Feds Proposal to allow Cyanide poison bombs, hound hunting and trapping impacts San Diego’s public lands
By Renée Owens / EastCountyMagazine / June 19, 2026
San Diego County residents should be aware that a little-known federal proposal is sneaking under the radar, one that will have serious local and national consequences. Why is it such a secret? It could be because the new rule’s creators want it to be adopted quickly before the majority of Americans understand what a harmful precedent it sets.
On May 27 the Trump administration announced a proposed rule to massively increase hunting and fishing throughout over 2.5 million acres of public wild lands, 95 percent of the entire National Wildlife Refuge System (NWRS) managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS). It expands not only refuge access but also targets species lists, seasons, bag limits, and allowed methods for hunting and fishing, and promotes a discretionary approach that is based not on science but on appeasement of a few powerful lobbies. To add to the chaos is a clause in the fine print that removes bans on lead ammunition and fishing tackle — protections fought for by scientists for decades – and reopens doors nationwide for hound hunting, traps, bait, and poisons, despite mounting bans on their use due to unambiguous evidence of their cruelty. This on the heels of deep cuts in USFWS staff and funding.
The NWRS: A Lifeline That Connects Our Flyways
The 1997 National Wildlife Refuge System Improvement Act is explicit: the primary mission is “conservation, management, and where appropriate, restoration of the fish, wildlife, and plant resources within the United States.” However, this new rule says the quiet part out loud, that the administration’s goal is to “remove unnecessary regulatory barriers to hunting.” A perusal of its supporting Executive Orders reveals that at its core is a political decree that ignores public land user preferences; only 0.7% of Californians are registered hunters.
East County San Diego NWR / USFWS
These refuges are not random polygons on a map. They were painstakingly designated to protect rare and vulnerable habitats from destructive human actions. San Diego’s NW refuges are not on the proposal’s list yet, but future additions are indicated. Note that hunting was quietly added to San Diego’s east county NWR in 2022, with ammunition use deregulated in 2025. The takeaway here is that San Diego County is not an island; its wildlife are inextricably linked to other geographic regions.
Expanded Hunting Throughout the Pacific Flyway
San Diego County is known as the “birdiest” in the nation, about 530 species and counting. Its lucrative biodiversity-based eco-tourism is partly thanks to being in the heart of the Pacific Flyway, the migratory superhighway connecting Alaska to Patagonia. This proposal will expand hunting and fishing on many refuges within this Flyway. One such refuge is California’s Lower Klamath NWR, which supports almost 80 percent of the Flyway’s migrating waterfowl as well as the largest winter bald eagle concentration in the contiguous U.S. A landmark 2022 study published in Science reported reductions in populations in both species, where nearly 50 percent of bald and golden eagles suffer chronic lead poisoning from ammunition and tackle. It also illustrated how a 1 percent drop in the western golden eagle population could dangerously tip their survival in Southern California.
Also in the heart of the flyway and on the proposed rule’s list of expanded access is California’s Tule Lake NWR. In 2024 it suffered a mass mortality event from avian botulism, over 80,000 dead birds with estimates to be thousands more. Botulism outbreaks typically impact a few dozen birds, but around Tule NWR more than 90% of wetlands have disappeared, creating die-offs on an unprecedented scale. The answer is not to kill more birds, it is to rethink water management in the hands of privatized utility companies, compounded by the severe impacts of a warming climate.
Also added to the list is Grays Lake NWR which, like many in the flyway, shares most of its hundreds of bird species with San Diego County. It hosts the largest sandhill crane nesting site in the world, not surprisingly Grays NWR is now on the rule’s “expanded opportunities to hunt” list. This NWR was also home of the first experimental reintroduction program for the critically endangered whooping crane, now numbering about 550 left in the wild. Predictably, several whooping cranes have been shot on refuges where sandhill hunting is allowed; the poachers avoided prosecution with the mistaken identity loophole.
The Unspoken Impacts to Wildlife and Pets
It isn’t just endangered birds that will be shot or trapped with “barriers” removed. Since 2008 there have been 51 endangered red wolf killings in the Alligator River NWR region, accommodated by claims of misidentifying wolves when hunting coyotes. There are fewer than 30 red wolves left in the wild. Allowing hunting of game species in protected species habitat is an obvious recipe for conflict. Expanding hunting across 95% of the refuge system while cutting USFWS staff does indeed increase opportunities – for unprosecuted poaching. The administration inspires little confidence in law enforcement when two of the U.S. president’s sons have recently been charged internationally with hunting without a license while killing a protected species in wildlife sanctuaries.
