Sponsor Sen. Crystal Brantley, R-Elephant Butte
By NATHAN BROWN
The Santa Fe New Mexican
A push years in the making to overhaul the way game commissioners are appointed and update the Game and Fish department’s mission to managing non-game species came a step closer to reality Saturday.
Senate Bill 5 passed after a roughly three-hour debate with 12 mostly Republican “no” votes and now heads to the House of Representatives. It would create a legislative-appointed committee to vet Game Commission candidates as well as making mostly modest increases to hunting and fishing license fees.
“This is bipartisanship in action,” Dan Roper, New Mexico program lead for Trout Unlimited, said in a statement after the vote. “After years of negotiations, now is the time to get game and fish reform through the legislature and onto the governor’s desk.”
The bill is supported by “a very broad coalition,” said Sen. Pete Campos, D-Las Vegas, one of the sponsors. Campos and the bill’s other sponsors emphasized repeatedly it was a bipartisan compromise born out of extensive negotiations with the affected parties.
“I just wanted to get up and emphasize that this bill is a compromise,” noted sponsor and lifelong fisherman Senate Majority Leader Peter Wirth, D-Santa Fe.
Sponsor Sen. Crystal Brantley, R-Elephant Butte said she knew it was a good bill because “nobody loves it. Everybody kind of likes bits and parts of it but nobody loves this bill.”
However, she added, “the greater good is far greater than any harm it would bring.”
Brantley, whose family runs “one of the more popular and recognized [hunting] outfitting businesses in the state” in the Gila National Forest near Winston, emphasized she would oppose the bill if she thought anything in it would hinder her family’s ability to make a living.
“It is a compromise in which we have addressed concerns from all parties,” Brantley said.
The bill would rename the Game Commission and the Department of Game and Fish, calling them the State Wildlife Commission and the Wildlife Department, respectively.
Some Republicans expressed concern the bill would give the commission too much power to impose potentially burdensome regulations. Sen. Larry Scott, R-Hobbs, asked whether the bill could let the commission “authorize a rule to prohibit drilling during the mating season of [three-toed sand dune] lizards.”
Brantley answered that the bill authorizes the commission to regulate the taking of game animals, not all animals. Scott found this unconvincing, saying the plain language of the bill seemed to authorize the commission to regulate any animal.
“I do not believe the language of this bill regulates just taking,” he said. “It allows rules that will deal with any species of wildlife, game or no game.”
Brantley said in her closing remarks the bill does not, contrary to what some have said, make any changes to predator control or laws regulating trapping on private lands or change the state’s hunting quota and draw systems.
The bill requires commissioners to “possess knowledge of wildlife, hunting and fishing” as well as mandating representation for ranchers or farmers, conservationists, hunters and anglers and Indian tribes and pueblos.
Senate Democrats said in a news release after the vote the bill “clarifies existing law to enable the Department of Game and Fish to manage additional species, such as pollinators and beavers, based on scientific findings.
“This approach would help maintain New Mexico’s rich biodiversity while ensuring landowners’ rights are respected,” the release continued.
Sen. Jeff Steinborn, D-Las Cruces, offered a couple of amendments to the bill aimed at beefing up the commission’s conservation mission and deemphasizing hunting and fishing that were voted down.
“This is the heart of creating a real Wildlife Department,” Steinborn said, noting the bill could be either a historic change or a missed opportunity to do more.
The bill’s supporters rejected this as potentially upending the compromise they had reached.
“I cannot stress enough the delicacy and the work that has gone into this rather large and extensive bill,” Brantley said.
Another of Steinborn’s amendments would have switched to four-year instead of six-year terms for commissioners, which he said would make it easier for a new governor who might have different ideas to appoint a commission reflecting their views.
Wirth argued six-year terms serve a purpose, noting lawmakers also included them in a recent Public Regulation Commission overhaul.
“It is all about stability,” he said.
