This article originally appeared in The Sportsmen’s Advocate, Spring 2022. Join now to receive our quarterly magazine.
If you’ve paid even a little attention to the regulatory, legislative and legal battles sportsmen have faced over the last couple of years, you know that animal activists have targeted predator management at an unprecedented clip. The Humane Society of the United States, Center for Biological Diversity, Mountain Lion Foundation, Natural Resources Defense Council and Defenders of Wildlife, Wildlife for All, among others, have leveraged every facet of government to undermine scientific wildlife management across the West – which, if implemented, will spread south and east.
In California, the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) petitioned the state fish and game commission to end all bear hunting outright. This came a year after HSUS-backed legislation that did the same was introduced and then pulled by the sponsor after immediate backlash from the hunting community. HSUS then tried to take it out of the hands of politicians and the public by using a petition – which also failed before the state’s game commission. California will likely see a ballot initiative in the future that will seek to end bear hunting outright – this is blueprint they’ve followed in the past.
In Washington state, the regulation process for the spring permit-only bear hunt was turned into a soap opera of epic proportions. Political malfeasance, legal red tape, unappointed commissioners and commissioners muddying scientific findings by repeating HSUS talking points in meetings swung the vote against a bear hunt taking place … and then back again … and then back again to no hunt taking place after the appointment of several new commissioners, two of which have backgrounds in large carnivore protectionism (as opposed to conservation).
That same spring, the Arizona game and fish commission was flooded with calls and emails after HSUS, Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) and Mountain Lion Foundation (MLF) held a webinar for their followers on what to say concerning banning mountain lion, bobcat and bear hunting during their open comment period for the state’s five-year management plan.
Colorado faced legislation that would have banned all mountain lion, bobcat and lynx hunting. It had a real chance of moving through the legislature, but was shot down in committee after sportsmen made calls, sent emails and showed up to rally on the capitol steps the day of the hearing.
Like California, Arizona and Colorado face the real possibility of ballot initiatives in the near future that accomplish these goals. [Editor’s note: This article was written in spring 2022 before discussion of Colorado’s ballot initiative to ban cougar and bobcat hunting began.]
The attacks are nothing new. But while the coordination, rehearsed talking points and array of moves came fast and furious – petitions, legislation and public comment periods were all used simultaneously – the arguments have evolved in a very dangerous way.
Origins of the North American Model
The roots of the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation (NAMWC) reach back to the early 20th Century as remedies to the unabashed exploitation of habitats and wildlife. Early conservationists and environmentalists recognized the unsustainable nature of societal demands on the resources; everything from unregulated logging to market hunting threatened habitats and wildlife nationwide.
Those forefathers of conservation and environmentalism reasoned that if man were the problem, ultimately man held the solution to those problems.
The Lacey Act of 1900, which brought an end to market hunting, was the first federal law protecting wildlife. From that point forward, conservationists began to create rules around hunting and fishing. Season dates and bag limits, the creation of the federal duck stamp and state hunting licenses, the Migratory Bird Act and other regulatory approaches began to create the system as we know it today.
Eventually, seven guiding principles formed the backbone of the NAMWC. Each tenet corrected a wildlife management mistake of the past or protected the model from corruption by special interests, such as the wealthy, large landowners or those opposed to hunting.
For 100 years the NAMWC has been responsible for not just recovering decimated game populations, but for the flourishing of those populations in today’s ever-shrinking habitats. A self-funding mechanism drives the model to the tune of nearly $3 billion a year in just license sales and federal excise taxes. By any measure, the model is a success and has become the standard of wildlife management worldwide.
Despite the obvious successes of the NAMWC, animal-rights activists are attempting to corrupt tenets of the model to advance their agenda. And they’re finding success using verbiage from our own principles to do so.
Corrupting the Model
Animal-rights supporters have made statements in commission meetings, during public comment periods and in the media that their opinions and views of wildlife management hold equal, or even greater, weight than hunters, going so far as to explicitly cite the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation by name as evidence of their knowledge.
