Episode 178: The High Stakes of State Wildlife Governance and the Fight for Direct Democracy with Michelle Lute

By: Jack Humphrey

July 10, 2026

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Michelle Lute, executive director, Wildlife for All

About

Michelle Lute is a wildlife scientist and conservation leader with two decades of experience in wildlife conservation, nonprofit leadership, and public policy. As executive director of Wildlife for All, she’s leading the charge to transform state wildlife governance and center justice, compassion, and democracy in conservation.

Michelle holds a PhD in wildlife management and has authored more than 30 publications across ecology and the social sciences. Her career spans roles in government, academia, and advocacy, all focused on evidence-based solutions for human-wildlife coexistence. She played an instrumental role in stopping Wisconsin’s 2021 wolf hunt and advancing Roxy’s Law, which banned traps, poisons, and snares on New Mexico’s public lands. Michelle is also vice president of the Rewilding Institute.

Episode Summary

Host Jack Humphrey sits down with Michelle to dismantle the persistent myths surrounding state-level wildlife governance, exposing how the “hunting pays for conservation” narrative has evolved into a multi-billion-dollar illusion. They dive deep into the aggressive and entrenched political interests, including a highly insidious new ballot initiative in Colorado designed to strip citizens of their direct democracy rights on wildlife policy. Michelle outlines the critical shift toward organizing at the state level as the federal landscape grapples with chaos, introducing fresh structural solutions — such as independent, science-backed biodiversity commissions to advocate for the vast majority of species currently ignored by the traditional state wildlife governance model.

Key Talking Points

Chaos at the Top & the “Substitute Teacher” Dynamic

• Federal Vacuum: Federal wildlife governance is currently in structural chaos, acting like a substitute teacher in a classroom where special interests (mining, logging, trophy hunting) are actively manipulating the situation to dismantle protections.
• The 98% Reality: While bedrock federal laws like the Endangered Species Act get the headlines, individual states are legally responsible for managing 98 percent of all species in the United States.

Debunking the Core Mythology: Who Actually Pays for Conservation?

• The “Client” Model: State agencies remain trapped in a narrow, myopic model that prioritizes creating harvestable surpluses of game and fish for a small user group rather than addressing mass extinction or climate change.
• The 73% Statistic: The historical narrative that hunters exclusively fund state conservation through license fees and ammunition excise taxes is obsolete. Today, an estimated 73 percent of federal excise tax dollars originate from non-hunting sources (home defense, sport shooting).
• True Definition of Conservation: True conservation is rooted in focusing on protecting biodiversity and whole webs of life, distinct from recreational trophy hunting and predator control.

New Threat: Colorado’s Anti-Democracy Ballot Initiative

• Innocent Packaging: Pro-hunting groups are pushing “Right to Hunt and Fish” initiatives across the country (already passed in 24 states), framing them as innocuous protections for local food sourcing.
• Insidious Fine Print: The specific initiative gaining steam in Colorado actively strips away direct democracy. If passed, it would completely ban future citizen-initiated ballot measures related to any state wildlife policy, closing the door on public input.

Alternative Governance: Building a Parallel System

• Bypassing a Broken System: Decades of advocates trying to play nice and “infiltrate the good-old-boy network” have hit a wall.
• New Agency Model: The Wildlife for All coalition is exploring a dual-structure framework: Let existing fish and game commissions regulate “game” species, while a separate, state-backed biodiversity agency handles predator protection, rewilding initiatives, and non-game wildlife.

Actionable Next Steps: From Awareness to the Ground

• Grassroots Organizing: Waiting for a change in federal administrations is a losing strategy. The immediate path forward requires down-ballot voting, building community, and showing up en masse at state commission hearings.
• Wildlife for All Resources: Michelle details the tools available on their site to map out state-by-state funding breakdowns, review monthly commission meeting calendars, and access their eight-week grassroots organizing training program.

Extra Credit

Check out all the useful tools on Wildlife for All’s website, including:

• Overview of State Wildlife Management
• Do Carnivores Need to be Managed?
• Is Hunting Really Conservation?
• The Decline of Hunting and Fishing
• Most Pittman-Robinson Funders are Non-Hunters
• TAKE ACTION!
• Newsletter

Jack Humphrey

Director of Digital Outreach (D.O.D.O.) for The Rewilding Institute

Host and Producer of the Rewilding Earth Podcast

Jack started Rewilding work as Executive Director of Sky Island Alliance in the mid-1990’s, organizing the Sky Island Wildlands Network design, ripping up illegal roads on forest service lands, installing wolf acclimatization pens on Ted Turner’s Ladder Ranch & conducting howling surveys to help make way for the final stage of the Lobo reintroduction program in the Southwest.

Through the years, Jack has worked with Dave Foreman and the Rewilding Gang to further Rewilding initiatives and education.

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