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A highly controversial ballot measure that seeks to protect all animal life is inching closer to passing in Oregon.

Known as the PEACE Act, which stands for People for the Elimination of Animal Cruelty Exemptions, the measure could potentially ban hunting, fishing, livestock slaughter, and animal testing, according to Fox 12 Oregon.

People who support the petition say “it’s about recognizing animals can feel pain and updating state law,” a News Watch 12 story explained.

But opponents of the act, such as Amy Patrick, of the Oregon Hunting Association, say if it passes, this legislation could have catastrophic effects on “ranchers, coastline economies, and wildlife management,” as per News Watch 12.

I see that Rachel Rear uses a stock photo for a hunter probably because she doesn’t actually know any hunters. When I see things like this I immediately think of the “rewilding” efforts that lead to things like this.

Wildlife biologists who have studied this their entire careers at DNRs are overlooked and ignored in favor of people who think they know better. No one bothers to think about the fact that predation, starvation and a host of other things cause as much or more pain as managing the herd by culling it.

Men know how to manage the herd size in order to maintain a healthy herd or slightly increase herd size over time, just like there are more trees in the U.S. than when the settlers landed on the shores. And not men who work for the U.N. Rewilding is a UN program. Real wildlife herd management is done by people who care and don’t have an agenda. In a recent commentary at Ammoland entieled Nature isn’t Gentle, Dean Weingarten explains.

It is as if the opponents of human management believe bears to be immortal, never to die except at the hands of human hunters.  This is a false, emotional, irrational belief structure. All predators die. Death by human hunter is overwhelmingly less painful than death without human intervention.

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Managed human hunting has evolved an ethos where a prime value is the “clean kill,” which minimizes the suffering of the animal. Compared to being torn apart by a bear, starving to death, or lingering death by accident, death by bullet is quick and painless.

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Humans can manage wildlife populations to achieve greater productivity than when they are not managed. Non-management results in horrific swings between environment-destroying maximum populations and ghastly minimum population deserts devoid of most large mammals. Most of North America was managed by humans with varying degrees of success long before Europeans were able to establish and maintain a presence.  Human management aims for high, but not destructive, productivity.

But Oregon is so overrun with ex-Californians that they wouldn’t listen to reason under any circumstances, and would favor the starvation of human predation by large, dangerous animals over managing the herd like it needs.

It’s the same thing with non-predatory game animals too. Too little hunting causes the herd size to precipitously increase, leading to starvation and diseases. Too much hunting leads to a smaller and less productive herd. DNRs across the country know how to manage that balance. Rachel Rear and her ilk do not.