A petition to ban all hunting in Oregon is getting close to making this year’s ballot. Proponents of the PEACE Act (an acronym for “People for the Elimination of Animal Cruelty Exemptions Act”) are reporting they have amassed about 100,000 of the 117,173 signatures needed for the petition to make the November ballot.
To account for a certain number of invalid signatures, they will likely need to gather well over the 117,173 minimum by the July 2 deadline, but the momentum since last fall indicates the anti-hunting money behind this effort will get it on the ballot.
The initiative petition process is part of the democratic system in Oregon; actually, about half the states have some variation of this process. Contributors to the push for signatures for this petition include the Portland, Ore., anti-hunting group End Animal Cruelty.
So, what is this thing exactly?
According to the petition, “The purpose of the People for the Elimination of Animal Cruelty Exemptions (PEACE) Act is to remove the current exemptions that allow for the inhumane and unnecessary abuse, neglect, and assault of animals.”
This “inhumane and unnecessary abuse, neglect, and assault of animals” would include hunting.
Oddly (or ironically), the petition makes this exception: “A person commits the crime of animal abuse in the second degree if, except as [otherwise authorized by law] necessary to defend against the threat of immediate harm to oneself, to other humans, or to other animals, the person intentionally, knowingly or recklessly causes physical injury to an animal.”
So then, a person could shoot a cougar, for example, to stop it from killing and eating a deer?
The petition argues that Oregon has statutes outlawing animal cruelty, but that there are exemptions to permit the intentional killing of animals in many contexts (such as on farms, in research labs and by hunters and fishermen). To change this, this petition would remove these exemptions. This would effectively ban all hunting—and ranching. Indeed, even pet ownership would become extremely onerous in Oregon, as this petition lists requirements for outdoor access and much more—would a cat in an apartment be okay?
By eliminating these so-called animal-cruelty exemptions, any hunter who, say, shoots a duck, rabbit or deer would find themselves facing the same criminal statutes that are currently used to prosecute people who harm pets.
“We really want to make Oregon the first state to vote on something like this,” David Michelson, the PEACE Act’s chief petitioner, told KOIN 6 News. “We are aware that it’s unlikely 50 percent of Oregonians are ready right now to move away from killing animals. But we want to get that conversation out there.”
KOIN pushed Michelson to acknowledge the need for wildlife management, such as for “controlling the proliferation of invasive species or pests.”
Michelson countered by saying he thinks there are non-lethal ways of controlling wildlife populations, such as “the introduction of sterile males into a population.”
As for all the rural communities that would be impacted by hunting and fishing bans, the impacts on ranchers, dog breeders and more, well, says Michelson, the PEACE Act would help pay for food assistance for them—vegetarian options perhaps … but then, locally grown vegetables would become more expensive as farmers deal with wildlife populations they can’t control.
