In a 21-8 vote on Friday, state senators advanced a controversial bill that would reform Vermont’s Fish & Wildlife Board and ban the practice of hunting coyotes with dogs.
Currently, the board votes to approve, deny and change hunting and trapping rules. It is made up of a panel of 14 residents who are appointed by the governor, and those seats have historically been held by people who hunt, fish and trap.
The bill, S.258, would strip the board of its rulemaking authority and instead make it an advisory body to the Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department. While the board could object to proposed hunting, fishing and trapping regulations, the commissioner of the Fish & Wildlife Department would have final authority over those rules under the changes proposed.
In addition, the bill would add two seats to the board — one member who would be appointed by lawmakers in the House, and the other by lawmakers in the Senate.
The idea to change the composition and authority of the board arose from concerns that, although the board currently has authority over regulations that impact all of Vermont’s hunted wildlife, it is made up only of hunters, trappers and anglers. Non-hunting Vermonters have not historically been represented on the board.
The bill changes “the composition and appointment process for the Fish and Wildlife board, so that it might begin to include, as it does not now, Vermonters who are part of a 90.1% of the citizenry who do not hold hunting licenses,” Sen. Chris Bray, D-Addison, chair of the Senate Committee on Natural Resources and Energy, told lawmakers on the floor.
Originally, the bill had called for members of the board to be evenly split between non-hunters and hunters, and for more members to be appointed by the Legislature, rather than the governor. But Bray proposed an amendment that walked those changes back, and also struck additional regulations related to trapping.
Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Baruth, D/P-Chittenden Central said the amendment was a “compromise,” made in response to concerns expressed by other senators, during Friday’s debate on the Senate floor.
The amendment takes action while not straying too far in any direction, Baruth said, and was a product of productive discussion among lawmakers.
Members of the Senate Committee on Natural Resources and Energy have been mulling big changes to fish and wildlife management in Vermont for years, and those conversations have been seen by some advocates in the hunting community as a broader attack on the culture and tradition of hunting in Vermont.
Sen. Russ Ingalls, R-Essex, told lawmakers on the Senate floor that the measure is “the biggest anti-hunting bill that’s ever reached the Senate, in my opinion.”
“If this bill passes, this is the end of hunting as we know it in the state of Vermont,” Ingalls said.
Banning coyote hounding could lead to other hunting bans, on bears, bobcat, foxes and maybe one day, rabbits, according to Ingalls.“That’s the way it’s gonna go,” he said. “It’s death by a thousand cuts.”
Sen. Dick McCormack, D-Windsor, told lawmakers he was “deeply troubled” that “this discussion, in some quarters, has devolved into a culture war.”
“The bill does not disrespect the native Vermont culture. It does not disrespect native Vermonters,” he said, adding that he knows a number of people who were born in Vermont who support the bill.