Pre-election ploy: U.S. animal advocacy groups don’t say a peep about it
WASHINGTON D.C.––The Department of the Interior on August 13, 2026 announced “the largest expansion of hunting and sport fishing opportunities in the history of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.
“With this action,” the Department of the Interior crowed in a media release, “more than 92 million acres, or over 95% of National Wildlife Refuge System lands, are available for hunting.”
As shocking as that should have been to most of the public, who still tend to believe that National Wildlife Refuges are federally protected safe spaces for wild animals, including fish and birds, more shocking still should be that five days later, as best ANIMALS 24-7 can tell, not even one animal advocacy organization appears to have denounced in a public manner this giveaway of unprecedented magnitude to the hook-and-bullet subset of the U.S. human population.
Only 4.2% of Americans hunt, but all pay for National Wildlife Refuges
“According to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service’s most recent National Survey of Fishing, Hunting and Wildlife-Associated Recreation,” the Department of the Interior media release mentioned, “more than 39.9 million Americans fish and 14.4 million hunt.”
In other words, only 11.6% of Americans fish, and just 4.2% hunt, about the same number as low-end estimates of vegetarians and high-end estimates of strict vegans.
Moreover, access and user fees paid by National Wildlife Refuge System users, including fishers and hunters, supply less than 1% of the refuge system operating and maintenance budget, now amounting to $522 million per year.
The other 99% comes through Congressional appropriations from the general funds contributed by every U.S. taxpayer.
The bottom line is that the 88.4% of Americans who do not fish, and the 95.8% who do not hunt are subsidizing the special privileges of fishers and hunters on National Wildlife Refuges nominally owned and paid for by all Americans.
Pittman-Robertson money goes to the states
While fishers and hunters commonly cite the Pittman-Robertson taxes they pay on equipment in claiming that they pay for wildlife conservation, reality is that none of this money goes toward maintaining National Wildlife Refuges. Rather, the Pittman-Robertson funds are distributed to state fish and game agencies.
“In total,” the August 13, 2026 Department of the Interior media release continued, “the final rule will deliver 1,488 new hunting and sport fishing opportunities across 32 states. An ‘opportunity’ is defined as the ability to hunt or fish a specific species at a specific location, providing a clear measure of expanded access across the system.
“The final rule will increase access at 107 national wildlife refuges and four national fish hatcheries. It also includes first-ever hunting or sport fishing opportunities at 14 refuges and three hatcheries.”
Hunting & fishing regulations also loosened
Observed Outdoor Life executive editor Natalie Krebs, “Examples of those brand-new opportunities that were referenced in the draft proposal included opening Grass Lake National Wildlife Refuge to migratory bird, upland game, and big game hunting.
“Grass Lake National Wildlife Refuge is a 4,300-acre complex of wetlands and adjacent prairie in Central Montana that was previously closed to all hunting,” Krebs explained, “largely because it serves as an important migration stop-over for waterfowl.”
The August 13, 2026 Department of the Interior media release went on to stress “a broader effort to simplify and modernize federal regulations,” including “more than 1,000 modifications to existing regulatory provisions, reducing complexity and making it easier for hunters and anglers to understand and comply with applicable rules.”
Translation: rules governing hunting and fishing will be relaxed to ensure that poachers are less often caught.
Krebs of Outdoor Life mentioned concerns about this.
Half of refuges left with no on-site personnel
“Many conservation groups, including Safari Club International,” Krebs wrote, “applauded the expansions when they were detailed this spring. Other groups celebrated the news, but with the caveat that public-land staff reductions and reduced funding will make responsible expansion of hunting opportunities more challenging.”
Backcountry Hunters & Anglers, Krebs remembered, in a May 2026 prepared statement suggested that, “Expanding access to the National Wildlife Refuge System must be matched by meaningful investments in staffing and resources needed to manage these lands and waters effectively.”
The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service under the second Trump administration has lost approximately 20% of its overall workforce, amounting to nearly 1,800 employees, to budget cuts, buyout incentives, and hiring freezes. The National Wildlife Refuge System has reportedly also lost an additional 20% of its personnel to firings and retirements.
More than half of all National Wildlife Wildlife Refuges are now entirely unstaffed on-site.
