Colorado Parks and Wildlife officials release wolf 2302-OR, a juvenile female, in Grand County in December 2023.
Just ahead of the start of Wolf Awareness Week, journalists in Utah revealed that an anti-wolf lobby group fraudulently misused public tax dollars to fund its activities, highlighting the entrenched power and corruption of the anti-carnivore lobbyists within state wildlife management.
What they unraveled shows just how enmeshed—and corrupt—anti-wolf advocacy really is.
According to the Salt Lake Tribune, more than $5 million of taxpayer money was funneled to a group called Big Game Forever to both keep wolves out of Utah and work towards federal delisting.
Even though Utah doesn’t actually have any wolves, legislators gave this funding—conservation appropriations for the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources—directly to the “nonprofit” to fuel the group’s anti-wolf agenda.
This is a glaring misuse of public resources, not to mention a failure of oversight by the state wildlife agency. For years, this group received handouts of taxpayer dollars, profiteering from funds that should go to actually protecting wildlife while masquerading as a conservation organization.
Nepotism and corruption are rampant in the actions of Big Game Forever as founder Ryan Benson hired his own brother, Jon Benson, as a consultant. Jon ended up filing for bankruptcy after trying to get the state of Utah to illegally transfer state land to him for a controversial plan to dredge Utah Lake to create 18,000 acres of artificial islands. While he lost in court, a separate consulting company he led billed thousands of hours of work to help delist wolves.
It’s also fascinating to see the contractors they hired besides each other. For instance, an entity called Lumley & Sons billed 2,795 hours of public outreach work. There is no Lumley & Sons registered in Utah, but the name matches an email associated with Matt Lumley, president of the Montana Trappers Association, vice president of the National Trappers Association, and Big Game Forever’s regional director for Montana and Wyoming.
He’s the same person who caught a Yellowstone wolf in a steel-jawed trap and, instead of killing or releasing it as soon as it was discovered (per Montana law), he instead alerted Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte, who traveled hours to come shoot the wolf (also in violation of state regulations).
The scandal underscores the urgent need for reform in state wildlife management. This is not just an instance of financial mismanagement, but a broader example of how the anti-wolf lobby, led by a small handful of people, wield disproportionate influence over wildlife policy, often sidelining science and biodiversity concerns.
It’s clear now the anti-wolf lobby is formed by a network of people who all know one another and are deeply embedded in the decision-making processes of agencies that should prioritize ecosystem health and biodiversity, not special interests.
How can these groups can operate without oversight and be given such outsized voices in shaping wildlife policy, diverting public funds into each other’s pockets on the taxpayer’s dime? How many other states and other “nonprofit” organizations are operating similarly? Who else is handing contracts to cronies under the guise of conservation?
It’s time to dismantle the corrupt ties between state wildlife agencies and the anti-wolf lobby, the pro-killing special interests. We have to ensure that wildlife management serves the public good for the benefit of all species and future generations.