Maine’s system of fish and wildlife management is broken. It is a hoax perpetrated on the people of Maine to give us the impression that we have a say in fish and wildlife management and that management decisions are based on science. Anyone who has ever tried to change the status quo by challenging Maine’s fish and wildlife power structure knows what I am talking about.

Fish and wildlife management in Maine is controlled by a small number of people whose goal is to promote their own self-interest by maximizing opportunities to kill wildlife with little or no concern for the impacts on those wildlife or on those who enjoy watching wildlife. Without a doubt they have no concern for cruelty to wildlife. Over the past 20 or so years these extremists have quietly and very effectively succeeded in rewriting Maine’s conservation statutes to increase their own monopolistic hold on fish and wildlife policy.

By law, Maine’s fish and wildlife resources belong to all of the people of Maine, but the law is not worth the paper it is written on. According to a 2001 report from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, wildlife watchers in Maine outnumbered hunters by nearly five to one and the money spent by wildlife watchers was more than double the amount spent by hunters. In spite of the fact that nonhunters outnumber hunters in Maine by nearly 10 to one, nonconsumptive users have no real say in how our fish and wildlife resources are managed.

Our fish and wildlife resources have been and continue to be abused by a state government that cares more about money, politics and power than it does about the resource and those who rightfully own that resource. Evidence of these abuses abounds. For example:

IF&W opposed federal protection for lynx on the grounds that there was insufficient evidence of its status in Maine. This was done before any real research was conducted into the lynx’s status in Maine and at the behest of Maine’s large landowners and forest products industry.

IF&W publicly opposed and worked against a citizen referendum to end bear baiting, hounding and trapping while claiming that without these methods of taking, bears would overrun the state. There was virtually no scientific evidence to support IF&W’s position, and in fact, there was evidence that baiting may actually artificially increase bear populations.

IF&W takes in millions of dollars through the moose hunt, yet has no program of moose management and won’t even spend the money needed to get an accurate count of the number of moose. IF&W recently adopted a rule creating an “experimental” moose hunt in southern and central Maine without having any fact-based number of moose in these areas, without any knowledge or understanding of the impacts of legal hunting on the moose populations in these areas, without any concern for wildlife watchers or the impact on the wildlife watching based economy, without any explanation of what their “experiment” is attempting to prove and with very little public support for an expanded hunt.

Several years ago, a bill that would ban coyote snaring was actually rewritten by the IF&W legislative committee to strengthen Maine’s coyote snaring program. This was done without the knowledge or participation of the bill’s sponsor who was not given a chance to see the revised bill until it was about to be voted on by the committee. IF&W continues to push for a resumption of coyote snaring despite the lack of any scientific evidence that coyotes negatively impact Maine’s deer herd. In fact, scientific evidence shows that coyotes respond to increased hunting and trapping pressure by producing more young.

Maine’s system of fish and wildlife management is based more on politics, power and money than on biology. It is broken, but it can be fixed if enough of us work together to fix it. Here is my plan for doing so:

1) Review and revise the statutes governing the operation of IF&W to increase the emphasis on fish and wildlife management based on science, to require that animal cruelty be considered when approving methods of taking wildlife, and to decrease the emphasis on consumptive use while increasing the emphasis on nonconsumptive use of our fish and wildlife resources;

2) Reduce the stranglehold of the special interests on the legislative process by eliminating the Legislature’s Joint Standing Committee on Inland Fisheries and Wildlife Resources and by assigning its responsibilities to the Legislature’s Committee on Natural Resources;

3) Establish a funding mechanism that forces all Mainers to pay their fair share for fish and wildlife management and at the same time give all Mainers a voice in fish and wildlife management;

4) Restructure IF&W to increase expenditures on nonconsumptive use and nongame wildlife and to give nonconsumptive users a greater say in agency decisions and policymaking;

5) Restructure the Commissioner’s Advisory Council to require that at least half of the members represent nonconsumptive users and nongame wildlife; and,

6) Require IF&W to expand public participation in its so-called “working groups” to include a balanced representation of consumptive and nonconsumptive interests.

At a recent public hearing on bear trapping, I told the committee that more and more Mainers feel disenfranchised by the political process and are getting tired of not being listened to by a government that caters to the noisy special interest groups, no matter how small. As I walked back to my seat after testifying, a trapper said to me quietly, “You are a bitter man.” I’m not bitter. I’m just one Mainer who is tired of fighting a corrupt system and I demand to be heard.

John M. Glowa is a board member of The Maine Wolf Coalition and the Wildlife Alliance of Maine. The views expressed are his and do not represent those of the boards.