Utah's Prop 5 Shields Wildlife
From Meddling By Eco-Activists

SALT LAKE CITY — Wary of meddling by well-financed environmental extremists from out of state, Utah voters have erected a constitutional barrier to protect hunting and fishing, livestock interests and wildlife managers against encroachment by animal-rights activists.

Voters last Tuesday passed Proposition 5, amending Utah's Constitution so any initiative seeking to change wildlife management will require a two-thirds majority to pass. All other initiatives continue to require a simple majority.

With all precincts reporting early Wednesday, the measure passed by a closer-than-expected 56-44 percent margin.

"Utah had been targeted. Animal extremist groups were going to come here and try to change the way we run our wildlife," said Don Peay, spokesman for Utahns for Wildlife Heritage and Conservation, which led the battle for the proposition.

Peay said the measure was backed by hunters and anglers, rural agricultural interests and non-hunting urbanites who enjoy looking at deer and elk.

He said when California banned cougar hunts, mountain lions decimated deer herds and endangered bighorn sheep.

"You have to manage for all wildlife, not just one," he said. "That's why we voted to protect our holistic, ecosystem management for all species."

"That's nonsense," groused Craig Axford of the Utah Voting Rights Coalition, which opposed the proposition. "Cougars have existed for thousands of years with deer and elk. That's the kind of lies that have been going on by the other side."

Proponents raised more than 10 times as much money — $596,646 to the opponents' $56,663.

"We were outspent 10 to one and our opposition used misleading ads," alleging animals-rights groups could try to end hunting and fishing, Axford claimed. "Nowhere has there been such a ballot initiative."

Axford said the coalition will dissolve, but one or more of its member groups is likely to mount a constitutional challenge, arguing that Proposition 5 violates the 14th Amendment equal-protection guarantee. He said it also is ambiguous as to whether the two-thirds vote requirement applied to those voting on the wildlife proposition, or to all those voting in the general election.

The Legislature voted overwhelmingly to put the proposal on the ballot, and all but one of Utah's top political leaders lined up for the proposition in the last week of the campaign.

In television and radio advertising, proponents cast the question as one of preserving the state's wildlife traditions from outside meddlers.

Opponents grumbled that the advocates' campaign was dishonest for not telling voters that Prop 5's way of protecting Utah wildlife management was to ask voters to decide, by a simple majority, that future voters cannot decide these issues unless 67 percent of them agree.

Among those who voted for the measure was Michael Martin, 28, a Salt Lake City sonar test technician, who said, "I don't really think I was informed enough, but I voted for it. I thought it was the right thing to do to protect the environment."

The Utah Voting Rights Coalition, supported by such liberal activist groups and individuals as the Utah League of Women Voters, Common Cause, animal welfare groups such as the Humane Society and Doris Day Animal League, and actor Robert Redford, didn't begin its advertising campaign until the Friday before the election. It portrayed the measure as undemocratic and anti-voter.

Earlier in the fall, Utah Jazz basketball player and avid hunter Karl Malone gave proponents a $1000 donation, and last week, they lined up other big guns: Gov. Mike Leavitt, the leaders of the Utah Senate and House and all but one of the state's all-Republican congressional delegation. Only 2nd District Rep. Merrill Cook opposed the measure, as did his Democratic challenger, Lily Eskelsen.

Cook won re-election. His district is primarily Salt Lake County, Utah's most populous and the area where the proposition drew most of its voter opposition. The vote in Salt Lake County was 87,834 in favor to 112,855 against.