Amendment 2 on hunting and fishing bankrolled by special interests

If approved by voters on Nov. 5, Amendment 2 will add to Florida’s Constitution a right to hunt and fish that includes controversial language opponents say is a threat to responsible wildlife management.

No citizens’ initiative was involved. No signatures were collected from voters around the state. The Florida Legislature got together to put Amendment 2 on the ballot. And the campaign to pass it is being bankrolled by a handful of special interests.

The political committee Vote Yes on Amendment 2 has raised more than a million dollars since it began collecting donations in April. It has spent all but $110,000 through Oct. 4. Seventy percent of that money came from just seven sources, state election records show.

In contrast, opponents at NoTo2.org have raised just $77,000, and $55,000 of that came from the Sierra Club and the Sierra Club of Florida’s PAC. Other opponents include Friends of the Everglades, Florida National Organization for Women, Florida Native Plant Society, Humane Society of Florida, numerous Democratic Party organizations and the editorial boards of the Tampa Bay Times, Orlando Sentinel and Miami Herald.

Vote Yes’s chairman is Luke Hilgemann, executive director of Naples-based International Order of T. Roosevelt (IOTR), and T. Roosevelt Action. IOTR’s president is Wes Bates, the CEO of Stanley Steemer International. Its registered agent is longtime Republican operative and Tallahassee lawyer Richard E. Coates.

The group describes itself on its website as a proactive hunting and conservation foundation focused on protecting the rights of hunters and anglers. Yet its sponsors include such far right entities as Patriot Mobile, “America’s only Christian conservative wireless provider” whose “causes” include Turning Point USA (TPUSA), the youth education group of well-known Christian nationalist radio talk show host Charlie Kirk.

T. Roosevelt is also a Turning Point sponsor for hunting and conservation. “We cannot win the fight against anti-2A and anti-hunting forces unless we are engaging the next generation of hunters and anglers where they are at,” Hilgemann wrote on IOTR’s website.

Hilgemann was previously CEO of the Koch family-affiliated conservative advocacy group Americans for Prosperity. With IOTR, he was the driving force behind the Legislature’s passage, by a vote of 154-1, of the proposed right to hunt and fish amendment. Senate Minority Leader Lauren Book, a Democrat, was the lone vote against it.

MESSAGE OF FEAR

This is the message T. Roosevelt is using on its website to sell Amendment 2 to voters: “Around America, radical extremists are attacking your right to hunt and fish. Our outdoor way of life and heritage are under attack like never before.

“The threats are real. In Oregon, a statewide referendum that would criminalize hunting and fishing fell just short of making the ballot. In Washington, D.C., bureaucrats made an attempt to defund popular outdoor education programs in schools. Now, we need to fight back.”

But the message [emphasis theirs] is overblown. No state outlaws hunting and fishing. And Oregon’s recent rejection was the second failure by extremist animal rights activists who also couldn’t muster sufficient signatures to make the ballot in 2022.

State election records show this is where the biggest money in support of Amendment 2 comes from:

• $100,000. Friends of Wilton Simpson. Simpson is Florida’s agriculture secretary who is said to be exploring a run for governor in 2026. His political committee still boasts $7.74 million.
• $250,000. T. Roosevelt Action Inc., hunters and anglers group.
• $250,000. Fish & Wildlife Foundation of Florida, a private nonprofit that works with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) “to protect our outstanding animals and plants and the lands and waters they need to survive.”
• $50,000. Arcadia Stockyard, cattle auctioneers.
• $50,000. Hilliard Brothers of Florida, cattle ranchers and growers of sugar cane, citrus and other crops.
• $25,000. OP Resorts and Affiliates, also known as Ocean Properties Resorts and Affiliates, owner of more than 30 hotels in Florida. Based in Portsmouth, NH.
• $35,000. U.S. Sugar ($25,000) and U.S. Sugar’s recently retired senior vice president and longtime lobbyist Robert E. Coker ($10,000).

Other supporters, as listed on Vote Yes On 2’s website, include: American Sportfishing Association; Rodney Barreto, chairman of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission; Charter Fisherman’s Association; Coastal Conservation Commission; Ducks Unlimited; Izaak Walton League Cypress Chapter; Marine Industries Association of Florida. Safari Club International, and Viking Yacht Company.

WHAT AMENDMENT 2 WOULD DO

Here’s the full text of Amendment 2, which would change Section 28 of Article 1 of the Constitution:

“RIGHT TO FISH AND HUNT. – Proposing an amendment to the State Constitution to preserve forever fishing and hunting, including by the use of traditional methods, as a public right and preferred means of responsibly managing and controlling fish and wildlife. Specifies that the amendment does not limit the authority granted to the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission under Section 9 of Article IV of the State Constitution.”

To pass, Amendment 2 must be approved by at least 60 percent of voters who vote on the measure. If approved. it will take effect Jan. 7, 2025.

The Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) is a regulatory agency established in the Constitution by voters in 1999. Three years later Florida enacted Statute 379.104 which, like Amendment 2, establishes a “right to hunt and fish” that “should be forever preserved for Floridians…subject to the regulations and restrictions prescribed by general law and by” the FWC.

Amendment 2 would go further. Not only would hunting and fishing become a constitutionally protected right in Florida, but they also would become the “preferred” method of managing wildlife, perhaps to include such “traditional methods” of taking game as gill nets and steel-jawed leghold traps, now both outlawed here.

“This proposed amendment would place hunting and fishing ahead of other, non-lethal means for managing Florida’s wildlife,” wrote attorney Macie J.H. Codina and Florida State University law student Savannah Sherman in an analysis of Amendment 2 for the Animal Law Section of the Florida Bar. Enactment “would tip the scales in favor of broader hunting seasons, more relaxed hunting and fishing regulations and the authorization of another bear hunt, as FWC did in 2015.”

Amendment 2, they said, would establish “an easy path’’ toward allowing hunts “that are contradictory to science and are done before any alternative means are implemented to manage wildlife. The Florida black bear, for example, would be placed especially at risk should the amendment pass. The frequency of interaction between humans and bears in Florida has increased in recent years, largely in part due to booming land development, habitat fragmentation, and the scent of food in trash cans.”