Which basically means hunting and fishing with little or no risk of illegal hunting or fishing being apprehended by wardens. At those sites, for all practical purposes, there are no wardens.
Only one National Wildlife Refuge visitor in five comes to hunt or fish
The National Wildlife Refuge System, mentioned the Department of the Interior media release, “includes 573 national wildlife refuges and 38 wetland management districts and welcomes 71 million visitors each year,” of whom only 22%––barely more than one in five––comes to recreationally kill animals.
“The final rule will publish in the Federal Register in time for hunting season,” the National Wildlife Refuge System mentioned.
What the Department of the Interior media release did not mention is that “in time for hunting season” also means “just ahead of the November 2026 national elections.”
To be remembered is that this latest Donald Trump administration giveaway of National Wildlife Refuge access to hunters and fishers, the biggest ever, personally announced by Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, comes six years after the second biggest giveaway of National Wildlife Refuge access to hunters and fishers, during the first Donald Trump administration and also approaching a national election.
Trump admin gave away second biggest expansion of National Fish & Wildlife Refuge access to hunters & fishers in 2020
Then-Interior Secretary David Bernhardt and U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service chief Aurelia Skipwith announced what was then the biggest-ever expansion of hunting and fishing access in the 117-year history of U.S. National Wildlife Refuge system on April 8, 2020, early in the primary election sequence leading up to the November 3, 2020 U.S. presidential election.
Bernhardt and Skipwith sought to open 2.3 million acres at 97 National Wildlife Refuges plus nine fish hatcheries.
(See Add to COVID-19 toll expanded hunting on U.S. Wildlife Refuges.)
That did not quite happen. Instead, after Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service under Biden appointee Martha Williams on May 4, 2021 announced a somewhat reduced “proposal for new or expanded hunting and sport fishing opportunities for game species across 2.1 million acres at 90 national wildlife refuges and on the lands of one national fish hatchery.”
Biden administration claimed credit for Trump giveaway
The Biden administration then claimed credit for what had originated as a Trump administration initiative.
The two Trump administration pre-election giveaways to hunters, in 2020 and 2026, continue a quasi-tradition begun by then-U.S. President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, in 2000.
Boosting the unsuccessful effort of then-U.S. vice president Al Gore to succeed him in 2000, Clinton opened 37 National Wildlife Refuges to hunting: more than any previous president.
By the end of the Clinton administration, 311 of the then-540 National Wildlife Refuges (58%) allowed hunting and 280 allowed trapping.
Clinton and Gore hoped to win hunter support in the conservative rural and semi-rural “red” states which form the base of the Republican constituency––especially in the “swing” states of Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.
All remain hunting strongholds, even as hunting participation continues to drop in most of the “blue” states that usually favor Democrats.
Clinton/Gore giveaway to hunters failed to win votes
But the Clinton/Gore ploy failed. Hunters in 2000 overwhelmingly favored the Republican presidential candidate, George W. Bush, a life member of Safari Club International.
Bush and his successor, Barack Obama, continued the election year giveaways, albeit on a lesser scale. By the end of the Obama administration, 321 of 553 National Wildlife Refuges allowed hunting in some form.
The U.S. National Wildlife Refuge system was begun in 1903 as a chain of no-hunting-allowed sanctuaries for declining bird species.
Limited hunting and fishing on some U.S. National Wildlife Refuges began with the Bankhead-Jones Farm Tenant Act of 1937, adopted under Franklin D. Roosevelt, a Democrat.
Trump continued what Dems began, but bigger & faster
Public hunting on National Wildlife Refuges was formally codified as an appropriate secondary use of habitat by the 1966 National Wildlife Refuge Administration Act, adopted during the Lyndon Johnson administration, and then was hugely expanded by the 1997 National Wildlife Refuge Improvement Act, adopted during the Clinton administration.
Catering to hunters was consistent with Democratic political strategy in every presidential election since 1952, when avid hunter Dwight Eisenhower, a Republican, defeated Democratic nominee Adlai Stevenson.
Stevenson was perceived, and portrayed by Republicans, as anti-hunting, because as governor of Illinois he had in 1949 vetoed a bill passed by both houses of the state legislature which would have allowed hunters to shoot cats.
(Beth Clifton collage)
(See Why U.S. Senate Democrats dance with Elmer Fudd & his hunting buddies.)
