Select Page

2025 Year in Review: Carrying the Light Forward

Dec 8, 2025 | Narrative, Reforming State Wildlife Management

A bull moose with velvety growing antlers stands in front of a forest meadow with purple blurred wildflowers and dark trees behind him. Text on the image reads, "The future of wildlife depends on the actions we take today." Explore Wildlife for All’s 2025 year in review, highlighting our nationwide impact on wildlife governance, landmark policy wins like New Mexico’s SB5, grassroots organizing successes, and the growing movement of advocates protecting ecosystems, science, and democratic decision-making.

A bull moose with velvety growing antlers stands in front of a forest meadow with purple blurred wildflowers and dark trees behind him. Text on the image reads, "The future of wildlife depends on the actions we take today." Explore Wildlife for All’s 2025 year in review, highlighting our nationwide impact on wildlife governance, landmark policy wins like New Mexico’s SB5, grassroots organizing successes, and the growing movement of advocates protecting ecosystems, science, and democratic decision-making.

2025 Year in Review: Carrying the Light Forward

“Do not go gentle into that good night…
 Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”
 — Dylan Thomas

“Democracy dies in darkness.”
 — Judge Damon J. Keith

Every year brings its measure of darkness, but 2025 felt heavy in ways that tested us all. State and federal agencies sidelined science. Commissions made decisions behind closed doors. Wolves were trapped and shot across the Northern Rockies. Killing contests targeted bobcats, foxes, and countless unprotected species. 

But in the midst of all that, something else was happening:

Our movement grew louder.
Clearer.
More courageous.

2025 tested the strength of our movement — but it also revealed something extraordinary. In every corner of the country, people refused to look away, refused to accept cruelty as normal, and refused to surrender their voice in systems designed to silence them.

This year, you refused to go gentle into the night.

A family group of six prairies nestle against one another in short green grass above the light tan dirt of their burrow. Text on the image reads, "Every species matters. Every action matters." Explore Wildlife for All’s 2025 year in review, highlighting our nationwide impact on wildlife governance, landmark policy wins like New Mexico’s SB5, grassroots organizing successes, and the growing movement of advocates protecting ecosystems, science, and democratic decision-making.

A Movement Growing Bolder

Despite the attempts to lock the public out, people showed up in 2025. You submitted thousands of comments, spoke at commission meetings, organized your communities, and pushed back against the quiet erosion of democracy in wildlife governance. And because of that, 2025 became one of the most transformative years in Wildlife for All’s history.

Our work together this year wasn’t about isolated wins — it was about shifting the system itself.

A Historic Breakthrough: New Mexico’s SB5

One of the most hopeful moments of 2025 came when SB5 passed in New Mexico, establishing one of the most transformative wildlife-governance reforms in modern U.S. history.

This bill, shaped through years of organizing and advocacy, reforms the state’s commission structure, brings scientific integrity back into decision-making, and ensures broader public representation.

It modernizing the agency’s mission to protect all wildlife, transforms the name of the agency and commission from Game to Wildlife, establishes a nominating committee to ensure qualified, representative leadership on the commission, and with a tandem bill, increased funding for non-game species, from Mexican gray wolves to river otters, and black-footed ferrets to piñon jays.

This sets a national model for governance reform and Wildlife for All is now deeply involved in implementation — ensuring this model becomes reality, not rhetoric.

Our team worked side-by-side with advocates from the start:

  • advising on strategy,
  • supporting hearings,
  • mobilizing public engagement, and
  • providing scientific guidance throughout.

This was a win for wildlife, for ecosystems, for democracy — and for every community that believes wildlife management should serve the whole public.

SB5 wasn’t just a policy victory. It was proof that systems can change when people demand it.

Defending Democracy

This year also made clear: the fight for wildlife is a fight for democracy.

In Colorado, we stood with wildlife commissioners who endured harassment for standing up to trophy hunting interests. And in Washington, we countered a politically motivated public records campaign aimed at intimidating advocates and warping public perception.

One of the most alarming stories we helped uncover was the secret militarization of more than 100,000 acres of public land along the southern border under NSPM-4 — without Tribal or public consent. This investigation revealed the erosion of democratic rights and threats to endangered species like jaguars and Mexican gray wolves, as well as to every species that migrates across this incredibly biodiverse region.

These moments were vital reminders of why our work—and our organization—exists.

One of the strongest tools we built in 2025 was our Courage Campaign — our movement-wide effort to expose decision-making, hold governors and legislators accountable, and shine a light on who is shaping wildlife policy behind closed doors.

Nearly 1,000 people contacted their leaders through this campaign demanding answers about wildlife governance — making it clear that secrecy and political capture will not go unchallenged. Every letter sent chipped away at the culture of impunity surrounding agency decisions and showed elected officials that people are watching.

The Courage Campaign isn’t just a petition. It is democracy in action — a direct counterforce to authoritarian tactics aimed at sidelining public participation.

