When people go to the polls in Arizona in a few weeks, along with deciding on a presidential candidate and other elected offices, voters will decide the fate of Proposition 102 which amends the state constitution there to read,
The state shall manage wildlife in public trust for the people, as provided by law, to assure continued existence of wildlife populations in the state. An initiative that permits, limits or prohibits the taking of wildlife, or the methods or seasons thereof, shall not become law unless approved by at least two-thirds of the votes cast on the proposition.
Meanwhile, Virginia voters will decide whether or not to add a new section to their state’s constitution that would read, “The people have a right to hunt, fish and harvest game, subject to such regulations and restrictions as the General Assembly may prescribe by general law,” although there is currently a lawsuit brought by The Fund for Animals and the Humane Society of the United States attempting to have that measure removed.
In 1998, Utah became the first state to enact such a change to its constitution. Is this a good way to go about protecting the rights of hunters and fisherman from animal rights activists and the more extreme parts of the environmental movement?
The thing that pops out about these ballot measures is how bizarre they might seem to the people who founded the United States and these individual states. The idea that there might come a time when people might try to outlaw hunting and fishing — activities, after all, which were occurring in North America long before the ancestors of most voters even realized there was a North American continent — would have sounded absurd. That some hunting and fishing groups sponsor such measures is testimony to how different attitudes about animals in contemporary America.
The Arizona Daily Star, for example, interviewed M. Dane Waters of the Initiative & Referendum Institute who said that Proposition 102 is a “blatant attempt to take away the fundamental rights of everyday Arizona citizens” by making a special exemption for certain referendums. Yet is it any more blatant an attack on rights than that carried forth by those who would outlaw or severely restrict fishing and hunting?
One of the interesting features of initiatives designed to limit fishing and hunting is their unintended consequences. Animal rights activists, for example, successfully pushed for a 1994 initiative in Arizona that banned leg-hold traps, which the activists claim are cruel. As biologist John Phelps of the Arizona Game and Fish Department told the Arizona Daily Star, however, the result is that an important tool was taken away with sometimes counterproductive results,
From our point of view we’ve been deprived of one response to damage and nuisance problems [from coyotes and other predators]… Now the response is more likely to be a lethal one.
Personally, though, I think the Virginia approach of putting the right to fish and hunt, with reasonable regulations, directly in the state constitution is a much better approach than trying to up the ante on initiatives which probably comes across as anti-democratic to many people.
Source:
Vote rights a side issue of wildlife measure. Maureen O’Connell, Arizona Daily Star, October 5, 2000.
Lawsuit filed over Virginia’s deceptive “right-to-hunt” amendment. Press release, The Fund for Animals, October 2, 2000.