The first point of the NAMWC is that “wildlife is a public resource.” The animal-rights movement has perverted this point to justify their position by reasoning that since it’s a public resource, public opinion is paramount in the discharge of wildlife management. They use the same reasoning with another point, the “democracy of hunting.”
Obviously, their reasoning is corrupt.
What those advocates forget to mention, and which we as sportsmen need to fill in, is the context of those principles.
Wildlife is a public resource. However, that doesn’t mean public opinion determines management decisions. It indicates that fish and game, whether on public or private property, belongs to the public (harkening back to, and correcting, the European model of game ownership). The tenet states that governments at various levels have a role in managing the resource on behalf of all citizens to ensure long-term sustainability.
The “democracy of hunting” doesn’t suggest that a mob of dissidents will get their way, but rather that access to and use of wildlife isn’t dependent on wealth, prestige or land ownership – again, differentiating our model from the European model and protecting it from corruption by an oligarchy.
Another point, “wildlife can only be killed for a legitimate purpose” gets trotted out during discussion over predator hunting and other management practices. Activists stress legitimate, wasteful and frivolous, words found within the context of the principle, and reason that since hunters don’t eat coyotes or kill them in large numbers – as an example – that there isn’t a legitimate reason to hunt them. They fail to acknowledge that implemented around calving season, both ungulates and livestock suffer decreased predation – however, their point has often been repeated in the media and to the non-hunting public, which is a public-relations problem for predator management.
Finally, even accepted science suffers under the warped reality of the animal-rights movement. As “the proper tool for discharge of wildlife policy,” the NAMWC states that science is to guide management decisions. For animal-rights activists, science (when it suits them), means undeniable data with concrete outcomes among a world of variables. Population surveys, reasonable data and scientific principles that have been wildly successful in the recovery and management of wildlife for more than a century are no longer acceptable. Their answer is to pause all hunting until we have that data and all associated possibilities of it in hand – which is impossible to ever obtain or keep current. We’ve seen this tactic deployed during the Washington and California bear fights.
One Cog to Break It All
Whether it’s denying science or evoking legitimacy, democracy and public opinion, the goal of the animal-rights movement is the same: to end all hunting. To do so, they’re focusing on predator hunting. Predator management is just one cog in the model, but it’s the one cog that can single-handedly bring down the entire model.
By ending predator management, mountain lions, wolves, coyotes, black bears and grizzly bears proliferate and have free reign. Increased predators on the landscape means increased pressure on ungulate populations. As ungulate populations drop to lower and lower levels due to predation, habitat loss, invasive species and severe weather, state fish and game agencies will have no recourse except to continually reduce the number of tags available for hunters.
As sportsmen, we hunt the biological surplus of available animals within specific habitats. If there is no surplus, then there are no tags issued and there is no hunting season. Without hunting seasons, especially for deer, there is no revenue stream through license and tag sales or via excise taxes on equipment sales.
At this point, the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation will collapse upon itself. Without a model that manages wildlife and provides funding, habitats, ecosystems and wildlife itself will all suffer. A broken model gives the animal-rights movement the opportunity to introduce a new model that reflects their utopian beliefs.
Rewilding: The Activists’ Fantasy
The unrealistic model espoused by animal-rights advocates is that of “rewilding.” First coined in 1990 by the radical environmental group Earth First!, rewilding sounds reasonably simplistic to the uninformed. Its basic mantra is: cores, corridors and carnivores.
Cores
True to its extreme environmental roots, rewilding is based in preservationist ideals, relying on the protection of vast amounts of wilderness from multiple use and the involvement of man in any way.
Corridors
Once forests and wildernesses have been protected, corridors with sufficient habitats to allow the travel of enough of an animal species from one core to another core area is required for genetic diversity.
