By BEN NEARY
NMWF Conservation Director
The New Mexico State Game Commission is preparing to develop a new four-year rule governing public land elk hunting while ignoring a recent legislative audit that recommended overhauling the “EPLUS” licensing system that funnels nearly 40 percent of the state’s elk licenses to private landowners.
The game commission has scheduled the first of three hearings on the statewide Elk Rule for April 11 and plans to get the final rule in place by the end of the year. The rule will specify hunt dates and the number of licenses to be issued through the public lottery process in each hunt area for the next four years.
However, Game Commission Chair Sharon Salazar Hickey said at the March 5 commission meeting in Socorro that the commission won’t consider changes to the commission’s “Elk Private Land Use System” rule – commonly known as “EPLUS.”
Under EPLUS, the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish issues permit authorizations to private landowners who have properties in elk habitat. Landowners commonly sell the authorizations for thousands of dollars to hunters. Some authorizations limit hunting to the landowner’s private property but others allow hunting anywhere in a game management unit, including on public lands.
In cases where hunters hunt public lands with a unit-wide permit they’ve purchased through the EPLUS system, they compete for elk meat and trophies with state residents who have drawn elk licenses through the public license draw system.
In late 2020, the state’s nonpartisan Legislative Finance Committee staff recommended that the game commission make sweeping changes to EPLUS to bring elk management in the state in line with neighboring states that commonly reserve 90 percent of all elk licenses for state residents.
“Game and Fish takes great effort to set hunt levels for big game in a way that sustains herds; however, landowners and out-of-state hunters, not New Mexicans and public land hunters, are the beneficiaries of department policies,” the LFC audit report states.
The LFC audit prompted Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., to write to game commissioners in 2020 urging them to act to reform EPLUS.
“Each year, the so-called ‘EPLUS’ program takes thousands of opportunities to hunt elk on our public lands away from average hunters and instead gives these public land hunting opportunities to the wealthiest few,” Heinrich wrote.
The New Mexico Wildlife Federation and other conservation groups have been pushing for years to reform the “EPLUS” system.
“The North American Model of Wildlife Management states that hunting opportunities must be allocated fairly and that wildlife belongs to everyone – not only the wealthy,” said Jesse Deubel, executive director of the NMWF. “For too long, the game commission has allowed private landowners to privatize and monetize the public’s wildlife. This game commission needs to put a stop to it, and that means EPLUS needs to be on the table during this rule update.”
Deubel and other staffers with the NMWF have briefed New Mexico Attorney General Hector Balderas and members of his Equity Advisory Council about their concerns with the EPLUS system.
Deubel encouraged New Mexico hunters to contact game commissioners and the governor’s office and demand that the commission address the inequities in the EPLUS system. “The New Mexico public owns the wildlife,” he said. “We need to demand better of our public servants.”
State law requires that 84 percent of the hunting licenses allocated through the state’s annual public draw process go to New Mexico residents. It reserves 10 percent to hunters – either resident or nonresident – who retain an outfitter and reserves 6 percent to nonresident hunters. However, those restrictions don’t apply to tags sold through EPLUS.
The LFC audit found that In 2019, 76 percent of landowner vouchers in the state’s primary elk management zone were converted into nonresident licenses. “The EPLUS program overwhelmingly benefits out-of-state hunters,” the audit states, adding that this in turn benefits the game department because nonresident hunters pay more for licenses.
“Accounting for both the public and private systems, in-state residents purchased 74 percent of the elk licenses issued from 2017 to 2019, nonresidents purchased 21 percent, and hunters with outfitter contracts purchased 5 percent,” the LFC stated. “This seems to go against the legislative intent that 84 percent of available licenses be offered to New Mexico residents and puts the state in contrast with some of its other western neighbors that cap the number of nonresident tags at 10 percent, including Montana and Arizona.”
Speaking at the March 4 commission meeting in Socorro,
Albuquerque hunter Brandon Wynn asked commissioners to open the EPLUS rule as it considers statewide elk management.
“In doing this, I don’t think you’re getting all the information you need,” Wynn told commissioners. He said he’s been stymied for years in trying to get concrete information from the game department about the allocation of elk permits.
“I think the commission, to make responsible public trust decisions, you need the information,” Wynn said. “Who really is getting to hunt in New Mexico? Is it people who have the money to pay, or is it some kid who lives in Northern New Mexico or down in Quemado? Well, I can answer that for you. Up to half the time, for different species in different places, it’s people that have a lot of money that don’t live here. And I think that as public trust officers, you have a duty to at least know what you’ve created and what you’re doing.”
Wynn told the commissioners he has heard that they are under orders from Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham not to cause any controversy.
“That’s just not right,” Wynn said. “Status quo can be just as controversial as attacking the issue that’s in front of you. I think the public is getting more aware, and we’re going to show up, right? So it would be controversial to sweep it under the rug.”
Commission Salazar Hickey responded that she has no intention of opening the commission’s EPLUS rule for revision while the commission updates the general elk rule this year.
Salazar Hickey said she believes it’s important that the game commission listen to public concerns. “But what I am concerned about is prioritization and strategic planning,” she said, noting that the game department staff didn’t have EPLUS on its list of rules to be updated.
“So, that said, at this point in time, I see no need to change this schedule,” Salazar Hickey said. “But I don’t want to shut things down in communications. So, commissioners, I’m going to ask that each of us continue to be very receptive to these kinds of discussions.”
Gov. Lujan Grisham in January removed Jeremy Vesbach from the game commission a year before his term would have officially ended. Before his removal, he was serving as vice chair and also served on the commission’s “Hunt Structure Committee.” The committee was charged with looking at the state’s allocation of hunting licenses for elk and other species. After Vesbach’s removal, Salazar Hickey terminated the committee.
Vesbach said the committee had included himself, former Commissioner David Soules, who died last year, and Commissioner Roberta Salazar-Henry. Vesbach said the committee’s work was focusing on the allocation of tags
for elk and antelope – two species for which residents commonly get less than 75 percent of the tags.
Salazar-Henry declined comment after the commission meeting on Salazar Hickey’s statement that the commission wouldn’t address EPLUS. While the commission updates its general hunting rules every four years, EPLUS is classified as a permanent rule and would require the commission to take action to change it.
“We really wanted to look at what were ways that we could move elk back up to that 80 percent area that other species were at,” Vesbach said of the committee’s mission. “That’s about as far as it got. We wanted to do public outreach, but it got shut down. So the chair (Salazar Hickey) doesn’t want to hear from people about how they’d like to look at improving resident allocation.”
Vesbach noted that Lujan Grisham had stated during her first gubernatorial campaign four years ago that the number of hunting tags going to residents was too low. “It’s time for hunters to speak up and hold her feet to the fire,” he said, adding they should insist that she take concrete action to follow through on her campaign promises.
Vesbach said hunters should realize that they can have a real effect on issues when they contact game commissioners and other elected officials and make themselves heard.
Vesbach said he had focused on how the EPLUS system affects hunting on public lands in New Mexico. “There’s a lot of private land and people who have the desire and the financial resources to just go and buy a $10,000 landowner tag every year, they can go hunt on private land anywhere in the West. There’s lots of opportunity,” he said.
Between EPLUS tags that are sold to hunters who use them on public land and the 10 percent of the public draw tags that go to hunters who can afford to retain an outfitter, Vesbach said 20 percent of New Mexico’s public land bull elk tags every year are going to hunters who can afford to buy their way to the front of the line.
“One in five hunters pursuing a bull elk on public lands in New Mexico bought that license and did not have to go through the draw,” Vesbach said. “They were able to just buy their way to the head of the line. I think that most people when they look at it without some sort of financial interest are thinking, ‘that’s not what public lands are supposed to be about. It’s not right for public land.’”
There’s no way to address the larger issue of managing elk hunting in New Mexico without addressing EPLUS, Vesbach said.
“There’s a very vocal contingent that does not want to touch it, from people who are financially benefiting from it,” Vesbach said of EPLUS. “But I think it’s just important to hold that conversation about it, to hear from people as a whole and you can’t do that without opening EPLUS. The Elk Rule is just how many elk you harvest and where. EPLUS is how those licenses are divided between resalable permits for public land, draw permits for public lands. EPLUS is where you get at that.”
Vesbach said the LFC audit made it clear that New Mexico has a real problem with the EPLUS system.
“Where the conversation goes off track is that people who are financially invested in this and are scared of losing the kind of subsidy they’re getting now will make it sound like this is somehow about private lands,” Vesbach said. “It’s really about public land and equal access to hunt on public land. We were narrowing in on how we improve public land opportunity for residents, because that’s where elk was really out of whack.”
Vesbach said the current system also hurts nonresident hunters who don’t hire outfitters.
“Everybody’s getting squeezed to try to put the very wealthiest at the head of the line,” Vesbach said. “And they’re already at the head of the line for private land across the West. So why they need to be at the head of the line for New Mexico’s public land too? That’s a question we all just need to ask ourselves: do we really need to bend over backward in these systems to put the wealthiest people in the country at the head of the line to hunt New Mexico’s public lands?”