The two Trump administrations may have all but ended pre-election giveaways of hunting and fishing access to National Wildlife Refuges, simply because with 95% of the system opened to hunting and fishing, and most of the rest geographically remote and inaccessible, there is little left to give away.
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Truly a basket of deplorables, doing what they do best, everywhere they can.
With gratitude for the heads-up and reporting on the lack of reaction by the organizations at least nominally purported to care about the living beings with whom we co-inhabit this land.
As usual, it seems that certain Republicans, especially those who regularly enjoy blood sports have the favored position in this Republican Administration and are receiving all they want which is deeply distressing to all of us environmentalists and animal advocates who deplore such activity.
I am greatly disturbed that the groups that favor conservation and no or limited hunting are not forcibly protesting as I have all my life and thank you for this abhorrent and sober notice.
The desire to slaughter sentient animals for pleasure is beyond my ken and the allowance of same bodes ill for this society as we are already witnessing in many walks of life. Just one more reminder of how cruel is the mindset of our current government.
Sad. So very sad.
This is despicable. And as the article shows, not limited to repugs, as demublicans have also pushed for hunting and fishing in wildlife refuges, against the wishes of most in the u.s. It seems none of them know the definition of “refuge”.
This all goes to show what we all should have learned by now: that BOTH major political parties have no ethics at all and each of them would sell their own mothers to get votes.
What is more disturbing is that even the conservation and animal advocacy organizations have no ethics or backbone. This was obvious to me when not one of these groups spoke out against the mute swan slaughter that California governor Gavin Newsom promoted and signed at the beginning of the year.
What makes no sense to me is how no one is noticing the minimal, dwindling numbers of hunters or cares about the growing number of environmentalists – this just tells me that no political party really cares about “We the People” and CERTAINLY doesn’t give a damn about “Them, the Wildlife.”
Lastly, you mentioned Adlai Stevenson, Democratic candidate for president the year I was born, 1952. I remember years later, in a political discussion with my mother, she said that Stevenson could never have won because ” he was too intelligent and too intellectual.”
Tells you something about the American public, doesn’t it?
Environmental Nonprofits who are keeping the legal pressure on Trump re: wildlife protections in National Forests and Refuges are:
Center for Biological Diversity: Spearheaded direct litigation and legal challenges against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service regarding sport hunting and fishing expansions in national wildlife refuges. [1]
Earthjustice: Frequently partners with or represents allied conservation groups (such as the Sierra Club and Defenders of Wildlife) in broader federal lawsuits challenging administrative rollbacks affecting public lands and endangered species habitats. [1]
Conservation Law Foundation & Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC): Have similarly joined forces in legal challenges targeting executive actions that open protected federal marine monuments and wildlife areas to commercial extraction and fishing. [1]
The history of giving away access to National Wildlife Refuges to hunters and fishermen demonstrates that they are all in it together. This should be front page news. Why on earth haven’t pro wildlife groups been vocal in opposition? My fear, with so many gangs here now from countries like Africa, is that we will see international poachers.
International poaching, in which wealthy European, Middle Eastern, or Asian trophy hunters would fly in, kill an animal, and fly home with the remains almost overnight, was already a sporadic problem in both the U.S. and Canada more than 40 years ago, when as volunteer assistant to a Quebec deputy warden I often heard senior wardens’ war stories about it –– and heard from a couple of trophy game ranchers, too, about their frustration in having to compete for business with hunting guides who took their foreign clients to poach on nominally protected land. Such cases are believed to be in the background in several instances that ANIMALS 24-7 has reported about, for example Wade Lemon goes to prison; helped Donald Trump Jr. kill bear & puma; For Josh & Sarah Bowmar, it’s the fire next time they appear in court; and Three-legged bears in the Great Smokies may be no accident. However, it is exceedingly rare that either a hunting guide or a foreign client is prosecuted in the U.S. for an “international poaching” offense, because typically the client and the evidence are out of the country, and therefore beyond U.S. or Canadian jurisdiction, before the offense becomes known to law enforcement. The offenders practically have to be caught in the act before a prosecution becomes possible.
Opening 95% of the U.S. National Wildlife Refuge System to hunting, and leaving half of the refuge system unattended, is of course very likely to worsen the problem.