Carnivores
Animals that have a disproportionate impact on an ecosystem compared to their numerical abundance are, according to some, “keystone” species. In North America, those species are usually large predators.
The three pillars work hand in hand to create a circular argument completely devoid of reality and the presence of society. The expansion of large carnivore ranges also works to fuel extension and protections for core and corridor ranges. The model allows for endless goalpost moving: if all three aren’t complete, then more protections are necessary. Once all three are in place, then the goalpost is moved again by declaring it unfinished until the exchange of genetics is legally documented and consistently established between core habitats.
We’re seeing this exact model and argument in action when it comes to the delisting of wolves and grizzly bears. A crux of delisting through Distinct Population Segments is the impact of one population upon the other, the threat of the loss of genetic diversity and the need to connect one population with another – each of which has scientific and legal thresholds to satisfy.
This is the ultimate goal of true believers in animal rights – to break the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation by ending predator management and removing hunters from the model. Eliminating tools such as sporting dogs, trapping, public-land access and lead ammunition from the model will damage it, but removing predator management will eventually destroy it.
This is what they’re attempting. This is what the Sportsmen’s Alliance has fought for four decades. This is why deer hunters in the South, East and Midwest need to step up to protect predator hunting in the West. Because as they win the West, the army of activists will move across the country demanding the same legal protections and scientific documentation of wolves, mountain lions, bears and coyotes that they’re pushing in Washington, California, Colorado and Arizona now.
Real-World Examples
The invasive tentacles of the “ecological” approach to game management seem innocuous to many, but only demonstrate how mindful and active we must be in every facet of management and protecting the NAMWC.
STEP ONE
Get anti-hunters on commission
The fight for political relevance begins here. Control the commission and you control the state game agencies, seasons and methods. By lowering standards for commissions, it’s easier to get anti-hunters and environmentalists on state boards.
Where we’ve seen it: Michigan, New Hampshire, Vermont and Washington state.
STEP TWO
Sow discord, vote against hunting
Once appointed to the commission, question the science of biologists under the guise of safety and being conservative with the resource.
Where we’ve seen it: In Washington, anti-hunting commissioners muddled biologists’ science while proposing improbable scenarios. A California commissioner questioned the relevance of the model today.
STEP THREE
Adjust tag availability
As prey populations plummet, biologists and commissions have no recourse except to reduce tags.
Where we’ve seen it: An elk study in southeast Washington proved extreme predation of calves, primarily by mountain lions. Anti-hunting commissioners questioned increased predator management in favor of reducing elk tags.
The Seven Pillars of The North American Model
- Wildlife is a public resource. In the Unites States, wildlife is considered a public resource, independent of the land or water where wildlife may live. Government at various levels have a role in managing that resource on behalf of all citizens and to ensure the long-term sustainability of wildlife populations.
- Markets for game are eliminated Before wildlife protection laws were enacted, commercial operations decimated populations of many species. Making it illegal to buy and sell meat and parts of game and nongame species removed a huge threat to the survival of those species. A market in furbearers continues as a highly regulated activity, often to manage invasive wildlife.
- Allocation of wildlife by law. Wildlife is a public resource managed by government. As a result, access to wildlife for hunting is through legal mechanisms such as set hunting seasons, bag limits, license requirements, etc.
- Wildlife can only be killed for a legitimate purpose. Wildlife is a shared resource that must not be wasted. The law prohibits killing wildlife for frivolous reasons.
- Wildlife species are considered an international resource. Some species, such as migratory birds, cross national boundaries. Treaties such as the Migratory Bird Treaty and CITES recognize a shared responsibility to manage these species across national boundaries.
- Science is the proper tool for discharge of wildlife policy. In order to manage wildlife as a shared resource fairly, objectively, and knowledgeably, decisions must be based on sound science such as annual waterfowl population surveys and the work of professional wildlife biologists.
- The democracy of hunting. In keeping with democratic principles, government allocates access to wildlife without regard for wealth, prestige, or land ownership.