Thursday, Nov. 25, 2021 | 2 a.m.
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The Nevada Wildlife Commission’s Nov. 5 vote to retain regressive wildlife-killing contests provides further, incontrovertible evidence that the commission’s actions are serially unfair, undemocratic and unrepresentative of all Nevadans’ views on how best to conserve and perpetuate our all-important wildlife species.
Defying overwhelming votes to end these stains on our state’s reputation and ethical hunting by the Clark County Commission and Reno City Council, five of the nine commissioners stridently defended the bloody, disruptive and dangerous-to-public-safety contests with a litany of absurd rationalizations.
Wildlife-killing contests award money and other prizes to those who kill the most animals in the shortest period of time. Even three of the four commissioners who did vote to end the contests statewide clearly indicated that their underlying motivation was to avert negative public perception of the commission. The inherent barbarity of encouraging mass wildlife killing by anyone with weapons and high-speed, off-road vehicles was summarily dismissed.
The feckless county advisory boards to manage wildlife added their unanimous support for wildlife-killing contests. The local boards, similar to the state commission, recklessly seek to maximize hunter convenience, opportunity and success based on emotion and subjective opinions. They demonstrate little concern for the well-being of wildlife they are statutorily obligated to protect and preserve for all Nevadans, not just fulfilling the fantasies of recreational hunters. They can’t even bring themselves to temporarily stop hunting when species they pursue are rapidly declining because of stressed and degrading habitat.
Mixed up in this one-sided killing juggernaut, we find the Nevada Department of Wildlife supporting hunters and the hunting preserve they have turned Nevada into because of the department’s self-interest in collecting license fees.
A recent NDOW employee survey clearly demonstrates overwhelming support for hunting interests. Plus, no severance fees are assessed or collected to compensate Nevadans for the loss of value when their wildlife is permanently severed from public lands by death, unlike royalties paid for extraction of natural gas and oil from federal public lands.
Lopsided wildlife governance in Nevada glorifies killing and minimizes genuine preservation, effectively turning our state into a very large hunting preserve serving the discretionary interests of just 2.3% of Nevadans.
The structural decay in wildlife governance mirrors what Nevadans experience with an archaic and dysfunctional Department of Motor Vehicles, state unemployment system and public education construct from kindergarten through graduate school. Nevada’s wildlife governance exclusively reflects a long-gone 19th-century frontier mindset, not the values and needs of 21st-century Nevada.
How do we fix the rampant injustices? Fortunately, it is much simpler than correcting our public education system.
Created by statute, Nevada’s Wildlife Commission should disappear altogether. The current contingent of commissioners, save one, lack any training in biology or any of the other hard sciences. Their public meeting input, ramblings and overt biases reveal a stark lack of knowledge, understanding or interest in representing all Nevadans. The same applies to the county advisory boards. Eliminating both saves the public treasury well north of a million dollars a year in unnecessary direct and indirect operating expenses. Both entities eerily invoke images of a 1985 Yugo passenger car — unreliable, impossible to repair, uncomfortable, impractical and long overdue for tow-truck disposal at the nearest junkyard.
What can human governance of wildlife look like going forward?
For starters, the Department of Wildlife has the trained biologists and habitat specialists necessary to help our wildlife survive, not predominantly promote an unhealthy killing culture that leads to more endangered species.
The department’s staff orientation, focus and public engagement of all Nevadans need a seismic shift from their current strategies, which may or may not be possible with current managers. Ethical hunting need not be abolished, just de-emphasized as the reason for this agency’s existence and daily activities.
Any monies collected by the department should go directly to the state’s general fund, while the Legislature and governor need to dramatically increase the department’s funding to implement projects that genuinely protect Nevada’s almost 900 wildlife species, not just focusing on a relative handful of species hunters want to kill while ignoring the rest.
We need to end a predator extermination program that mandates spending 80% of its funds on killing activities, and implement programs promoting co-existence and non-lethal strategies, not destruction. Predator species play an important role in a healthy, interdependent ecosystem. Through Nature’s genius, they self-regulate their numbers to environmental conditions without human meddling, doing so long before humans ever inhabited Nevada.
If Nevadans care about helping our voiceless and heartlessly oppressed wildlife with a new management model, now is an opportune time to say so to those seeking 2022 campaign contributions and votes. Let candidates know that this is an important issue in our state, where more than 80% of the land is held in public trust for the widespread benefit of current and future generations.
Fred Voltz lives in Clark County. For over a decade he has actively participated in Nevada wildlife advocacy.
