Halting Drone-Assisted Hunting Before It Takes Off (Op-Ed)

Wayne Pacelle, President and CEO, Humane Society of the United States | May 06, 2014 04:59am ET

Wayne Pacelle is the president and chief executive officer of The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS). This Op-Ed is adapted from a post on the blog A Humane Nation, where the content ran before appearing in Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

The HSUS is calling on all 50 state wildlife agencies to adopt rules to prohibit drone-assisted hunting before this method of spotting wild animals and then chasing them down becomes the rage with people who've never contemplated the notion of hunting ethics.

Drone hunting would allow hunters to use remote-controlled, camera-equipped aircraft to locate wildlife in order to shoot and kill them for sport. This shocking issue came to light in Alaska after wildlife officials there learned that a moose was killed by a hunter using a drone. That incident prompted the Alaska Board of Game to propose and unanimously pass a regulation outlawing the practice. Two other states, Colorado and Montana, also have recently outlawed the use of drones for hunting, while two other states, Idaho and Wisconsin, already have included prohibitions in existing regulations on the use of aircraft to hunt wildlife. Three more states, New Mexico, Vermont and Wyoming, have pending rule-making petitions before their respective wildlife commissions to ban the practice.

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