This alert is no longer active, but here for reference. Animals still need your help.

A fatally wounded wolf limps back to her den, but dies before she can feed her pups. Fish swimming peacefully in a lake are brutally hooked in the mouth and yanked out of their home to die on the floor of a fishing boat. Deer flee the sound of gun shots coming from a nearby shooting range. These and many more scenes like them will become the norm if S. 733, the Sportsmen’s Act, becomes law. This bill must be killed.

At a time when more people are interested in watching wild animals than in shooting them, S. 733 will make it mandatory that federal lands be expanded and enhanced for the exploitative purposes of hunting, noncommercial fishing, and recreational shooting, and that all federal plans for land use must consider these activities.

According to a 2016 study by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, watching wild animals is outpacing hunting by a considerable margin. 86 million people enjoy the great outdoors as watchers of wild animals, while only 11.5 million go hunting. Watching animals brings in more money to local economies than does hunting, $75.9 billion versus $25.6 billion. Therefore, what we must do is preserve public lands for the watchers primarily. Hunting must not be made a priority, when so few of the people enjoying our national parks are hunters.

Hunters kill more than 200 million animals a year. Passage of this bill will encourage hunters to kill even more animals while putting wild animal watching patrons on notice that their rights are not as important as hunters’ rights, and reinforce the greatest injustice of all, that the animals themselves, the ones most affected by hunting, have no rights at all.

An additional provision of this insane bill will establish a Wildlife and Hunting Heritage Conservation Council Advisory Committee whose purpose will be to advise other government agencies on hunting and recreational shooting opportunities among its other duties. Isn’t that similar to putting the inmates in charge of the asylum?

What YOU Can Do:

This alert is no longer active, but here for reference. Animals still need your help.