Editor’s Note: The following was first published on the Northern Ag Network and is republished here with their permission.
There are 8.1 billion people on this planet.
Wildlife does not survive on sentiment. It survives because people choose to conserve it.
For more than a century, the United States has operated under the most successful wildlife recovery model in the world — the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation.
Through science-based management, regulated hunting and fishing, working ranches, habitat stewardship, and user-funded conservation, America restored wildlife from the brink of collapse.
Elk returned. Whitetails rebounded. Wild turkey flourished. Waterfowl populations stabilized. This did not happen by leaving nature alone. It happened because wildlife had value.
Now that system faces one of the most serious threats in modern history.
What Is Initiative Petition 28?
Oregon’s Initiative Petition 28 (IP28), also called the PEACE Act, seeks to remove longstanding exemptions in the state’s animal cruelty statutes.
If passed, it could redefine hunting, fishing, ranching, animal agriculture, and other lawful wildlife management activities as criminal acts under expanded animal cruelty definitions.
The Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation (CSF) has publicly opposed this initiative, recognizing the magnitude of what is at stake.
Jeff Crane, CEO of the Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation, and Tom Opre, CEO of Shepherds of Wildlife, patently agree:
This legislation may be the single largest threat to wildlife conservation, rural communities, and the American way of life in modern history.
That is not rhetoric. It is a recognition of what happens when sustainable use is removed from conservation policy.
The Signature Campaign: How This Is Moving Forward
The group behind IP28 is actively collecting signatures across Oregon. They are reportedly tens of thousands of signatures away from qualifying for the ballot.
Petition gatherers are often stationed outside grocery stores and public spaces, presenting the initiative in emotionally simplified terms — focused on animal cruelty language — without fully explaining the sweeping legal consequences for hunting, fishing, farming, and wildlife management.
Many citizens signing may not understand that this measure could:
• Criminalize traditional hunting and fishing
• Undermine livestock operations
• Disrupt food production systems
• Destabilize conservation funding structures
Ballot initiatives are powerful tools. But when complex wildlife law is reduced to emotionally charged soundbites, the public deserves a full and honest explanation of what is at stake.
The Core Issue: Removing Humans from Conservation
IP28 represents a philosophical shift. It reframes the human use of wildlife — even regulated, science-based use — as inherently immoral. That is not how American conservation was built. Conservation in North America is based on wise use.
Wildlife is a public trust resource. It is renewable. It is managed. It is regulated.
When you remove sustainable use from that equation, you remove incentive. When you remove incentive, you lose habitat. When you lose habitat, you lose biodiversity. This is not speculation. It is ecological and economic reality.
What Happens If This Model Collapses?
If initiatives like IP28 succeed, the consequences will extend far beyond Oregon.
1. Wildlife Funding Erodes
State wildlife agencies rely heavily on hunting and fishing license revenue and federal excise taxes tied to sportsmen and women.
That funding supports habitat restoration, species research, law enforcement, and conservation education.
Dismantle sustainable use, and you destabilize conservation funding. There is no replacement system currently structured to fill that gap at scale.
2. Working Landscapes Disappear
Rural America holds the majority of wildlife habitat.
Ranchers, farmers, and landowners maintain open space and migration corridors. These working lands often provide better habitat than fragmented development.
If rural families lose the ability to sustainably benefit from their land, development pressure increases. Pasture becomes pavement. Habitat becomes housing tracts. Biodiversity declines — not because of regulated hunting — but because habitat disappears.
3. Rural Stewardship Collapses
Wildlife lives where people live. Elk, deer, predators, livestock — these interactions happen in rural communities. Conservation succeeds when those communities are empowered as partners.
Criminalizing lawful interaction does not create harmony. It creates resentment. And when resentment replaces stewardship, wildlife loses its strongest defenders.
4. Human Dignity Is Undermined
Hunting and ranching are not fringe activities. They are food systems. They are livelihoods. They are cultural traditions.
For many families, wild game supplements household food. For many ranchers, livestock is generational survival. Conservation cannot survive if it excludes human dignity.
On a planet with 8.1 billion people, wildlife must coexist with humans in ways that are practical, sustainable, and economically viable. Wildlife that provides no value to local communities does not remain protected for long.
A Global Lesson
Through films like Killing the Shepherd, The Last Keeper, and The Real Yellowstone, Shepherds of Wildlife has documented this truth around the world:
Wildlife thrives where rural people benefit from it.
When sustainable use is removed, unintended consequences follow — poverty increases, illegal killing rises, habitat declines, and conservation weakens.
Mother Nature doesn’t practice conservation. We do. People do.
Conservation is a human decision — and it works when people are included.
This Is a Defining Moment
IP28 is not a minor policy debate.
It is a direct challenge to the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation — the most successful wildlife recovery system ever implemented.
If sustainable use is criminalized: We risk losing biodiversity. We risk losing working landscapes. We risk losing rural stewardship. We risk losing the system that rebuilt wildlife in America.
This moment demands clarity.
Conservation means wise use. Conservation means science-based management. Conservation means human dignity alongside ecological responsibility.
If we allow conservation to be redefined as the elimination of use, we will not strengthen wildlife. We will weaken it.
Wildlife survives with people — not without them.
– Tom Opre
Tom Opre is a film director and wildlife conservationist from Montana’s Flathead Valley, founder of the Shepherds of Wildlife Society, which produced the documentary film “The Real Yellowstone.” As the past president of the Professional Outdoor Media Association (POMA), he works to help other outdoor communicators and industry leaders understand the top issues facing wildlife conservation today.
