criminals.