By Jennifer Puccio
Every fall, local families head into the woods and onto the water not just for sport, but for the harvest.
Freezers fill with wild game and fish, which often provide a household’s entire year of healthy protein.
And the people doing the harvesting are changing. The most recent U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service survey reports that, nationwide, women make up 22 percent of hunters and 30 percent of anglers, and those numbers are probably very reflective of the population in east Linn County.
Behind the scenes, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife works to ensure the environment and food supply remain sustainable. They oversee 16 wildlife areas, run hatcheries, perform species surveys, set harvest quotas, and partner with landowners and other agencies. Together, these efforts support an outdoor economy that benefits the entire state, including rural communities like Sweet Home.
That system, however, would be brought to a halt by a proposed initiative petition called IP 28, being advanced by a group called People for the Elimination of Animal Cruelty (PEACE).
The proposal would ban hunting and fishing – sport and commercial – and classify them as animal abuse, with no exemptions for tribes. It would outlaw standard agricultural practices in farming and ranching, including livestock slaughter, breeding, dehorning, and castration. Rodeos, traditional pest control, and animal research would also be banned.
A ban framed as “protecting animals” under the acronym PEACE may sound morally appealing. But it ignores how fish and wildlife are protected in our country. In practice; the proposal would harm animals and people and put the final nail in the coffin for a little-known statute called the Public Trust Doctrine.
Established by the Supreme Court in 1842, and reinforced in 1896 with a focus on wildlife, the doctrine holds that private interests do not own waterways and wildlife; they are held in trust by the government for present and future generations.
In Oregon and across the country, hunters and anglers are the primary funders of wildlife and wilderness management. According to the ODFW, about 40 percent of its budget comes from hunting and fishing licenses and federal excise taxes on hunting and fishing and wildlife watching equipment purchases, collected under the Pittman-Robertson and Dingell-Johnson Acts. In other words, people who enjoy Oregon’s wild waters and forests help pay to maintain them.
Remove hunting and fishing from that system and the funding dries up.
Nature, as the old saying goes, abhors a vacuum. If wildlife management loses the resources that sustain it, something will replace it – and it begins with a “p,” but it isn’t the public.
With weakened fish and wildlife management, populations quickly exceed the capacity of their habitat, leading to starvation once food is consumed to completion. Diseases spread and habitats collapse more easily in these situations, harming far more animals than regulated harvest ever would.
Wildlife agencies also monitor diseases that move between wildlife and livestock, which affect private ranching. This includes diseases like Leptospirosis. Transmitted through water and soil, it can move between wildlife, cattle, and dogs, and then to people.
Americans often speak proudly of rugged individualism in the outdoors. But the tradition behind hunting and fishing grew from ordinary citizens gaining the freedom to hunt. In Europe, hunting belonged to royalty and landowners. In the United States, wildlife was placed in public trust.
President Theodore Roosevelt helped cement that idea after spending three days in the Yosemite wilderness with naturalist John Muir in 1903. He went on to establish national parks, forests, and refuges across the country. The Roosevelt elk that roam our region still carry his name. Years later, even First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt took part in stocking trout in Yosemite waters.
Access runs deep. Half our nation, including Oregon, participates in a habitat and landowner access program, which uses grant-funded patrols to keep millions of private timberland acres open for public hunting. Linn County also ranks high in sales of over-the-counter hunting tags, which creates a reliable stream of funding for wildlife management. That participation also reflects the quality of the region’s outdoor resources: last month, Fishmasters ranked Green Peter among Oregon’s top 30 fishing lakes.
If the supporters of this petition want peace for animals, there are constructive ways to pursue that. Work with state and local leaders to strengthen the wildlife funding acts mentioned earlier. Support Oregon’s current wildlife crossing projects that restore migration routes and reduce vehicle collisions where highways cut through habitat. Or assist local shelters that provide low-cost spay and neuter and adoption of animals. These efforts reduce suffering for animals and people.
Native peoples practiced the tradition of caring for the land and its inhabitants long before us: its bounty survives and thrives not when people are banned from it, but when they take responsibility for its care and use.
– Jennifer Puccio lives in Sweet Home and studies environmental science at Linn-Benton Community College.