Editor’s note: This spring, IDFG will be engaging the general public in the agency’s once-per-decade strategic planning effort. ICL encourages wildlife advocates to use this valuable opportunity to have your conservation voice heard. We will provide updates on how to participate in this process, as more information becomes available. You can sign up for ICL Wildlife Campaign Updates to make sure you get news on all wildlife happenings sent right to your email inbox.

Notorious poacher Edgar Howell set out from Cooke City, Montana in the spring of 1894 with bad intentions. He made the trek into Yellowstone’s Pelican Valley with almost 200 pounds of supplies on a 10-foot handmade toboggan. His mission was to kill whatever bison he could find amongst the park’s tiny herd and cash them in with taxidermists in the area for $300 apiece. He managed to accomplish half the feat.
The foray was short-circuited by veteran U.S. Cavalry Scout Officer, Felix Burgess, who was on winter patrol in the area. After hearing six rifle shots ring out across a break in the timber, Burgess managed to evade the keen nose of Howell’s dog and followed a ditch in the landscape to capture the poacher while he skinned one of the five slain animals. Prisoner Howell was promptly hauled off to Fort Yellowstone. However, at the time, such egregious acts had not yet been codified and Howell suffered only the indignity of expulsion from the park. One could argue, though, that what came of this unsatisfactory outcome next was one of the most consequential events in modern conservation history.
Upon confiscating Howell’s plunder from his teepee basecamp and the nearby frigid, bloodstained meadow, U.S. Cavalry officers took the spoils back to Park headquarters. There, by chance, was the well-known journalist Emerson Hough, on assignment for Forest & Stream editor, and acclaimed naturalist George Bird Grinnell. Hough’s ensuing article describing the arrest, along with Yellowstone Park photographer F. Jay Haynes’ image of stoic officers posed behind the heads of eight park buffalo, were quickly published for a shocked nation to see. Within six weeks, the political heft of Grinnell and his buddy, Public Service Commissioner Theodore Roosevelt, prompted Congress to pass the first of two pieces of legislation that would become known as the Lacey Act, aiming to “protect the birds and animals in Yellowstone National Park, and to punish crimes in said park, and for other purposes” and enshrining the notion that “the immensity of man’s power to destroy imposes a responsibility to preserve.”
Prior to that cathartic national conservation moment, 400 years of obscene imperialistic wildlife exploitation in North America had led to millions of years of evolution toppling like Jenga sticks. Society had previously held notions that grotesque post-colonization losses of native wildlife were an inevitable consequence of an increasingly “civilized” country and merely collateral damage of modern times.

The North American Model of Wildlife Conservation
Today, wildlife is no longer viewed as inexhaustible. The Lacey Act spawned state-based regulations that now govern hunting seasons and bag limits across the country. It also prompted passage of Pittman-Robertson (1937) and Dingell-Johnson Acts (1951) which have channeled over $25 billion in federal excise taxes on sporting goods to the US Fish & Wildlife Service (USFWS), funding state management of fish and game species. When combined with funds from tag and license purchases, hunters and anglers have been part of meaningful conservation successes and helped establish a system that has restored and stabilized certain populations of wildlife that are now legally and sustainably managed. The structure has also been effective in reintroducing and expanding ranges of game animals and has helped preserve big chunks of habitat.
In 2001, wildlife professionals paired the two pillars of sustainable funding sources and strictly enforced game regulations, to describe a set of seven interrelated conservation principles, known as the “North American Model of Wildlife Conservation.” This model intended to provide an ethical framework for managers and hunters to abide by. Many ideas trace back to concepts in the Lacey Act. Among them are “wildlife resources are conserved and held in trust for all citizens” and “wildlife is allocated according to democratic rule of law.”

