If you are a New Mexico hunter or angler, please read the following letter and send your agreement to sign-on along with your full name and city of residence to peter@wildmesquite.org.
THANK YOU for speaking up!
We, the undersigned New Mexican hunters and anglers, write to express our opposition to coyote killing contests. These contests are inconsistent with the ethical pursuit of game species, do not represent the majority of hunters, and reflect poorly on the mainstream hunting community. We urge you to sign legislation, SB 268, to prohibit coyote killing contests in our state.
Many sportsmen’s organizations nationwide and in New Mexico subscribe to the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation, a set of principles for responsible management of public resources. Coyote killing contests violate several of the Model’s key tenets. First and foremost, the Model advises that wildlife only be killed for a legitimate purpose. Coyotes killed in contests, however, are often wastefully discarded. The Model also affirms that science should drive wildlife policy. Studies have shown that killing contests do not effectively manage predator populations; instead, they simply disrupt ecosystems and can lead to increased conflicts with livestock. And the Model declares that wildlife is held in public trust; it is not a commercial resource, yet a whole private industry has emerged to sponsor and host killing contests, with some contests offering prizes into the tens of thousands of dollars. Because of these deviations from the North American Model, coyote killing contests cannot be considered responsible, ethical hunting.
We do not consider a prohibition on coyote killing contests to be a threat to legitimate hunting. The real threat to the sportsmen’s community is the contests themselves. Reckless misuse of wildlife resources gives hunting, hunters, and our state a bad public image. Please sign SB 268 to preserve the integrity of hunting in New Mexico.
Respectfully submitted,
Name
City
