Wyoming's delegation blasts draft Congressional ban on killing wildlife with snowmobiles

By Billy Arnold

Jackson Hole News&Guide

Via Wyoming News Exchange

JACKSON — Two of Wyoming’s three Republican representatives in Washington, D.C., quickly decried a bipartisan bill introduced Thursday that would make it a crime to kill wildlife with motor vehicles on some federal lands.

“The SAW Act is poorly thought-out legislation pushed by radical activists and sponsored by Members of Congress who have minimal to nonexistent federal land, snow, or wolves in their district,” Rep. Harriet Hageman said in a prepared statement. “Our western issues and way of life is completely foreign to them.”

While Sen. Cynthia Lummis, like Hageman, criticized the bill, Sen. John Barrasso is waiting to weigh in.

“Senator Barrasso will review the details of the bill if it’s officially introduced in the U.S. Senate,” his communication director, Laura Mengelkamp, told the Jackson Hole Daily on Thursday.

Rep. Nancy Mace, a South Carolina Republican from the Charleston area, sponsored the bill, dubbed the Snowmobiles Aren’t Weapons Act, or the SAW Act.

“Our federal lands are not battlegrounds for reckless and belligerent behavior,” Mace said in a statement provided by her office Thursday. “This bill will preserve the safety and beauty of our natural spaces and ensure wildlife can thrive without the threat of harm from motor vehicles.”

The SAW Act would make it illegal to “intentionally” use a motor vehicle to “run over, strike, or kill a wild animal” on public land with exceptions for wildlife management and avoiding injury or property damage. 

A person found guilty of doing so could be fined up to $5,000 and imprisoned for no more than a year.

As written, the bill applies only to federal land managed by the Department of the Interior, not national forests managed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Wayne Pacelle, the president of Animal Wellness Action and the Center for a Humane Economy, said that’s an error and will be fixed.

Pacelle has spent months lobbying Congress to pass the bill. He worked with Mace’s office and said three other representatives will co-sponsor the bill: Don Davis, D-North Carolina; Matt Gaetz, R-Florida.; and Troy Carter, D-Louisiana. Though Mace and Davis were scheduled to speak at a Thursday press conference, neither showed up. Mace’s and Davis’ offices confirmed they are co-sponsors. Gaetz and Carter couldn’t be reached Thursday.

In May, representatives from the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management said that they have no wildlife management authority and that reform efforts must come from the states. Traditionally, unless wildlife is protected under the Endangered Species Act, states manage their wild inhabitants.

But Elaine Leslie, a former chief of biological services for the National Park Service, said there’s flexibility.

“We know that the Forest Service and BLM have abrogated their wildlife management authorities to the state, but there are other things that those agencies can do, and certainly regulating the use of snowmobiles can be one of those,” she said in the Thursday press conference Pacelle organized.

In late February, Daniel resident Cody Roberts captured a wolf in Wyoming’s “predator zone” — the 85% of Wyoming where wolf hunting is not regulated, and wolves can be killed with no limit — brought it into his residence and later into a bar, details that Wyoming Game and Fish has confirmed.

Subsequent reporting from WyoFile and the Cowboy State Daily, however, alleged that Roberts ran the animal over with his snowmobile and disabled it before parading it around. A photo surfaced showing Roberts with the wolf, its mouth duct taped shut. A separate video shows him kissing the wolf. Another video from the Game and Fish investigation shows the wolf shock collared, muzzled and leashed, lying on the floor.

The incident spurred international outrage and calls for Wyoming to reform policies that allowed Roberts to get off with a $250 fine. 

Running “predators” over with a snowmobile is currently legal.

But last week, Wyoming officials tasked with revisiting state laws around animal cruelty and predator management opted out of endorsing legislation that would ban people from killing predators with snowmobiles. Instead, they moved to officially protect the practice, known as “coyote whacking.”

The SAW Act’s introduction was also a response to a Wyoming committee’s recommendation to specifically allow people to run over predators with snowmobiles — as long as they kill them quickly.

Pacelle was originally talking with Rep. Troy Nehls, R-Texas, about sponsoring the legislation but said Nehls backed out after hearing from industry groups opposed to the proposal. That’s part of why introducing a bill took longer than expected, Pacelle told reporters. But the committee’s move spurred introduction.

“The trigger was the insufficient action by the advisory group,” he said. “That last proceeding did not instill confidence in us that it was going to be handled with thoroughness by the state of Wyoming.”

Leslie, the former National Park Service official, said the committee’s current proposal is unenforceable.

“The best we can hope for is federal action that eliminates this behavior. Period,” she said Thursday. “The Wyoming Legislature really doesn’t have the means of enforcing what they’re putting in that draft bill.”

This story was published on September 13, 2024.