BHA responds to Idaho Senate Bill 1326

Wildlife in Idaho, and across the United States, is a public trust resource held by the state for the benefit of all citizens. Under this principle, wildlife is not privately owned by the landowner on whose property it happens to stand but is managed by the state to ensure healthy populations and opportunity for fair chase hunting, fishing, and trapping.

Wildlife moves freely across the landscape and does not recognize property boundaries. As a result, wildlife regularly occupies a mix of federal, state, tribal, and private lands. In Idaho, approximately 30 percent of the land base is privately owned, much of it in large working landscapes that provide important habitat for elk, deer, upland birds, and other wildlife. Backcountry Hunters & Anglers strongly supports private property rights and the critical stewardship role landowners play in conserving wildlife habitat across these landscapes.

At the same time, the public ownership of wildlife carries with it a responsibility––wildlife laws must be enforceable wherever wildlife occurs. Conservation officers are sworn peace officers tasked with protecting the public’s wildlife resources and ensuring that laws governing hunting, fishing, and trapping are applied fairly.

For more than a century, the Open Fields Doctrine has attempted to provide practical balance between constitutional privacy protections and the state’s responsibility to enforce wildlife laws in the open landscapes where regulated outdoor activities occur. While the Supreme Court has upheld the core principles of the Open Fields Doctrine in the 1984 Oliver v. United States ruling, several states including: Montana, New York, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington have enacted legislation restricting the actions of conservation officers from enforcing game laws on private lands. Notably, New Hampshire, Minnesota and Florida have passed laws in support of the Open Fields Doctrine, and hunters are often equally divided by the issue.

The legislature in Idaho is currently considering Senate Bill 1326 which would effectively eliminate the use of the Open Fields Doctrine in Idaho by prohibiting government agents from entering private lands without a warrant, consent, or exigent circumstances and goes so far as to create civil liability for conservation officers who do so.

If the Open Fields Doctrine is removed, what mechanism will ensure that the public’s wildlife laws can still be enforced across the landscapes where wildlife lives and where hunting and fishing occur?

Without a workable answer to that question, the risk is not merely reduced enforcement—it is the weakening of the public trust responsibility to conserve wildlife and an erosion of the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation.

Wildlife conservation in America has succeeded because it rests on a balanced framework: respect for private property, strong constitutional protections, and the shared understanding that wildlife belongs to the public and must be managed and protected accordingly.

Maintaining that balance requires policies that both respect private property rights and allow conservation officers to effectively uphold the law and protect our shared wildlife heritage.

As Abraham Lincoln famously observed, “laws without enforcement are just good advice.” Wildlife laws are no exception.