Hunting Is Under the Gun : Groups Say That Animal Rights Advocates Eventually Might Eliminate the Sport Altogether
It sputtered at first, then got a boost two years ago in California, and now the animal-rights movement, in its effort to eliminate the killing of animals for sport, seems to have the hunting community up against the wall.
Sportsmen’s organizations and wildlife agencies throughout the country are so alarmed at the speed and efficiency with which the movement is traveling that they are calling for an all-out effort among hunters to band together “before it’s too late.”
“If you look at what’s going on nationally, it doesn’t have to be a heavily populated Eastern state (to be pressured by animal-rights groups) anymore,” said Al Wolter, director of communications for the Wildlife Legislative Fund of America, a group created in 1977 to protect the rights of sportsmen. “They’re having big problems in Montana right now.”
And in Colorado and Florida and New Mexico and Arizona . . . nearly everywhere animals are hunted.
“They’re doing what they’re good at--knocking down the wall, one brick at a time,” said Jim Glass, president of the WLFA.
“We’ve got a tremendous amount of clout out there in numbers,” Wolter said. “But if they’re not organized, it’s not helping anybody. A lot of times they’re just enjoying the fruits of others’ labors. . . . That happened on Proposition 117.”
In California, the animal-rights movement won a significant victory when Prop. 117 passed in 1990, outlawing the hunting of mountain lions.
“A stronger turnout likely would have defeated the referendum and ended the extremists’ ill-founded assault on scientific wildlife management,” said Daniel Poole, of the Boone and Crockett Conservation Committee.
The Fund for Animals, one of the most visible animal-rights groups in the country, followed that victory with a successful attack on bowhunting of bears, saying that the method was cruel and inefficient. The courts were not satisfied with the California Department of Fish and Game’s documents supporting the hunt and canceled it.
Since then the DFG, spending more time, effort and money than it would like to spend--the bear challenge cost $400,000--believes it is able to adequately prepare documents necessary to satisfy the courts. The agency was successful in getting the archery bear season reinstated, and there were no challenges for the 1991 deer or bear seasons.
Still, the Fund for Animals, in a letter to the DFG before the season, hinted that it would return, insisting that “the DFG’s cozy relationship with the consumptive user groups is inappropriate.”
Further challenges are coming in California, and others are popping up elsewhere in the country.
The Fund for Animals was the chief player in halting a four-day elk hunt last fall in Arizona--after it had begun, a first. It has successfully fought grizzly bear hunts in Montana, where half the adult men and one in five women hunt, and where deer, elk and antelope hunters five years ago spent $126 million. Black-bear hunts in Florida and the use of bait and hounds during bear hunts in Colorado also have been halted.
Wayne Pacelle, 26, national director of the Fund for Animals, which has divisions in 18 states and 200,000 members nationwide, says his organization last year spent nearly $2 million and that it will at least match that this year.
The Humane Society of the United States, considered at least as effective as the Fund for Animals, is working toward attaining total closure to hunting on the 90-million-acre national refuge system.
Smaller, grass-roots groups are springing up, too. Newsweek magazine reported that there are 7,000 animal-rights groups, and although few concentrate on hunting, there are enough to keep the hunting community reeling.
The annual budget of all animal-rights organizations has been estimated at up to $300 million.
The WLFA annually examines or reviews about 10,000 pieces of legislation “that initially may or may not affect sportsmen,” Wolter said.
“This is on the state level, and we do the same thing with our national affairs office in Washington, D.C.--bird-dog the Congress and legislators there to keep an eye out for things that may adversely affect sportsmen or scientific wildlife management.”
Wildlife managers in every state say they are affected by the movement against hunting.
“It requires a tremendous commitment of time,” the Sacramento-based Connelley said. “A lot of the creative energies the department has now have to be relegated toward those activities. It’s just been such a big, massive project for our whole division.”
Janet George, a wildlife biologist with the Colorado Division of Wildlife, agreed.
“It has affected us because there are a lot of people in that movement,” she said. “We’re mandated to manage wildlife for all people, so we’ve got to listen to everybody. Animal-rights groups are part of the public.”
That the nation’s 70 million hunters have been paying for 90% of wildlife management in most states apparently doesn’t carry much weight.
New Mexico recently lost its spring bear season, largely because of pressure put on the state’s fish and game department. Colorado’s spring season is being scaled back, and the Fund for Animals is planning to challenge its existence.
In Montana, the Fund for Animals sued twice to stop grizzly bear hunting, finally persuading a federal judge in Washington to cancel last fall’s hunt, which targeted grizzlies that wandered out of Yellowstone National Park. The bears are listed as threatened and therefore are protected by the federal Endangered Species Act. The judge ruled that hunting was not the only tool available to handle the surplus bears.
In Arizona, animal rights activists recently succeeded in gathering enough signatures to put on the ballot a measure aimed at banning trapping on public lands, or 85% of the state.
However, passage of the initiative, the commission says, would declare as state policy that “it is the . . . desire of the people of Arizona to make our public lands safe and humane for all creatures” and “to manage our wildlife and protect our property by humane and non-lethal methods .”
In a position statement, the commission said: “We believe enforcement of this policy would prohibit all recreational fishing, hunting and trapping currently enjoyed in Arizona.”
Pat O’Brien, an administrative director with the Arizona Department of Game and Fish, said that if the initiative were approved by voters, “it would knock the bottom out of the ability to manage wildlife as we know it today.”
Said Wolter: “It’s never happened before where they can lose anything on one ballot issue. The only way to stop it is to not win this thing by a 49-51, it’s to just smash them, to prevent other people from thinking they can do this in other states.”
Whether or not Arizonans lose their opportunity to shoot animals and catch fish remains to be seen, but one thing seems clear: Sportsmen can no longer take what they do for granted.
Hunters are becoming more of a minority with each passing season. Land is being gobbled up by developers and, as a result, younger generations are losing touch with the animal kingdom as it was known to their forebears.
“The climate has definitely changed,” said Cleveland Amory, who founded the Fund for Animals in 1967. “We’re not quite as far along as we are with furs, but we’re certainly on the way.”
A recent study by the American Shooting Sports Foundation shows that the typical American hunter is 42 1/2, compared to the average age of 37 1/2 in 1986. The survey also indicated an overall reduction in hunting frequency, with 27% of those surveyed saying they were hunting less, 15% hunting more and 58% about the same.
License sales in almost every state have plummeted, prompting agencies to increase prices to make up for lost revenue. The availability of land on which to hunt is nowhere near what it was years ago. Animal populations, as a result, are being pressed on all fronts.
Without hunting, a new system of wildlife management will have to be developed, and thus far no practical alternatives have been offered, experts say. Pacelle pointed out that ducks, doves and several other animals certainly do not need to be killed, adding that he would like “at least, to see more thought given to non-hunt alternatives to wildlife management.”
But those in the hunting community wonder if the general public will be willing to foot the bill for land acquisitions, habitat restoration and the various projects associated with managing wildlife; or if society is even aware of the contribution sportsmen have made, and still make every year.
“We’ve maintained all along that it’s not the ‘antis’ that are going to decide the issue, it’s the 85% of the public that are non-hunters who will ultimately decide our fate,” Wolter said. “So it’s kind of a race between us, the sportsmen, and the anti-hunters to get at this 85%.”