Building Power in States Across the Country

While SB5 was a landmark moment, it was far from the only front where our movement advanced. This year we:

  • Supported State Wildlife Action Plan reform nationwide — with Michelle now on the implementation team in New Mexico, and advocates across many states stepping into these critical processes for the first time.
  • Fought harmful policies and advanced reforms in more than a dozen states, including:
    • Arizona — supporting the petition to end hounding, calling out opaque decision-making, and strengthening a growing base of reform advocates.
    • Nevada — helping lead opposition to wildlife killing contests and working to stop dangerous trapping regulations to protect mountain lions and other unprotected wildlife.
    • Florida — helping block efforts to restart the bear hunt and supporting local coalitions.
    • Wyoming — working to get grizzly bears recognized as Species of Greatest Conservation Need and pushing back against “predator zone” cruelty.
    • Maine — supporting wildlife-killing-contest bans and strengthening statewide networks.
    • New Jersey — backing a forthcoming reform bill and building early support.
    • Michigan — helping stop goose gassing and securing coyote-season reforms.
    • And many more, from California to Washington, Indiana to Colorado, Utah to Wisconsin.

Every state looked different, but the pattern was the same: We’re bringing science back, more diverse voices to the table, and accountability to wildlife agencies hiding behind outdated practices.

A red-tailed hawk flies against a bright blue sky. Text on the image reads, "Real change for wildlife starts with peeople who care." Explore Wildlife for All’s 2025 year in review, highlighting our nationwide impact on wildlife governance, landmark policy wins like New Mexico’s SB5, grassroots organizing successes, and the growing movement of advocates protecting ecosystems, science, and democratic decision-making.

Changing the Story, Together

This was also the year our shared voice became impossible to ignore.

Our social media community grew from 4,300 to more than 34,700 people — a 706% increase.

Hundreds supported our UC Davis petition calling the university out for misleading research about wolves and joined us in opposing the mass killing of barred owls. Together, we drove more than 6,000 comments supporting the Roadless Rule and thousands more in support of the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act, NEPA and in defense of public lands.

And through it all, our blog became a hub for truth-telling — more than 70 new posts since January alone — documenting commission abuses, offering scientific context, exposing harmful practices, and lifting up the people fighting for change.

Through narrative guides, myth-busting content, and media interventions, we challenged misinformation about carnivores, exposed weaponized “science,” and re-centered wildlife as essential parts of ecological systems — not expendable targets for recreation or profit.

We also completed the most comprehensive internal alignment process in WFA’s history — creating our 30-year roadmap, visual Theory of Change diagram, committees that have already produced whitepapers aligning our movement, and a 4-minute video that showcases the vital importance of our mission. Our message is spreading.

Our community is growing. And the narrative is shifting — away from wildlife as “resources,” toward wildlife as our kin, our co-inhabitants, our responsibility to protect.

Looking Ahead: A Vision for 2055

As 2025 draws to a close, we’re holding both grief and gratitude. We’re honoring what and who we lost this year, celebrating what we built together, and preparing for the long road ahead.

And soon — in our Year in Review email — we’ll share something we’ve been working toward for years: our 30-year vision for wildlife governance in 2055. It’s bold, hopeful and it lays out exactly how we can transform state wildlife management into a system rooted in science, democracy, and compassion — one capable of supporting thriving ecosystems and communities for generations.

This vision is only possible because of you. When commissioners were attacked, you stood with them. When agencies tried to hide the truth, you exposed it. When wildlife needed defenders, you showed up. 

A monarch butterfly flies through the air in a field of blurred yellow flowers. Text on the image reads, "From science to action. Protect the species you love for generations to come." Explore Wildlife for All’s 2025 year in review, highlighting our nationwide impact on wildlife governance, landmark policy wins like New Mexico’s SB5, grassroots organizing successes, and the growing movement of advocates protecting ecosystems, science, and democratic decision-making.

Help Us Train the Next Wave of Wildlife Leaders

If we want to rage against the dying of democracy, we need more people ready to organize, lead, and hold agencies accountable.

That’s why we just launched Building Power for Wildlife Justice, our eight-week grassroots organizing program beginning this January — designed to train organizers who will fight for wildlife where they live.

We need your support to create the change we all want to see for wildlife. Your donation today helps us:

  • offer training to frontline communities to build grassroots organizing in their states,
  • provide learning resources and mentorship,
  • equip emerging leaders with the tools they need, and
  • build a stronger, more connected network of advocates nationwide.

If you believe in this movement — in science, in justice, in a future where wolves and cougars can live free and wild — please support our training program today.

👉 Make a year-end gift to grow the next generation of wildlife leaders.

Thank you for carrying the light with us this year. In 2026, it’s only going to get brighter. Because we’re just getting started.

DEFEND DEMOCRACY. PROTECT WILDLIFE. DEMAND LEADERSHIP.