News & Commentary

By Hannah Grover. Originally published in The New Mexico Political Report.

A newly launched initiative seeks to reform wildlife management not only in New Mexico, but across the nation.

Wildlife for All is a campaign from the Southwest Environmental Center, which is based in Las Cruces. The advocates behind the effort say the current system of managing wildlife places too much emphasis on hunting and fishing and not enough emphasis on conserving biodiversity.

While Wildlife for All emphasizes that it is not anti-hunting, it maintains that wildlife is a public trust for everyone, including people who don’t hunt or fish, and that it should be managed as such.

The idea of wildlife management reform is not new. During this year’s legislative session, Sen. Jeff Steinborn, D-Las Cruces, introduced a bill that would have overhauled the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish. This bill ultimately died in committee with opponents describing it as too broad and sweeping and arguing that it could negatively impact hunting and the economy. Hunting and fishing generate millions of dollars in revenue annually to local communities.

And Kevin Bixby, the executive director for Wildlife for All and for Southwest Environmental Center, was a panelist during a state Legislature’s interim Water and Natural Resources Committee meeting discussing wildlife management reform in August.

“Wildlife agencies and commissions should also shift their focus to conservation and stewardship rather than the ‘management’ of a few select game species for maximum yield, integrating ethics and the best available science while considering the welfare of individual animals and ecosystem health,” said Jill Fritz, the senior director for wildlife protection at the Humane Society of the United States and a member of the Wildlife for All board of directors, in a statement.

Wildlife for All emphasizes science-based decision making and has an advisory committee that consists of several scientists, including a former wildlife conservationist for the New Mexico State Land Office and the former lead of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Mexican wolf recovery effort.

On its website, Wildlife for All outlines what it believes an ideal state wildlife management plan would look like. This includes abolishing the game commission or, if that does not happen, making the duty of the wildlife commission to act as “impartial juries in wildlife deliberations for the benefit of all beneficiaries, and not to advocate for any particular interest group or stakeholder.”

The majority of the game commissioners appointed are either hunters or anglers. The current chairwoman of New Mexico’s game commission, Sharon Salazar Hickey, is not a hunter.

The governor appoints each commissioner and can remove them without stating a reason.

Bixby said it is not unusual for governors to remove game commissioners from their post for political reasons. That gives governors a lot of control in how wildlife is managed, which Bixby said needs to change.

Additionally, Bixby said not all animals in New Mexico are managed by the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish, which leaves many species with little protection unless they are placed on the federal Endangered Species List.

Species that are not managed by the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish include invertebrates and many of the bat species. While many native species are not protected, the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish does manage populations of non-native species like rainbow trout, ibex, barbary sheep and oryx. These species were introduced into New Mexico for sportsmen. This has had negative impacts on native species. For example, the rainbow trout hybridizes with the native Rio Grande cutthroat trout. The hatcheries now raise and stock triploid rainbow trout, which are unable to reproduce. But prior to that shift, the hybridization destroyed populations of the native fish.

Increasing the number of species managed by the department would require additional funding, which already is a limiting factor for the department. Hunting and fishing licenses are a major source of funding for the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish and other wildlife agencies throughout the country. This funding provides vital revenue for conservation efforts, but some states are seeing a decline in hunting and fishing.

Bixby said the public attitude toward wildlife is shifting. People who don’t hunt and fish enjoy spending time outdoors doing activities like bird watching. He said wildlife is a public trust and doesn’t belong to any one group of people. Therefore, he said the funding for initiatives to protect wildlife should come from more than just one group of people.

Faced with funding challenges, wildlife agencies across the United States are looking for more sources of revenue. There are various proposals for how to fund the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish without relying heavily on the sale of hunting and fishing licenses.

One proposal that has received support from various groups is charging a tax on outdoor gear. But Bixby said he does not necessarily support that proposal.

Instead, Wildlife for All supports a model adopted in Missouri which dedicates an eighth of one percent of general sales tax to conservation.

