Hunting dates to the beginning of time and is the main tool for biologists to successfully manage wildlife populations for their overall benefit. Still, there are those who actively look to stop hunting and frustrate the proven principles outlined by the North American Wildlife Conservation Model.
The Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation answered a recent request from the Congressional Western Caucus, a group of lawmakers from the House of Representatives, to go to Washington DC and shed light on past, present and future anti-hunting and anti-wildlife management efforts.
Below are the comments delivered by RMEF Director of Government Affairs Ryan Bronson to the group about animal rights and anti-hunting activists seeking to take over state wildlife commissions, move management away from successful methods and use the ballot box to push their extreme agendas.
On my first day at RMEF four years ago, I was briefed about how Oregon activists are seeking to ban all animal harvest, whether by hunters, trappers, livestock producers or even pest control. Their current initiative that is collecting signatures for the 2026 ballot is IP28. This is the most radical proposal, and we hope that it is even too extreme for Portland, but we will see. They have another year to collect signatures.
It has become clear to me that the radical animal rights movement is working on every level of government available to them. In Washington state over the 12 years of the previous governor, we have witnessed the appointment of politically motivated commissioners to the state wildlife commission that have been undercutting scientific wildlife management by ignoring recommendations from their biologists and taking away hunting opportunities from the people paying most of the bills for the agency’s wildlife work. We have hope that Governor Bob Ferguson will begin restoring sanity to the regulatory body that oversees wildlife management in the state.
Colorado is probably the best case study in the all-out assault these groups are making. For many years, activists have petitioned the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission to reduce or ban the harvest of mountain lions. The commission has repeatedly considered their data on lions and rejected the petitions. In 2022, they introduced legislation to do the same thing, and for the first time the hunting organizations organized opposition and defeated the measure. Undeterred, they filed a ballot measure, Proposition 127, following on the heels of Prop 114 that mandated the forced introduction of wolves into the state. While the animal rights groups organized by DC based Animal Wellness Action outspent the sportsmen community, our groups were able to raise several million dollars and defeated the measure 55-45 percent.
These are the multi-front battles we have been fighting, at the commission, legislative and ballot measure levels, not to mention the federal efforts that others have detailed today.
And while we have staved off catastrophe in Colorado, every year Governor Jared Polis makes new appointments to the commission, and seat by seat the body gets more hostile to our interests. An animal rights attorney now holds a “recreation” seat on the commission, and we had to raise a mighty stink to keep a wolf advocate from being confirmed to a “sportsman” seat last year.
Just this week a new ballot measure has been filed, Initiative petition # 52, that would create a parallel anti-hunting commission and called the Colorado Wildlife and Biodiversity Act, signaling that we need to keep gearing up for ballot fights for the foreseeable future.
RMEF would rather be raising money for habitat, but if these extremists keep attacking our system of wildlife management and our ways of life, we are happy to fight that fight as well.
(Photo credit: Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation)