By BEN NEARY
NMWF Conservation Director
SOCORRO – The New Mexico State Game Commission voted Friday to get legal advice about whether its system of allocating bighorn sheep tags follows the law.
For years, the game commission has manipulated its definition of “hunt code” to sidestep the state’s license quota law to make sure that nonresident hunters and hunters who retain an outfitter are able to draw bighorn sheep tags that otherwise would go to resident hunters.
The New Mexico Wildlife Federation and other conservation groups have pushed for the commission to honor the legal definition of a hunt code for bighorn the same as they do for every other species. The groups suggest that if the quota law presents a problem, the New Mexico State Legislature should change it rather than have the game commission ignore it.
“It’s completely inappropriate and likely illegal to ignore the definition of a hunt code as is currently being done for bighorn sheep,” Jesse Deubel, executive director of the New Mexico Wildlife Federation, told the commission on Friday.
“If this commission and department wants to change the definition of a hunt code, then I suggest they go to the state Legislature and do that,” Deubel said. “Until then, abiding by the current definition, it makes sense to stop lumping different hunts together under one code, which I suggest is not consistent with the way we define hunt code and the way that other species in the state are managed.”
New Mexico’s quota law specifies that residents must receive a minimum of 84 percent of the tags for each hunt. The law reserves 10 percent for residents or nonresidents who have contracted with an outfitter and 6 percent for nonresidents who haven’t contracted with an outfitter.
In order to have enough tags to give New Mexico residents the required minimum of 84 percent and still have a tag left over for an outfitted hunter, a specific hunt must have a minimum of seven tags. And in order to give a tag to a nonresident hunter who hasn’t contracted with an outfitter, a hunt must have at least 13 tags.
For all other species, New Mexico uses the term “hunt code” to mean a single hunt in a single place at a given time.
State law defines “hunt code” as being a description used to identify and define the species, weapon type and time frame authorized for a specific hunt.
But the commission classifies all Rocky Mountain bighorn ram tags as being in a single hunt code and classifies all desert bighorn ram tags as being in another, separate hunt code. The sheep populations are spread out in small groups separated in some cases by hundreds of miles. The various hunts within the single “hunt codes” also happen at different months of the year.
Pooling the bighorn tags together brings the number of tags in each so-called hunt code that the game commission can claim to be following the quota law even as it allocates some of the small number of tags to outfitted and nonresident hunters.
Without counting all the sheep tags under single hunt codes, outfitted hunters and nonresidents wouldn’t draw tags. The Pecos area, for example, offers five ram tags in the first hunt this fall.
Brandon Wynn, an Albuquerque hunter who has taken bighorn sheep in several states in the West, told the commission that a federal law went into effect in 2005 that would have allowed New Mexico to impose a quota limiting the number of sheep tags that went to non-residents. Nonetheless, he said the game commission refused to act until 2012, when nonresidents drew 15 out of 16 desert bighorn tags the first year they became available.
Once the quota system was applied to sheep, Wynn said the commission acted quickly to adopt the current manipulated definition of a hunt code for the species to make sure that nonresidents and outfitted hunters weren’t entirely cut off.
During the eight years that the game commission had authority to impose a quota but failed to do so, Wynn said New Mexico unnecessarily gave away 63 extra sheep tags that should have gone to resident hunters.
“It’s an emergency when a nonresident is not going to get a tag,” Wynn said of the commission’s perspective. “So what they did was this disaster we have now, where you have all the Rocky Mountain rams and desert bighorn rams lumped together.”
Kerrie Cox Romero, executive director of the New Mexico Council of Outfitters and Guides, said the debate of residents versus nonresidents versus outfitted hunters doesn’t hold water for bighorn sheep. She said more resident hunters book with outfitters for bighorn sheep than for any other species.
“Over 50 percent, close to 80 percent some years, resident hunters book with outfitters,” Romero said. “So when we’re trying to divide the resident and nonresident and the outfitters, it doesn’t work for bighorn sheep.”
Romero encouraged the commission to maintain the current process for bighorn permits. “We disagree with the allegation that this process is somehow contrary to the statute,” she said.
Romero said the current draw process for bighorn sheep differs from other big game species, “and yes, it was done to provide nonresident hunters with opportunity in the draw.”
Romero said the current system makes sense because there are fewer bighorn sheep permits than any other big game species. And she said nonresident hunters have funded over 95 percent of the bighorn sheep program since the program began over 20 years ago.
“So while we can stand here and debate wealth and equity the fact is there would be no huntable populations of bighorn sheep in New Mexico without the financial contributions of nonresident hunters,” Romero said.
Commissioner Roberta Salazar-Henry, said she’s been inundated by statements of concern from hunters about the process that’s being used to draw bighorn sheep tags.
Salazar-Henry said the current system was devised by the game commission under previous New Mexico Gov. Susanna Martinez in order not to have to apply the state’s quota law the way it was intended and to allow nonresident hunting opportunity.
“I fully support nonresident hunting opportunities,” Salazar-Henry said, adding that she acknowledges that auction tags and lottery tags have provided critical financial support for the state’s sheep program.
However, Salazar-Henry said she doesn’t agree with the back and forth between people who think the game commission should ignore the legal definition of a hunt code.
“The reason I’m saying that is we just left the Supreme Court which told us that we need to follow the law,” Salazar-Henry said.
The New Mexico Supreme Court earlier this week ruled in favor of the NMWF and other groups that mounted a legal challenge to a game commission program that had granted certificates to private landowners purporting to allow them to exclude the public from rivers and streams that cross their lands. The court ruled the program was unconstitutional and ruled that certificates the commission had granted under it are void.
The commission on Friday agreed with Salazar-Henry’s suggestion that the commission get an informal legal opinion from the New Mexico Attorney General’s Office about the legality of classifying all the Rocky Mountain and desert bighorn tags together as single hunt codes.
In other action, the commission voted to retain Commissioner Sharon Salazar Hickey as chair and voted to name Commissioner Jimmy Bates as vice chair.
John Crenshaw, president of the board of NMWF, told the commission that the group welcomes newly appointed Commissioner Deana Archuleta.
Archuleta started attending commission meetings this week. Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham recently appointed her to fill the seat vacated by the death last spring of former Commissioner David Soules.
In introductory remarks, Archuleta said she grew up fishing in New Mexico but is not a hunter. She said her family history in the state goes back for centuries.
Archuleta worked as an adviser in the U.S. Interior Department during the Obama Administration. For the past three years, she has worked as a government relations manager for Exxon-Mobil, currently working in Washington, D.C.
Joel Gay, policy chair with the New Mexico Chapter of Backcountry Hunters & Anglers, told the commission that his group is deeply disappointed that Lujan Grisham has again named a person with no record of wildlife management experience to the game commission.
“While we understand that every new commissioner goes through a learning curve, they should not start from zero,” Gay said.
Stewart Liley, head of wildlife management with the game department, briefed commissioners on a range of initiatives, including efforts to update hunting regulations for javelina, pronghorn and migratory birds.
Liley said the game department would like to allocate more money into its “Open Gate Program” which pays landowners to allow hunters access to hunting and fishing properties. He said the program has sat at about $200,000 a year but that he would like to see it increase to about $1 million a year – a figure he said could see increased big game hunting opportunities.
The game department undertakes a review of its big game hunting regulations every four years. Liley said the commission is set to begin its review of elk and deer at its meeting April 11 in Santa Fe.
Matt Wunder, chief of the NMDGF Ecological and Environmental Planning Division, briefed the commission on the Wildlife Corridors Action Plan. The public has until March 12 to comment on the plan, developed by the New Mexico Department of Transportation in partnership with the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish.
The plan identifies wildlife-vehicle collision hotspots that pose a particularly high risk to the traveling public. Using ecological data and modeling, it also identifies wildlife corridors that bisect roads and provides a list of priority projects based on the results of the plan’s analysis.
The plan focuses primarily on the movements of six large mammals: elk, deer, pronghorn, bighorn sheep, black bear and mountain lion.
The NMWF is hosting a conference on the issue of protecting wildlife corridors. The event is from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., March 24 and 25 in Albuquerque. Interested parties in the event as it’s livestreamed on the Internet. For more information, please contact the NMWF at nmwildlife@nmwildlife.org or call 505-417-3518.