Funding could also be available through the Recovering America’s Wildlife Act if it is passed. This federal legislation was introduced by U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich, a Democrat from New Mexico. It would provide funding for states to implement efforts to state wildlife action plans.

However, once again, this leaves out species that are not under the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish’s purview. Bixby said Wildlife for All would like to see the bill expanded to include those species.

One way that the changes Wildlife for All advocates for could come about is through legislation and Steinborn is not the only New Mexico politician who supports reforming wildlife management. State Sen. Brenda McKenna, D-Corrales, sits on the board of Wildlife for All. McKenna is a member of Nanbé Pueblo and, in a statement, she said her Indigenous roots taught her “to honor all life and the nature that supports them.”

“Everything is connected,” McKenna said. “We recently lost more species—their extinctions because of human activity. Wildlife for All honors all species. Wildlife for All will be a powerful advocate for the sentient beings that share the Earth with us..”

By: Henry Redman – October 19, 2021 6:45 am

Reprinted by permission from the Wisconsin Examiner.

Over the past year, one of Wisconsin’s most heated political fights has been over the direction of the state’s conservation policies and the rules that guide hunting in the state.

Lawsuits have been filed and insults have been traded. A Republican appointee to a state board has dug his heels in and refused to leave his seat even though his term has expired and replacement nominated. A package of bills nominally for expanding hunting access which allows for the hunting of sandhill cranes and the concealed carry of firearms has been introduced by Republican legislators. Ted Nugent held court in the Assembly chamber of the State Capitol last week.

The fight has expanded and morphed. It serves as a proxy battle between legislative Republicans constantly seeking to pull power away from Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ executive branch and the Department of Natural Resources; a culture war between urban and rural Wisconsinites and a clash between conservationists and hunters.

Which side people fall on often depends on how they feel about Evers, wolves or some combination of the two.

As the push and pull over hunting in Wisconsin continues, Republicans and their allies say they are fighting to protect a way of life that is essential to traditional Wisconsin values and the importance of maintaining a strong hunting and fishing culture in the state. But there are hundreds of thousands of hunters in Wisconsin and some feel that the values the Wisconsin hunter has traditionally stood for are being left behind in favor of scorched-earth politics, neglecting  the conservationism pioneered by such Wisconsin icons as Aldo Leopold and John Muir.

“I think we’ve always had an eye on conservation as a hunting culture,” Noah Wishau, co-chair of the Wisconsin chapter of Backcountry Hunters and Anglers, says. “You go back through Aldo Leopold and John Muir, conservation groups from the 1920s through to today, groups like Ducks Unlimited and the Wisconsin Waterfowl Association, those groups have been around and you can see their successes in what we have in our hunting opportunities today.”

Earlier this year, Hunter Nation, a pro-hunting lobbying group, filed and won a lawsuit seeking to force a wolf hunt to be held in February. State law says that whenever wolves aren’t listed as endangered by the federal government, there has to be a hunt here. Officials at the DNR had planned to hold a hunt in November, but Hunter Nation’s win meant there would be hunts both in February and November.

In May, Natural Resources Board Chair Frederick Prehn’s term was set to expire. An appointee of former Republican Gov. Scott Walker, Prehn has refused to leave his seat even though Evers has nominated his replacement. Prehn represents the deciding vote on the board which currently has a 4-2 Republican majority.

Prehn has coordinated with both Hunter Nation and the Republican leadership in the state Senate to hold onto power. One of their chief goals, Prehn’s emails show, is to influence the wolf hunt.

This summer, Prehn and his fellow Republicans ignored the advice of DNR biologists and, in a contentious meeting, voted to set the quota for the November wolf hunt at 300 — much higher than recommended. A few weeks ago, the DNR went against the decision of the board and set the quota at 130.

As all of this was going on, several lawsuits were filed against Prehn and the DNR trying to get the courts to untangle it all.

This month, Republican legislators unveiled their package of hunting bills, which they said was a direct response to, in their eyes, Evers and DNR Secretary Preston Cole ignoring hunters and farmers in Northern Wisconsin.

