advocating for endangered species
drafting environmental legislation
preserving wildlife habitat
The Ballot Box
as an agent of environmental protection
One valuable tool influencing public policy on environmental issues is the ballot initiative. Ballot initiatives are used most commonly at the state and municipal levels of government, although fewer than half of the states allow ballot initiatives. Ballot initiatives allow citizens to vote directly on a wide range of public policy issues (and essentially overrule their elected officials). This is especially common when state legislators have been unresponsive to issues that are important to the public.
Within the states that do allow ballot initiatives, some progress has been made on environmental issues in recent years. These ballot initiatives can later be used as templates for legislation in other states, as they can be introduced and passed like most legislation --by elected senators and representatives in those states. Ballot initiatives that have been voted on recently include:
Alaska: A prohibition on mining projects that are harmful to wild salmon fishery preserves. (Passed)
Alabama: A twenty year extension on payments made to the Forever Wild Land Trust. (Passed with 75% of the vote. Funds come largely from oil and gas leases in the Gulf of Mexico. The losing side on this ballot initiative spent more than four times as much on this initiative as did the Forever Wild side.) Funds generated through this initiative will be used to purchase forests, wetlands, wildlife habitat, and other ecologically valuable lands.
Florida: Funding of the Water and Land Conservation Fund to purchase ecologically valuable forests, wetlands, conservation easements, etc… (Passed with 75% of the vote.)
Louisiana: Placement of restrictions on certain bear hunting practices. (Failed.)
Michigan: Placement of a prohibition on wolf hunting seasons in the Upper Peninsula. (Failed.)
Montana: To overturn the Citizens United decision and prohibit corporate contributions to state and local elections. (Voters approved this with 75% of the vote, but the initiative was invalidated by a lower state court ruling.)
New Jersey: To dedicate six percent of corporate business tax revenues to open space preservation. (Passed with 65% of the vote.)
Washington: An initiative to toughen penalties for trafficking in rare and endangered wildlife species including up to five years in jail and higher fines for certain violations. (This initiative passed with 71% of the vote.)
Given the lack of leadership from the US Congress on environmental issues, and the alignment of many US Senators and US Representatives with corporate interests rather than with wilderness values, environmental ballot initiatives at the state and local levels will become more common. At least in some states, these initiatives could have a profound impact upon the preservation of threatened species, and the preservation of their increasingly compromised, diminished, polluted, and infringed-upon habitats.