This commentary is by Walter Medwid, a resident of Derby.
The steady flow of letters to the editor and commentaries, admonishing Vermont’s Department of Fish & Wildlife to reexamine its embrace of positions — on issues such as the use of body-crushing, leghold and drowning traps; the use of hounds in hunting of bear, raccoon or coyotes; or its anti-predator bias — raise questions about what really is happening.
How did these controversial practices come to reflect Vermont public policy and Vermont values?
Some context may be useful to better understand the forces at play. The heyday of hunting license sales was in the mid-1970s. For example, in the category of “resident hunting” license sales, 1974 was the high-water mark at 63,177. By 2021 that number was 17,431. Over that same period, “combination” license (hunting and angling) sales were down from 51,800 to 27,835.
So, for nearly a half-century, license sales have been in steep decline. An effort to recruit a new generation of hunters and reverse the trend by establishing a youth hunting license began in 1993. Despite that effort, those license sales have also dropped, from 7,507 in 1993 to 3,434 in 2021.
Clearly, Vermont’s culture is changing from a model of traditional dominance over nature (it’s there for human use) to a coexistence model. Ironically, in a 2018 survey conducted by Colorado State University, the largest group of the Vermonters (34%) identified as mutualists (prioritizing coexistence with wildlife) yet at the same time mutualists were the least represented orientation at Fish & Wildlife (only about 5%), with traditionalists dominating staff values.
Vermont’s culture evolves and yet Fish & Wildlife remains anchored in the past.
During this same period of license sales decline and cultural shift, a global wildlife crisis has also emerged. Vermont has now identified some 1,000 species as species in “greatest conservation need” — and that list doesn’t even include over 200 Vermont species already listed as threatened or endangered. To add to the challenges, a recent UVM report shows that the state is losing some 1,500 acres of forest lands every year.
The issue isn’t about hunting — an important management tool for deer in particular. It is about aligning an agency to address contemporary challenges. Vermont has not responded to this new cultural and environmental landscape.
Gov. Scott has adopted a wildlife governance model that is labeled in scientific wildlife journals as the “Iron Triangle.” On one side of the triangle are traditional license holders — hunters and trappers. Side two is the management at Fish & Wildlife, headed not by a wildlife professional but by the governor’s political operative, chosen to prioritize license holder interests as the chief agenda. The last side of the triangle is the Fish and Wildlife Board, which consists of one member from each county chosen by the governor; all are either hunters, anglers and/or trappers.
The governor could have addressed inclusion and equity issues in his appointments but chose instead to pack the house in their role of establishing public policy over all game species. It is worth noting that the Fish and Wildlife Board is a remnant of Gov. Snelling’s efforts in the 1970s to professionalize and modernize how state operations function by shifting from boards and commissions to professional staff.
And, while Snelling’s efforts were largely successful, the pushback from hunters who feared losing their privileged status with a board of their peers to wildlife biologists, resulted in the oddity of the Fish and Wildlife Department having no regulatory or policy authority over deer and dozens of other game species — a department that has never had full standing, unlike others in state government.
Thus, the Fish and Wildlife Board (unelected, unaccountable and largely uncredentialed; and representing only a small fraction of Vermonters) determines public policy over public resources held by law in the public trust but without the public having any standing — effectively creating a fourth branch of government. This amounts to a privatization of a public resource, which is specifically forbidden in Title 10, Section 4081 of Vermont law (wildlife is for the benefit of all citizens).
Further, the Iron Triangle model of making public policy via a body that represents only a narrow subset of Vermonters runs contrary to Article 7 of our Constitution.
The reality is that our wildlife governance is as politicized as anything in Idaho or Montana. Vermont’s Iron Triangle has full and complete control over a swath of public resources. And in that model, wildlife policy as stated in Section 4081 is thrown under the bus.
The strongest of recommendations from the wildlife profession in the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies’ Blue Ribbon Report, calling for state agencies to “transform” to address contemporary conditions, is ignored. The seminal paper calling for agencies to adopt wildlife governance principles for the 21st century is also ignored. Instead, the governor and his Iron Triangle keeps wildlife governance in a time capsule that harkens back to the mid-1970s.
But at what cost? One sentence from the AFWA Report regarding costs of functioning under the Iron Triangle hits the nail on the head: “If state fish and wildlife agencies fail to adapt, their ability to manage fish and wildlife will be hindered and their public and political support compromised.”
So, as far as the letters to the editor and commentaries calling for Fish & Wildlife or the Fish and Wildlife Board to reconsider positions on controversial subjects, they are of no direct consequence to any component of the Iron Triangle. The letters and commentaries do, however, raise public and legislator awareness of the disconnects outlined above. With continued public pressure, it is likely more legislative initiatives will emerge in the face of executive branch intransigence.
Gov. Snelling was ahead of his time in wanting to modernize and professionalize all of government operations in light of the landscape before him in order to better serve all Vermonters. His responsible, common-sense and proactive leadership approach would surely come in handy today.
