Our Work

With our coalition partners, we lead, coordinate and support state and national efforts to drive the following state-level reforms:

• Enact legislation that aligns wildlife management with public trust principles, so that all species are valued and protected, all voices are heard and respected, decisions are based on sound science and values that are explicitly acknowledged, deliberations are transparent and accountable, and decisions are based on what is in the long-term best interest of wildlife, habitats, and current and future generations of humans.
• Change the way wildlife commissions are constituted to reflect the broad public interest in wildlife, and to prioritize their duty as trustees to protect the wildlife public trust.
• Refocus wildlife agencies to act as administrators of the wildlife public trust, and to prioritize protection of species and habitats over everything else.
• Establish new sources of funding for wildlife conservation that are broad-based and not connected to particular “uses” of wildlife.
• Require state wildlife agencies to be transparent and accountable to the general public by, for example, posting detailed information about their sources of revenues and expenditures on their websites, posting information about how federal Pittman-Robertson and Dingell-Johnson grants are spent, etc.

We are guided by the following principles:

1. Wildlife should be treated as a public trust, which federal, state, and tribal governments have a fiduciary duty first to preserve for future generations and secondly a duty to regulate current uses, enforce against illegal uses, and manage the trust for the broad public interest;
2. Wildlife decision-making should be democratic, transparent, informed by science, and include explicit value statements;
3. Consumptive uses and users should not be privileged; 
4. The individual interests of all organisms to exist and thrive should be recognized and respected;
5. All wild species, including invertebrates, have ecological value and should be protected as part of natural ecosystems;
6. In cases of conflict, native species should be prioritized over non-natives.
7. The public benefits broadly from the existence of wildlife, and should share in the cost of protecting it.

Read the one page summary of our work here.