U.S. Sportsmen's Foundation Joins Lawsuit to Save
Hunting
posted January 8, 2007
The U.S. Sportsmen's Alliance
Foundation has filed to represent sportsmen in
a precedent-setting lawsuit
brought by animal activists to derail hunting,
fishing and trapping for
abundant game wherever endangered or threatened
species exist.
On
Jan. 4, the U.S. Sportsmen's Alliance Foundation (USSAF) asked U.S.
District
Judge John A. Woodcock Jr. for permission to join a federal lawsuit
brought
by the Animal Protection Institute against the Maine Department of
Inland
Fisheries and Wildlife. In October 2006, the animal rights group sued
to
expand endangered and threatened species protections to healthy and
abundant
wildlife populations.
"Our goal is to prevent the animal rights
movement from manipulating the
Endangered Species Act to ban hunting,
fishing and trapping," said Rob
Sexton, USSAF vice president for government
affairs. "The case could set a
precedent that affects the future of hunting,
fishing and trapping and how
they are used as wildlife management tools."
At issue is the legal argument brought by anti-hunters that trapping of
any
species should be banned in order to prevent the possibility
of
inadvertently catching federally protected Canada lynx, bald eagles and
gray
wolves. There is no data proving this to be a problem.
"It is
important for sportsmen to understand this lawsuit represents far
more than
a strike against a single sport," said Sexton. "The trappers won't
be the
only ones impacted. If anti's can stop all trapping in a place where
there
is a risk of catching a Canada lynx, they can just as easily try to
stop
fishing in bodies of water where there is a risk of catching an
endangered
species of sturgeon."
This lawsuit also treads on states' authority to
manage wildlife. An
unfavorable decision would virtually require judges to
close hunting,
fishing and trapping.
As the case develops, the USSAF
continues to defend sportsmen's rights in
two nearly identical lawsuits
brought by anti's against the Minnesota
Department of Natural Resources.
They also would set dangerous precedents
that put hunting, fishing and
trapping in jeopardy.
The USSAF has filed to join the case, along with
the Sportsman's Alliance of
Maine, Maine Trappers Association, Fur Takers of
America, and individual
sportsmen Oscar Cronk, Donald Dudley and Alvin
Theriault.
The U.S. Sportsmen's Legal Defense Fund is the nation's only
litigation
force that exclusively represents sportsmen's interests in the
courts. It
defends wildlife management and sportsmen's rights in local,
state and
federal courts. The U.S. SLDF represents the interests of
sportsmen and
assists government lawyers who have little or no background in
wildlife law.
The U.S. Sportsmen's Alliance Foundation is a national
association of
sportsmen and sportsmen's organizations that protects and
advances America's
heritage of hunting, fishing and trapping.
* * * *
* * *
Let these truths be indelibly impressed on our minds--that we cannot
be
happy without being free--that we cannot be free without being secure in
our
property--that we cannot be secure in our property if without our
consent
others may as by right take it away. - John Dickenson
http://www.chattanoogan.com/articles/article_99395.asp
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