Ballot Box Becomes Battleground in War Over Hunting Rights

The ballot box has become a battleground for animal-rights groups seeking curbs on the killing of wildlife and hunting groups concerned that such limits will wreak havoc with game management and eventually lead to bans on hunting itself.

In Alaska, the two sides are dueling this fall over companion ballot measures. A constitutional amendment proposed by a pro-hunting Legislature would ban initiatives dealing with wildlife, while a referendum put on the ballot by petition would reverse lawmakers’ decision to relax a ban on land-and-shoot wolf hunting imposed by voters in 1996.

In Oregon and Washington, nearly identical initiatives would ban body-gripping animal traps for most uses, along with two specific poisons. The passage of a similar measure in Arizona six years ago helped prompt lawmakers there to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot this year requiring a two-thirds majority to pass game-related initiatives.

In North Dakota and Virginia, voters will decide whether to write the right to hunt and fish directly into state constitutions. And in Montana, an initiative seeks to curb the growth of game farms where hunters can stalk animals in fenced enclosures.

Nearly all these campaigns pit animal-rights groups bent on ending what they call cruel abuses of wildlife against pro-hunting groups aimed at preserving the right to hunt and trap.

For several years, animal-rights groups had the upper hand, successfully banning the leg-hold trap in Arizona, Massachusetts, California and Colorado, along with land-and-shoot hunting in Alaska.

Campaigns used potent images of animals struggling in traps or running from low-flying aircraft, and appealed to voters’ affinity for furry creatures in the wild.

“The whole premise of the initiative is that these traps and poisons are cruel and they’re indiscriminate,” said Linda Wathne, who is coordinating the anti-trapping campaign in Washington state. “People’s attitudes are changing toward animals. Trapping is just not something that most people are willing to accept any longer.”

Hunting interests fought back. Alarmed at what they derisively call “ballot-box biology,” pro-hunting campaigns defeated 1998 attempts to ban wolf-snaring in Alaska and dove hunting in Ohio.

“We believe that wildlife management is best left in the hands of professional wildlife managers and scientists and shouldn’t be subject to the political process such as ballot initiatives,” said Rudy Rosen, executive director of Safari Club International, a hunting advocacy and conservation group.

But defeating ballot measures is expensive, and hunting interests are trying preemptive strikes designed to seal off animal-rights groups’ access to the initiative process. The 1998 election also saw Utah voters pass a constitutional amendment requiring a two-thirds majority to pass an initiative dealing with wildlife, while Minnesotans passed a constitutional amendment protecting hunting and fishing rights.

“We simply can’t afford to ante up $200,000 to $300,000 every two years to defeat a wildlife initiative sponsored by what I call the animal-rights fanatics,” said Al Jones of the Coalition for the Alaskan Way of Life, an unlikely alliance of trappers, big-game hunters and Alaska Native groups working to pass the amendment banning wildlife initiatives altogether.

Each side accuses the other of subverting the democratic process. Hunting groups say animal-rights activists are bypassing duly appointed governing bodies such as the Alaska Board of Game. Such boards, advised by professional game managers, should make decisions about how wildlife should be managed and killed, hunters argue.

They contend that initiatives play to the uninformed sympathies of the masses and foist unworkable and even dangerous policies on game managers. In Alaska, they argue, the ban on land-and-shoot wolf hunting has allowed the predators to breed and multiply, resulting in a decline in moose and caribou for human hunters.

In Washington, opponents of the trapping ban predict a boom in beavers and beaver dam-related damage to logging and agricultural businesses.

They also argue that the financial clout of national organizations such as the Defenders of Wildlife and the Humane Society of the United States allows lavish campaigns in small states where advertising is cheap and locals cannot afford to defend themselves.

“We feel kind of outnumbered,” said Carol Torsen of the Abundant Wildlife Coalition, a mostly Alaska Native group that has raised about $10,000 to fight the bid to restore the ban on land-and-shoot hunting. “We just hope that the public will understand the issue from the perspective of people who live off the land and who depend so desperately on having moose year after year.”

The group pushing the referendum, Alaskans for Wildlife, has raised more than $195,000.

In Washington, the pro-trapping Citizens for Responsible Wildlife Management has raised at least $156,087, while Protect Our Pets and Wildlife, the group pushing the ban, has raised $629,625.

For animal-rights groups, shutting off their access to the initiative process amounts to banning average citizens from decisions on how wildlife is treated. Game boards and commissions, they argue, tend to be dominated by the small percentage of people who actually hunt.

“These extreme hunting groups fear the common-sense judgments of voters, and they are trying to undermine our history of governing by majority rule and create a new standard so they can continue their hobbies or profit-making ventures,” said Wayne Pascelle, vice president of the 7-million-member Humane Society of the United States.

Pascelle also rejects the notion that his group’s deep pockets are oppressing the people of Washington or any other state, noting that the organization has thousands of members in those states.

“Thus far we’ve probably given in the range of $250,000 in Washington, Oregon and Arizona,” Pascelle said.

Instead, he argues that animal-rights groups are routinely outspent in such campaigns and points to the Ballot Issues Coalition, an organization made up of pro-hunting interests such as the Archery Manufacturers and Merchants Assn., the National Rifle Assn., the National Trapping Assn. and the Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturers Institute.

Stephen Boynton, the coalition’s chairman, said his group was founded in 1998 when hunting interests realized they were being outspent and out-campaigned in state ballot measure races. The coalition spent about $500,000 on ballot issues in 1998 and plans to spend about the same this year on campaigns in Alaska, Arizona, North Dakota, Oregon, Virginia and Washington.

He wouldn’t disclose where the money was going, although campaign disclosure records show the coalition has already given $150,000 to push the super-majority amendment in Arizona, $75,000 for the ban on wildlife initiatives in Alaska, and at least $30,000 to fight the Washington trapping ban.

“They have emotional issues,” said Boynton. “The animal-rights people would like to think there’s an old-folks home for beaver. Animals in the wild suffer more trauma in the wild than in human terms you could imagine.”

Humane Society of the United States: https://www.hsus.org/programs/government/2000_ballot042700.html

Citizens for Responsible Wildlife Management: https://www.responsiblewildlifemanagement.org/