“Governor Evers and his DNR haven’t shown good leadership in any aspect for Wisconsin outdoorsmen and women,” Sen. Rob Stafsholt (R-New Richmond) said in a statement.  “Over and over again, the DNR has made it clear that they won’t listen to rural Wisconsin citizens’ concerns, so we’re taking a stand with this legislative package. We’re telling hunters, anglers, trappers, and gun owners that we’ve got their backs and we’re defending our rights for transparency, simplified regulations, and improved access to our state’s natural resources.”

Wishau says he’s more concerned that all the meddling will undermine the Natural Resources Board, which he believes has worked well in the past and resulted in conservation successes that hunters and environmental groups can agree on.

“I have trouble, as somebody who grew up being a conservative, with lawsuits being the way to start or stop things, it’s the purview of the Legislature,” Wishau says. “In Wisconsin, we have a good system. There’s a shield from the Legislature making laws and telling the DNR what to do, that’s the Natural Resources Board. I have concerns about the future of the Natural Resources Board. … Some of the stuff we’re doing today just because it’s popular or just because, on this one issue, it’s not working the way we want so we’re going to do something else. I have trouble getting rid of a system that works and has given us some outstanding success stories over the years just for temporary convenience.”

Animating every move in this fight is the wolf hunt, which Wishau says is the “third rail when it comes to hunting politics in Wisconsin.” Groups like Hunter Nation, its allies in state government and some residents of Northern Wisconsin — who don’t like living near a wolf pack — take a hard line approach against the wolves.

“You are now officially the #1 enemy of wolves. :‐),” Natural Resources Board member Greg Kazmierski wrote in an email to Prehn in June.

But Wishau sees the return of the wolf to Wisconsin as a success story and while he says the wolf population should be managed, that doesn’t mean it should be as aggressive as some groups want.

“It’s frustrating when you’re trying to look at it through a conservation lens,” he says. “The wolf is a conservation success story in Wisconsin; they came back. We have places in this state that can support a wolf population. Instead of looking at that as a good thing and figuring out a way to manage the population. You get, ‘We don’t like wolves, we don’t need wolves,’ and that’s a shame. We have wild places in this state that can support a wolf population, that’s cool. Wolves should be on the landscape but we should be able to manage them.”

But Wishau also doesn’t think this polarization over the wolves is a new thing — saying humans and wolves have been coming into conflict for ages and it’s hard to overcome that.

“I can’t think of a fairy tale or anything like that with the wolf being anything but the villain,” he says.

As a backdrop to all of this, hunting in Wisconsin is declining in popularity — giving activist groups such as Hunter Nation a bunker mentality and making them feel like the sport they love is dying. Republicans say the DNR’s rules and regulations are killing hunting in Wisconsin, making it too difficult for people to take up the sport.

Wishau points to the cost of the gear and an aging hunting population as a more likely cause. Jason Stein, research director at the Wisconsin Policy Forum and a hunter himself, says there is cause for concern about hunting declining in Wisconsin — partially because the fees from hunting licenses help pay for a number of other conservation programs.

“The baby boomers have been the big hunting group and they were bigger than previous generations of hunters and subsequent generations of hunters,” Stein says. “They’re starting to get to the age where they may end up hunting longer than other hunters have in the past, they’ve done other things longer, but people come to a point where they drop off. You might think we’re going to have fewer hunters, so what? Like we have fewer badminton players. But the problem is, unlike badminton, we have part of our state programming built on hunting and fishing. There is revenue for state conservation programs that comes from hunting and fishing in a way that bird watching or hiking doesn’t to the same degree. So that’s the legitimate issue here.”

Working to get more people involved in hunting and fishing in Wisconsin would be good, Stein says, but it’s not clear that the goal of broadening the appeal of those pursuits will be achieved through a package of culture war bills that, among other items, will allow people to carry weapons while driving an all-terrain vehicle.

“In the abstract, getting more people involved in these things is a worthwhile thing for lawmakers to get involved in,” he says. But, he asks,  “is this the package to do it?”

By Michelle Lute. From Earth Island Journal.

