Group Targets Hunting with Hounds in Arizona

On Nov. 25, 2024, the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD)—a Tucson, Ariz.-based group with a long history of anti-hunting initiatives and litigation—delivered a 17-page petition to the Arizona Game and Fish Commission, asking it to, “…ban the use of dog packs to hunt mountain lions, bears, bobcats, foxes and other wildlife.” Representatives from the Sierra Club Grand Canyon Chapter and the Mountain Lion Foundation spoke out in support the proposal.

Bear and mountain lion hunting would feel the impact most, although the ability to use dogs in pursuit of rabbits, squirrels, predators and fur-bearing animals would also be curtailed should the proposal be adopted. The petition includes language that specifically exempts bird-hunting dogs and depredation hunts with hounds operating under proper permits.

The proposal never even came to a vote. To qualify for consideration by the Arizona Game and Fish Commission, each proposal must request a change to a single regulation. CBD’s Nov. 25 treatise covered two, precluding it from deliberation.

State officials, however, fully expect modification of the document into two and resubmission this year. Arizona has been a hotbed for animal extremist initiatives and lawsuits, many of them citing the need to protect endangered species in the state, which include the California condor and reintroduced wolves.

November’s petition cites the confirmed sighting of seven jaguars—in 30 years—as a primary motivating factor for changing the state’s hunting rules. Ironically, home range for those big cats is in Mexico. One ventures north and across the border at about the same rate as the United States holds a Presidential election and their median population in the state, monthly is zero.

Arizona’s history of animal rights-fueled voter initiatives and petitions stretches back decades. In 1992 Proposition 200, for example, an anti-trapping measure with language so imprecise that a liberal court could interpret it as affecting hunting and fish, was soundly defeated by voters. Two years later, however, Proposition 201—a ban on snares, certain traps and poison on public land, was victorious in the polls. That history indicates if CBD doesn’t secure a win with the Arizona Game and Fish Commission this year, voters will decide the outcome in 2026.

Ballot-box biology isn’t always victorious, however. Voters in Colorado defeated what would have been a ban on mountain lion hunting and bobcat trapping last November.

For more on the story, keep checking back on americanhunter.org.