In Wyoming, landowners receive big-game hunting tags to help maintain wildlife habitat and wildlife managment goals on their property. That’s nothing new. What is new is what they might be able to do with those tags if an introduced bill passes the state legislature. Senate Bill 118, which is being spearheaded by a newly elected legislator, aims to make those tags transferrable, meaning landowners could sell them to whoever they wanted.
“This is a step too far,” Wyoming Wildlife Federation government affairs director Jess Johnson told Outdoor Life Monday during a break between legislative sessions. “This is a step in the wrong cultural direction for sportsmen. We cannot let this go through.”
Under Wyoming’s current allocation system, landowners are eligible for a pair of draw-only tags — including two each for elk, deer, pronghorn, and turkey — for every 160 acres they own. This 160-acre minimum was also the standard used for Western homesteaders in the late 1800s under the Homestead Act, so it’s still a common parcel size today.
Those landowners must also prove that wildlife inhabit and utilize their properties. For a wild herd of elk, that amounts to a minimum of 500 elk on the property for at least four days a year. Legislators who support the bill (some of whom are large landowners themselves) say that making tags transferrable can help ranchers diversify their income streams during tough times. The current bill does not mention any caps on the amount those tags could go for.
“Ranchers are hurting right now,” Laura Pearson, a Wyoming Senator and sheep rancher based in Kemmerer, told WyoFile. “It’d give ranchers and farmers the ability to sell or give those tags to whomever we want.”
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In an interview with Cowboy State Daily, executive vice president of Wyoming Stock Growers Association Jim Magnana said the group supports the idea of giving landowners more options for their tags.
“But it’s a complex issue,” he acknowledged. “And there needs to be some work on the details.”
The bill in its current form designates Wyoming Game and Fish Commission as the governing entity for the new landowner tag resale program. But Johnson said that in a surprise move on Jan. 23, the bill hopped committees, moving from the Travel, Recreation, Wildlife and Cultural Resources Committee to the Agriculture, State and Public Lands and Water Resources Committee.
“I’m incredibly worried about it. Most of the time our wildlife and hunting bills go through our Wildlife Committee, but this bill was re-routed to ag,” Johnson explained. “I hope landowners with tags in the legislature recuse themselves from the vote because it is such a conflict of interest. If this passes there will be areas in this state that go almost entirely to landowners [with no limited draw tags left for the public.]”
The proposed legislation also comes amid a larger push for transferrable landowner tags in the West and other states. This worries everyday hunters, who say the practice is essentially privatizing the public’s wildlife. They point to a state like New Mexico, where elk tags are sold by landowners to the highest bidders and can fetch up to $12,000, as proof of their concerns. And they say the recent Senate bill in Wyoming is an attempt to drive a wedge between the two most vocal, and sizable, constituencies in the Cowboy State.
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“Most of the time agriculture and sportsmen get along really well. Sportsmen know ag helps the creatures we love here,” Johnson said. “That said, landowner tag transfer is such a decisive issue here that many in ag also view it as an issue that further separates sportsmen from ag in a time when we are trying to make sure our working landscapes continue in the future.”
The Wyoming Game and Fish Department issued 3,507 landowner licenses statewide last year at $39 apiece, according to a fiscal note accompanying the bill, which doesn’t mention for which species or how many applications WGFD received. But Johnson says that if the bill passes, that number is likely to go way up.
“A lot of landowners don’t hunt, but if you put a monetary value on this, that’s going to incentivize landowners to put in.”
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