I pity the country
I pity the state
And the mind of a man
Who thrives on hate
– Willie Dunn

When Indigenous singer-songwriter Willie Dunn sang these lyrics in 1971, he was railing against a colonialist system of oppression. At its root, colonialism is an exploitation of land and its inhabitants. Dunn saw it as a manifestation of hatred, an observation that holds up in 2021 as it did in 1971. Today, colonialism still oppresses people, commodifies land and its wildness, and tramples the rights of anyone in its war path.

As our collective consciousness awakens to the tentacles of colonialism, we find it in every corner, in contests for land and for life. We find it in the area of the Great Lakes now known as Wisconsin, where Ojibwe (Anishinaabe) consider wolves (Ma’iingan) as sacred siblings whose fate is entwined with their own. One would be hard pressed to disentangle hatred for one’s brother from one’s self, and thus the war on wolves is inextricably tied to colonialism. The hatred my colleagues and I fight on a daily basis is one directed at wildlife, the “others” most often represented by glowing eyes in the deep dark woods. By targeting native wildlife like wolves, that hatred also hurts humans and the sacred relationships we have with life and land. So I want to tell you a story, about Wisconsin, about wolf and human families, and fighting hate with love and lawsuits.

The powers that be for Wisconsin’s wildlife serve on the state Natural Resources Board (NRB), a governing body of governor-appointed members. Recently, that power decided to ignore science, public input, and any semblance of a democratic process or legally required tribal consultation and wage war on wolves with hounds, snow mobiles, traps, and other lethal methods. Their goal is to eradicate up to 300 of Wisconsin’s remaining wolves, nearly half of the roughly 700 living, breathing souls lucky enough to have survived the February hunt during their breeding season. That brutal hunt decimated the wolves’ still recovering population.

In that hunt, Pat Clark, a resident of Bear Dam, Wisconsin, and his family lost the neighboring wolf family that grew up along with Clark’s children. Hunters pitting hounds against wolves chased and shot dead seven of the nine members of the Lewiston Bog Pack. No more sharing stories of hushed moments spying pack members following each others’ tracks in the snow. No more trail camera photos of pups exploring the bog. In their place, a photo of eight people holding seven dead wolves with smiling emojis obscuring the true identities of men who thrive on hate. More than just seven wild lives were lost in that act.

In defense of family, land, wildness, and the intrinsic values of wolves, my organization Project Coyote (an Earth Island project), along with coplaintiffs Animal Wellness Action, the Center for a Humane Economy, and Friends of the Wisconsin Wolf and Wildlife, sued Wisconsin over their war on wolves. As our complaint explains, Wisconsin’s state-sanctioned policies — both the kill quota of 300 wolves and Act 169, the law that compels the state to hold a wolf hunt every year — blatantly disregard not just wolves and their ecosystems but also science, democracy, and sovereign tribal rights.

Wisconsin’s War on Science

The current process of setting wolf policy in Wisconsin has ignored the best available science that articulates wolves’ contributions to healthy, functioning ecosystems and warns of the folly of lethal predator control. A vast wealth of scientific literature outlines how carnivores like wolves self-regulate based on prey availability and habitat and thus do not require lethal management. Studies from Wisconsin researchers led by Project Coyote Science Advisory Board Member Dr. Adrian Treves indicate that allowing legalized killing increases illegal poaching and thus humans have likely contributed to a 27 to 33 percent decline in the Wisconsin wolf population since federal protections were removed late last year. Additionally, howl surveys this summer are not revealing pups in many packs. After the February hunt during wolves’ breeding season, we should not be surprised. The dire population scenarios that we are already seeing will only get worse with another hunt this year.

Wolves, like other apex predators, beget biodiversity. Ecologists have measured astounding trophic cascades, where apex predators influence every level of the food web and increase species diversity from beavers to beetles and birds. Wolves mitigate the impacts of climate change on species such as bald eagles and ravens by provisioning scavengers with carrion year-round. Wolves even reduce deer-vehicle collisions and save Wisconsin residents about $10.9 million in damages each year. Because wolves reduce overabundant prey, they also reduce transmission of diseases such as chronic wasting disease, and economic and ecological damage to myriad landscapes. Killing wolves ignores and erases the many benefits wolves bring to complex socio-ecological systems.

