STATE
A Colorado ballot measure to ban mountain lion and bobcat hunting will be on the ballot. RMEF has made large financial donations to the campaign committee and is encouraging members and supporters to also donate directly to the effort. The anti-hunting organizations are planning to spend $3 million. You can learn more by visiting the RMEF advocacy page dedicated to this issue.
Gun and ammo tax increase on the Colorado ballot too. The Colorado legislature approved a bill this past session that will ask the voters to increase taxes on guns and ammunition by 6.5% on their retail price and require retailers to submit the tax. Firearms and ammunition manufacturers are already taxed federally at 11%, but unlike the Colorado scheme, the Pittman-Robertson tax generates revenue that benefits hunters and recreational shooters. This tax scheme on legal firearms owners will fund an array of unrelated crime victims, mental health, and school programs- and is clearly meant to drive up the price of legal gun ownership.
Washington wolf downlisting effort scuttled by commission. The Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission went against the recommendations of wildlife managers with the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) and voted 5-4 against reclassifying wolves from state-endangered to ‘protected-sensitive,’ in the eastern third of the state. Retaining the state-endangered status, statewide, limits WDFW’s tools for wolf management. Commissioners Lorna Smith, Melanie Roland, Woody Myers, Tim Ragen and Barbara Baker voted (go to 2:45:45) to keep wolves listed as is while Commissioners Jim Anderson, John Lehmkuhl, Molly Linville and Steve Parker voted to downlist. RMEF submitted official comments and even offered testimony to the commission.
Oregon anti-hunting, trapping, livestock and pest control ballot measure fails to qualify for ’24 ballot. For the second election cycle in a row a groups of radical animals rights activists have failed to qualify a ballot measure in Oregon that would criminalize the killing of animals for any reason except self-defense, make artificial insemination of pets or livestock a sex crime, and ban most pest control, rodeos and common veterinary practices. It is crazy and extreme, but it continues to be a threat in Oregon. The activists are now aiming for the 2026 election cycle, and are already collecting signatures. It has wildlife organizations wondering is a right to hunt, fish and farm amendment is needed in Oregon.
FEDERAL
Fix our Forests H.R. 8790 advancing in the House. RMEF has been beating the drum for active forest management for a long time. Foresters know what needs to be done to improve the health of National Forests and make them more productive for wildlife, but litigation, burdensome regulatory processes and bureaucracy keep getting in the way. Thinning projects take an average of 5 years to permit, and prescribed fire takes 7 years. RMEF supports specific remedies to these problems including: reversing the 9th Circuit Court’s ‘Cottonwood Ruling’, simplifying and expediting environmental reviews for forest projects by expanding ‘Categorical Exclusions’, expand cooperation with local and tribal governments through the ‘Good Neighbor Authority’. All these remedies are included in bipartisan legislation that passed the House Natural Resources Committee in July.
Senate Promoting Effective Forest Management Act S. 2867. Negotiations continue in the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on a set of reforms to forest management policy, that while more limited than the House Fix our Forests Act, move in the direction RMEF is advocating. RMEF had hoped this legislation would be marked up in July when the committee took up a similar energy and infrastructure permitting bill, but best-case scenario looks like the bill may move in September. Passing this puts it in play for the end of year negotiations where RMEF hopes to get critical forest policy reforms passed and signed into law.
House and Senate budget bills. The process for passing annual Congressional appropriations for federal agencies have been messy for many years, but with divided government and razor thin majorities the process has been even more difficult to follow. RMEF priorities including CWD funding and LWCF project budgets remain stable in both bodies, but explicit funding for migratory corridors was not included.
Farm Bill. There is really nothing new to report. The House bill unveiled at the beginning of the summer has most of RMEF’s forestry and access priorities. The Senate has provided only Republican (minority) and Democrat (majority) frameworks. Most speculation indicates a Farm Bill may advance in the lame-duck session following the election, but before a new Congress and administration is sworn in.
Wolf suit. After making a mistake in their initial filing to re-list grey wolves on the endangered list nation-wide, environmental groups re-filed- so RMEF re-filed to intervene. The litigants are attacking the validity of state population monitoring by citing non-peer-reviewed papers that were funded by wolf-proponents. RMEF has always maintained that state wildlife agencies should sustainably manage wolves just as they manage elk, mountain lions, deer, black bears and other wildlife in line with the North American Wildlife Conservation Model.
Grizzly de-listing. Grizzly bears are currently listed as Threatened on the Endangered Species List. In January of 2022 Wyoming petitioned to remove them from the list in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, Montana petitioned to de-list in the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem and Idaho petitioned to delist the entire lower 48states. In February of 2023 the USFWS responded finding the Wyoming and Montana petitions may be warranted but rejected Idaho’s lower-48 petition. In July of 2023 the USFWS began a 12-month finding process that was due July 31, 2024 to respond to the Greater Yellowstone petition filed by Wyoming. Montana filed an intent to sue for failing to respond to the Northern Continental Divide petition. The USFWS filed paperwork in court July 26th declaring that the issues relating to the three petitions were interrelated and therefore they are delaying the decisions until the end of January 2025.
ELECTIONS
As a 501c3 non-profit organization RMEF is prohibited from engaging in partisan elections and is not allowed to endorse candidates. We are allowed to engage in ballot measures that directly affect our mission, which is why we have opposed several ballot measures in recent years that imposed ballot-box-biology or undermined our members’ Second Amendment rights. While RMEF cannot tell you who to vote for, we strongly encourage our members to be registered and to vote.
The RMEF ISSUES AND ADVOCACY PAGE on the RMEF.org website has several useful tools. The ELECTIONS tab can help you get registered to vote, find your polling place, and apply for an absentee ballot. The DIRECTORY tab can help you find your elected representatives, and makes it easy to send them messages. The BILLS and VOTES tabs track legislations and specific votes that are of interest to RMEF. Finally, when issues come up that requires the RMEF grassroots to mobilize we will issue a Call-to-Action that are posted on the ADVOCACY HOME PAGE, providing background information and suggested messaging that members can edit in their own words and send to targeted officials.