How Will You Vote on Question One?

If you want to help make decisions about wildlife in Massachusetts, you'd better have a gun. Only those who have held Massachusetts sporting licenses for five consecutive years are eligible for five of the seven seats on the state Fisheries and Wildlife Board. Four of the five seats are restricted to those who represent fishing, hunting and trapping interests. Massachusetts state law doesn't just allow special interests to influence regulatory decisions; it requires it. Hunters have a special interest in wildlife regulations, and in Massachusetts, they control them by law.

This year Massachusetts voters have the chance to remove these membership requirements for the Fisheries and Wildlife Board and to ban two cruel methods of hunting and trapping animals. Question One, the only referendum question on this year's ballot, would change current law in three ways: It would abolish the requirement that five of the seven board seats go to hunters, ban steel jaw and padded leghold traps, and prohibit the use of dogs in hunting bears or bobcats, with some exceptions.

Opponents of Question One want the board membership requirements preserved on the theory that only hunters have the knowledge necessary to effectively manage wildlife. Only 3 percent of Massachusetts citizens currently satisfy the membership requirements, which do not include any minimum knowledge of wildlife. Current law, and Question One opponents, presume that hunters by definition know more about the best way to manage wildlife than the millions of other state citizens who spend time in and care about nature.

Opponents also argue that hunters ought to control the state Fisheries and Wildlife Board because the fees hunters pay for their licenses fund the board. Robert Deblinger, assistant director of the state Division of Fisheries and Wildlife, referred to this as "sportsmen watching sportsmen's dollars." Deblinger sees nothing wrong with recommending that anyone interested in serving on the board buy a hunting license. So state citizens need both to profess the required belief and to pay a fee if they want to hold an appointed state office. We might as well allow only smokers to spend the revenues from cigarette taxes, so smokers can watch smokers' dollars.

A "yes" vote on Question One would also ban cruel, painful traps that catch an animal by gripping any part of it rather than by confining it whole, as a cage does. Most of the traps that would be banned are steel-jaw and rubber-jaw leghold traps, both of which crush the limbs of animals they catch. Leghold traps pose a serious danger to household pets as well as the animals trappers mean to catch. "For every target animal, there are two to three untargeted animals that are trapped," says Aaron Medlock, legislative policy analyst for the Humane Society.

Although opponents of Question One claim that rubber-jaw traps do not cause injury, when a dog named Cindy was caught in three such traps for four days, her injuries were so severe that she was put to sleep. To escape the traps, Cindy had tried to chew off her paws. "She was crying as she did it from the pain," says Joy Bannister, the Fall River dog officer who found her.

In addition to reducing special interests' power on the Fisheries and Wildlife Board and banning cruel traps, Question One would ban the use of hunting dogs to hunt bears or bobcats. Hounding, as this practice is called, "is the moral and sporting equivalent of shooting a caged animal," according to some state legislators who support Question One. Dogs with radio collars corner their prey, allowing the hunter effortlessly to locate and shoot the helpless animal.

Hounding endangers the hunting dogs as well: Bears and bobcats may fight the dogs, hunters may mistakenly shoot dogs, or the dogs may become caught in traps--Cindy was a hunting dog. Odds do favor the hunting dogs when they "overtake, maul, and kill cubs and kittens," which they do often. Currently Massachusetts law permits hounding for training purposes, leading some hunters to stalk the same bear or bobcat for months before finally killing it. Several states already ban hounding, and three others will consider banning it this Tuesday.

Will Question One remove all methods of preventing animal overpopulation, as its opponents suggest? Hardly. States that have already banned leghold traps and hounding have successfully and humanely controlled animal overpopulation. In addition, Question One allows the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, scientists and people who have "reasonably" but unsuccessfully tried to control an animal problem on their property to apply for a limited permit to use the banned methods. Thus Question One would reserve the cruelest methods as last resorts and prevent their use as sport without allowing animal overpopulation to go unchecked.

Hunters' concern about overpopulation, besides being ungrounded, rings false. Many of the most commonly fished or hunted species have been stocked in convenient locations only so they may more easily be fished or hunted. For example, inedible fish in Cape Cod ponds were poisoned to death and replaced with trout at the demand of fishermen. Hunters may also cause clearcutting to encourage increases in the populations of their preferred prey. Hunters often cause overpopulation as they claim to control it.

Banning leghold traps and hounding would keep countless animals from needless pain and suffering. This fundamental point is lost on some opponents of Question One. "Hunting is sort of like if you have a crop of carrots and the crop is coming up too thick and you have to weed some of them out so the rest will survive," says Melbourne Crouse, director of the Gun Owners Action League. "I don't think there is anything wrong or cruel about it."

Question One would introduce representative government to the Fisheries and Wildlife Board and prevent cruelty while affecting only 300 to 400 trappers and a handful of hounders. Sound good? Then vote yes on Question One this Tuesday.

Piper Hoffman is a first-year student at Harvard Law School. Ted Sichelman, also a first-year student at the Law School, researched this piece for the Harvard Law School Student Animal Legal Defense Fund.