Editor’s note: This commentary is by Louis Porter, who is the commissioner of the Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department.
[T]he Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department’s professional staff work tirelessly to conserve fish, wildlife, plants and their habitats for the people of Vermont. As a state agency we are accountable to ALL members of the public, not just one interest group. We recognize and celebrate that people in Vermont connect to the land in different ways, from bird watching, hiking, canoeing, biking and skiing, to hunting, fishing and trapping. Many of these activities must be regulated because they can impact wildlife in some way. However, getting people outdoors to connect with nature helps to foster a land ethic which increases appreciation for wildlife.
The department’s primary focus is on sustaining wildlife populations for future generations and on addressing the exigent threats to species. The daily work of the department includes the nongame species program, land conservation, threatened and endangered species recovery efforts, protecting wildlife against poaching, public education and landowner outreach, managing the state’s conserved lands, and reviewing development permits to address impacts to wildlife habitat. These programs support all wildlife species and their habitats for the benefit of all Vermonters.
The department and our many conservation partners have developed effective working relationships that seek common ground, working together to address the real threats to wildlife including habitat loss and fragmentation, climate change, and invasive species. For decades, the Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department has worked cooperatively and successfully with our partners towards our common goal to conserve wildlife and their habitats. This cooperative approach to addressing these challenges has embodied the “Vermont way,” working together on areas of agreement and engaging in civil dialogue on areas of disagreement.
Unfortunately, this has not been the approach taken by the recently formed group Protect Our Wildlife (POW). Its approach has fostered a polarized, combative atmosphere that has not only been unproductive and divisive, but counter to the long-term welfare of Vermont’s wildlife populations.
Sadly, they have brought confrontational, mean-spirited tactics to Vermont that have heretofore only been seen on the national political stage. They have also launched ugly attacks against any conservation organization that doesn’t fully support their agenda, such as The Nature Conservancy and Cold Hollow to Canada.
Comments on the POW Facebook page have run the gamut from referring to hunters and trappers as “evil dangerous people” to suggesting that trappers and hunters should be hurt or killed. Vilifying and dehumanizing a group of people or suggesting violence towards those with whom we may disagree are tactics that have no place anywhere. These tactics have morphed into a two-sided mud-slinging contest which only underscores that negativity breeds negativity.
POW has seized every opportunity to criticize and mischaracterize the actions of the department and the board. In keeping with this pattern, POW founder Brenna Galdenzi’s recent piece in VTDigger fails to recognize sound scientific conclusions and leaves out relevant information, perhaps because the facts do not support POW’s agenda.
Regarding POW’s Nuisance Wildlife Control Petition, Galdenzi asserts in her VTDigger piece that the department “proposed only the bare minimum required as a result of the passage of bill H.636.”
In fact, the board and department have no authority in statute to issue a Nuisance Wildlife Control Operators (NWCO) permit, to require extensive training, or to suspend such a license for failure to report. The department similarly has no authority in statute to suspend a trapper’s license for violations unrelated to recreational hunting, fishing or trapping during the regulated furbearer harvest seasons.
By statute, the commissioner must provide a course of basic instruction in trapper education. In addition, the commissioner has gone above and beyond, and will include additional voluntary training on nuisance wildlife control issues in the department’s trapper education courses. Galdenzi was explicitly advised of these facts during the October board meeting.
Galdenzi failed to mention that the board did, in fact, approve 12 new rules related to NWCOs, including mandating that a person who obtains a trapping license shall complete and submit an annual biological collection survey. She also omitted the fact that where the board had the authority to do so, it granted significant portions of the POW petition on NWCOs.
Regarding the fox petition, Galdenzi contends in her VTDigger piece that the department “responded to the petition with a report that cites outdated and irrelevant studies that only sought to justify the status quo.”
Given that Lyme disease is an increasing problem in Vermont, the department took the petition regarding fox and Lyme disease very seriously and assembled a team with extensive experience in wildlife biology to assess the petition, including a biometrician and research scientist, wildlife biologists and an epidemiologist from the Vermont Department of Health. Over a period of eight months the department produced a 20-page report which cited 52 relevant studies related to the association of fox, mice and Lyme disease. After an in-depth review of the data and the current scientific literature, the group concluded that the current, very low level of fox harvest was having no effect on the overall fox population. Rather, forest fragmentation, climate change, and invasive plants are likely influencing the spread of ticks and the transmission of the disease.
Rodents host black-legged ticks and are thus one of the main drivers of Lyme disease. Rodent populations rise and fall annually based on the availability of food, closely tracking the highly cyclical nature of beech nut and acorn production. When beech and oak trees produce a lot of nuts, high rodent populations soon follow.
Ticks are on the rise, but their increase is the result of climate change, forest fragmentation, and the spread of invasive plants, three of the central issues that Vermont Fish & Wildlife staff are working every day to address. Ticks are most prevalent in suburban areas where forests are highly fragmented. And ticks are found in highest densities in patches of invasive plants such as barberry and honeysuckle, which our staff work hard to eradicate in Vermont. One study found that Lyme-infected ticks increased from 10 per acre to 120 per acre in a patch of Japanese barberry compared to the surrounding area.
Thus, the consensus among researchers is that the most effective means of limiting Lyme disease is to reduce forest fragmentation from development and the spread of invasive plants.
In summary, rodents do play a role in the spread of Lyme disease, but their populations rise and fall based largely on natural cycles of wild nut production. And foxes are one of many, many rodent predators, whose populations are affected by habitat quality and competition from other predators such as coyotes. The current, extremely limited level of fox harvest in Vermont simply does not have a negative effect on fox populations or the spread of Lyme disease.
There are many challenges facing the future of Vermont’s wildlife including habitat loss, climate change and sustainable funding for conservation. Conservation organizations concerned about these threats work together in good faith to minimize these risks so that future generations will have the privilege of interacting with wildlife. It appears, however, that POW’s leadership has a single-minded animal rights agenda and is not willing to find common ground because that runs counter to its ultimate goal of halting hunting and trapping at all costs. Unfortunately, the polarization of the Vermont community and the persistent attacks on the credibility of the Fish & Wildlife Department and other legitimate conservation organizations divert scarce resources from critical work on behalf of the conservation of all wildlife.
