Nov. 29–Michigan’s general election ballot next November may be as teeming with wildlife as an Up North forest.
A hunters group will ask the Board of State Canvassers on Monday to approve petition wording as they attempt to create a new state law. The Scientific Fish and Wildlife Conservation Act would affirm that the state Natural Resources Commission has the power to name game fish and animal species in Michigan.
The initiative could end up on the general election ballot next November, joining at least one, and possibly two, referendums on Michigan’s new wolf hunt.
The group behind the latest petition drive, Citizens for Professional Wildlife Management, said their effort is in response to continuing attempts to end Michigan’s wolf hunt by nonprofit wildlife advocacy group Keep Michigan Wolves Protected.
“Are you going to have scientists manage your wildlife? Or are you going to have emotional TV commercials and who can spend the most on TV commercials?” said Merle Shepard, chairman of the Citizens group.
Shepard is a past president of Safari Club International’s Michigan Chapter and said the initiative drive is supported by that organization and most other hunting and fishing groups in the state.
Under the state constitution, if the petition language is approved and 258,088 valid signatures are gathered within 180 days, the state Legislature has 40 session days to enact the proposal. If lawmakers fail to adopt the initiative, it goes before voters in the next general election on Nov. 4, 2014. Should the Legislature adopt its own measure, both it and the petition-driven initiative would go before voters.
Michigan’s controversial first wolf hunt began Nov. 15 and will conclude Dec. 31 or when the state’s quota of 43 wolves across three designated zones of the Upper Peninsula is met. The wolf hunt was approved by the Legislature just months after the federal government removed wolves from listing under the Endangered Species Act in January 2012.
Keep Michigan Wolves Protected, affiliated with the Humane Society of the United States, collected more than 250,000 signatures statewide to put the question of whether wolves should be listed as a game species before voters in November 2014. But a bill sponsored by State Sen. Tom Casperson, R-Escanaba, approved by the Legislature and signed into law by Gov. Rick Snyder, effectively thwarted the referendum, putting the game species designation in the hands of the appointed Natural Resources Commission.
The Keep Michigan Wolves Protected referendum will remain on the November 2014 ballot, however, and the group is now undertaking a second petition drive for another referendum, this one seeking to undo Public Act 21, the state law stemming from Casperson’s bill that lets the Natural Resources Commission decide state game species. It’s this latest effort that prompted the hunting group’s countermeasure.
“It’s pretty obvious that they will go to any length to have the wolf hunt,” said Jill Fritz, director of Keep Michigan Wolves Protected.
“They are going to be asking the citizens of this state to sign a petition for an initiative that is going to take away their rights to vote on critical wildlife issues.”
Shepard said the Citizens group’s initiative follows the spirit of Proposal G, a 1996 ballot referendum that put the designation of game species with the Natural Resources Commission. That measure passed with nearly 69% approval from state voters.
Stony Bing, president of Safari Club International’s Michigan Chapter, said game designations are rightly left with the state Department of Natural Resources.
“They keep track of the animals, they do the counts and monitor their health, and they make the decision — that’s what we hired them for,” he said. “Otherwise we could fire the bunch of them and run it the way PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) wants to.”