Wisconsin’s War on Democracy

The NRB is arbitrarily choosing a kill quota wholly untethered from any science. It has failed to consider the many voices in support of wolves. Despite overwhelming public comment against killing wolves and against the most egregiously cruel killing methods — Wisconsin and Idaho are the only states that allow hunters to abuse dogs in pursuit of slaughtering wolves — the NRB is not interested in evidence-based decision-making that reflects real science and the values of the public.

The NRB gets a major assist in eroding any chance of just or fair process in state Act 169 that requires an annual wolf hunt regardless of science, public sentiment, or commonsense. Approving a hunt without public support or adequate scientific information is undemocratic and a violation of the public trust responsibilities the NRB has as policy-makers. It violates the trust constituents place in the law and those that govern wildlife policies and manage wildlife. It ignores numerous studies and public comment periods demonstrating that diverse Wisconsin residents, including farmers and hunters, value wildlife alive as well as carnivores’ contributions to ecosystem health and function.

Wisconsin’s War on Tribal Rights

Wisconsin wolf policy fails to respect true, proper tribal consultation with sovereign Native American Nations. True consultation would proceed in a fashion similar to two sovereign nations negotiating policies in which both governments have an interest. Instead, sovereign tribes are treated as another stakeholder (and if you are not a license buying hunter, you are not a stakeholder with equal footing in state wildlife policy) and simply informed of NRB decisions.

In the case of the February 2021 hunt held during the wolves’ breeding season, tribes were informed of the quota of 200 wolves (and given that some pregnant wolves would inevitably be among those 200, the death toll surely counted much higher). The Ojibwe tribes, according to federal treaty laws, claimed their right to 50 percent of the wolves within their ceded territories, which translated to 81 of the 200 wolves slated to die by the NRB. Given their sacred relationship, Anishinaabe would not kill their 81 Ma’iingan sisters and brothers.

Within approximately 60 hours, hunters killed 218 wolves, exceeding the non-tribal quota by 83 percent (99 wolves). This slaughter thus not only violates the sacred ecology of the land but also the sovereign rights of its people to be in relation to the land and its inhabitants in a genuine and ethical way.

Wisconsin’s war on wolves is a war on its people, particularly the disenfranchised voices that speak up for a moral, just life. But their voices will not be silenced. In response to the national war on wolves being waged in Wisconsin, Idaho, Montana, and other areas, tribes sent a letter to the Secretary of the Interior urging emergency listing protections for wolves to stop the ongoing slaughter and allow for proper tribal consultation. On September 28, a delegation that includes Tehassi Hill, chairman of the Oneida Nation, the largest tribe in Wisconsin, will present a document called “The Wolf: A Treaty of Cultural and Environmental Survival” — considered a new framework to approach wolf conservation — to Interior Secretary Deb Haaland.

As Indigenous artist, mother, and narrator of the new short film Family, about Indigenous relationships with wolves, Crystle Lightning clearly articulates in her recent opinion editorial in Native News Online, “This trophy killing of wolves is a manifestation of the continuing assault on Indigenous cultures.”

Only hatred pits family members (dogs on wolves) against each other. Only hatred attacks the whole family and their neighbors (Anishinaabe, Ma’iingan, the Clark family and the Lewiston Bog Pack). Only hatred runs roughshod through the world to kill for no good reason. Willie Dunn recognized the pathos of the White settler and the State that is the vehicle for his hatred. When I hear Dunn’s words today, they are the only solace I can find in a world overwhelmed with hatred. They remind me that only love that unites us counters hate that kills. Love and maybe the occasional lawsuit.

[Dr. Michelle Lute is the National Carnivore Conservation Manager of Project Coyote, a project of Earth Island Institute, whose mission is to promote coexistence between humans and wildlife through education, science, and advocacy. Visit ProjectCoyote.org and sign their petition calling for federal relisting of wolves under the ESA and the creation of a national wolf recovery plan].