However, the vast majority of North American native wildlife species—95% or more—aren’t pursued by sportsmen and women. Take for instance the Monarch butterfly, recently proposed to be added to the Endangered Species List by the USFWS, which has declined by more than 95% in the last 40 years. While the current management system has been highly effective in conserving the 2% of native species that are hunted and fished, conservation successes have not yet translated to equitable management of nongame species like the Monarch. Nongame species comprise more than 95% of Idaho’s wildlife, yet less than 3% of Idaho Department of Fish and Game’s budget is assigned to these species. Legacy legislation and the North American Model weren’t intended to address the perilous landscape animals now face or to generate the funding required to ensure all native wildlife species can thrive. We need to find solutions that protect ALL wildlife—game and nongame species alike.
Threats to game species—such as market hunting and indiscriminate attitudes about the taking of wildlife—ultimately gave rise to watershed conservation laws that stabilized populations and instilled a conservation ethic among sportsmen. However, reasonable harvest limits and prevention of wasteful exploitation were essentially arithmetic problems that could be solved through adjusting hunting limits. Threats now posed to wildlife from climate change and habitat fragmentation are more complicated— closer to an exercise in quantum physics or string theory.
While thankful for stewardship ushered in by the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation, more than 50 years of conservation work in Idaho has led ICL to recognize that the management and funding model that emerged since passage of the Lacey Act of 1900 is inadequate in light of current threats facing ALL native wildlife species. The “Model” needs to be reimagined.

Threats are MUCH bigger now
Significant population declines in all sorts of wildlife—mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles, fish, insects—are a result of ecosystem stressors that weren’t a conservation issue in the formative days of Lacey. System glitches from climate change can lead to compromised pollination cycles, increased disease, genetic bottlenecks, and proliferation of invasive species. Loss of habitat and fragmented landscapes are now regarded as the greatest threat to species diversity—both here in Idaho and globally. 50% of wetlands have disappeared and 75% of native vegetation in big swaths of the country is gone.
Given these increased threats to Idaho’s native species, we must make management decisions to ensure wildlife populations and habitats are resilient and diverse—where each plant or animal’s role can be fulfilled into the future. To persist, wildlife species must be able to withstand both modest and catastrophic disturbances as well as maintain long-term adaptive potential as a population. For instance, researchers have found that wildlife in Idaho is, on average, moving 11 miles further north and 36 feet higher in elevation each decade to cope with climate-induced habitat changes. What happens when there’s nowhere left to go?
Wildlife managers must now look at ecosystems and the critters that occupy them more holistically. This starts with addressing food, cover, and water needs. We must conserve swaths of healthy, connected lands and waters. We can take proactive management actions that make the human/wildlife interface more friendly, providing connectivity or “stepping stones” for dispersal between populations. We can build and retrofit roadway infrastructure to make highways more friendly for wildlife and people alike.

Threats to wildlife also affect the human species—especially Idahoans. Our communities are highly dependent on wildlife to fulfill our ways of life, provide for our physical, mental and emotional health, and sustain our traditions.
To address landscape-level threats, we must build an equitable wildlife funding structure that accommodates for the needs of both game and nongame species. This will strengthen the best parts of the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation—including the idea that wildlife is a PUBLIC TRUST resource. What does that exactly mean? Idaho statute proclaims “wildlife resources are managed in trust by the respective states for the benefit of all their residents and visitors.” However, a relatively small percentage of public opinions have tended to dominate the conversation when it comes to IDFG decision-making. This also needs to evolve. Discussions of how to address large-scale threats must now involve a wider diversity of voices. Wildlife enthusiasts of all stripes must act collectively to address high stakes conservation challenges through collaboration and trust.

The 2012 Idaho Wildlife Summit was a good-faith attempt by IDFG to embark on this exact journey, but was quickly squelched by special interests that were fearful of change. ICL is hopeful that innovative discussions like this are no longer taboo.
The fact remains that wildlife is encountering an entirely new landscape compared to the days of Lacey, Grinnell, and Roosevelt. We now must reimagine wildlife management, policymaking, and funding to grow a larger conservation “pie” and ensure that decision-making is responsive to current threats facing all of Idaho’s native wildlife. This is the urgent conservation challenge we face.
Thankfully, acts like Edgar Howell’s burglary of Yellowstone bison from the American people are now generally treated with the gravity they deserve. Common-sense legislation now serves as a conservation backstop to safeguard against blatant exploitation of game species and wide-scale, indiscriminate abuses of the past. Now, it’s time to build on that bedrock and reimagine our nation’s wildlife management structure. The risk is not going back to the days of Howell. Rather, it’s ignoring the fact that, just as wildlife must inevitably adapt to a changing landscape, so must managers who are charged with being custodians of that public resource.