As if that weren’t enough, this rule will significantly expand trapper access. USFWS estimates there are 260,000 licensed trappers nationwide already using the NWRS, despite their indiscriminate impacts and virtually non-existent enforcement. Trapping has been condemned by many hunters as “non-sporting” but the agencies seem deaf to changing attitudes. According to USDA’s “pest” removal Wildlife Services, the trapping species kill rate is two non-target animals for every one intended, resulting in thousands of “accidental” deaths per year including protected species like grizzlies, wolves, eagles, river otters, as well as pet dogs. On the 43% of NWRs where trapping is already legal, these devices are deployed without any requirement to report what they catch.
Cronyism is Replacing Conservation
Current context is essential to appreciate the intentions behind this rule. This is the same administration that rescinded the EPA’s greenhouse gas endangerment finding – the legal underpinning for virtually all federal climate protections; rolled back limits on pollutant PFAS – toxic “forever chemicals” – in drinking water; is reversing the ban on M-44 cyanide bombs to barbarically kill wildlife and offspring in dens; is in process of handcuffing the Endangered Species Act (ESA) including ongoing recovery efforts; scripting the elimination of the Roadless Rule that protects 45 million acres of National Forest land, and is negotiating the illegal sale of 3.2 million acres of federal public land with another 250 million on the table.
The roadmap for this rule was published in April 2023. Project 2025’s Chapter 16 — written by William Pendley, who has publicly advocated selling all federal public land in the West to private investors — calls explicitly for delisting the gray wolf and grizzly bears everywhere, abolishing the USGS Biological Resources Division, firing USFWS species specialists, eliminating judicial review of environmental decisions, and revoking USFWS rules on predator control, poisons, and bear baiting. It promotes eliminating the Endangered Species Act’s use altogether and declares that no priority is more important than maximizing fossil fuel extraction from public lands. A refuge hunting free-for-all, the lead ammunition rollback, the ESA dismantlement, the public lands sell-off, the staff cuts are not disconnected decisions. They are a checklist published well before this administration officially took control.
The USFWS manages 570 NWRs and hundreds of conservation areas across the country. This administration has fired 18 percent of USFWS staff while cutting 20 percent of their discretionary budget, pilfered millions in conservation funds, and completely emptied the coffers of the National Wildlife Refuge Fund. The few federal wildlife officers remaining are spread across 150 million acres to oversee all investigations including polluting, poaching, illegal fires, and take of protected species which includes a burgeoning market of plants hobbyists. (The California Native Plant Society reports some of the rare succulents poached recently in San Diego County are over a century old.) Alarmingly, this rule references its directives via Executive Orders and memos that lay the groundwork for ignoring state regulations.
History vs. Reality and the Future of the NWRS
You may be asking is it really that bad, haven’t we all been told conservation is thanks to hunters? A century ago, indeed yes. Wildlife agencies, however, have not kept pace with reality. Hunting-as-conservation is touted by hunter-staffed wildlife commissions, amplified by trophy hunters, and accepted by a public that has ceded the truth to big budget lobbyists like the NRA and Safari Club. But context matters: the U.S. wildlife agencies were built in the late 19th century by hunters, for hunters, and that control persists. Their primary goal of wildlife management is maintaining a harvestable surplus of favored species for hunting. Such is not science-based. Wolves are massacred to near-extinction to appease elk hunters, a failing strategy followed by millions spent on reintroducing a few now-endangered wolves to restore the ecological balance that hunting fails to achieve. This game-focused, ecologically blind strategy has played out countless times over decades to the tune of endless conservation failures. Hunters themselves are publicly warning about unprecedented population crashes, calling out unsustainable harvests, and accusing agencies of prioritizing hunter access over the ecological health of the resource. The people who have most to benefit from rebuilding the dying sport of hunting (no pun intended) are saying the population cannot sustain more pressure.
Watching Wildlife Alive and Thriving Pays the Bills
At the heart of the matter is that the status of wildlife, and our means of enjoying them, have changed drastically since the days of Teddy Roosevelt. Economists reveal that non-hunters — hikers, birders, photographers, naturalists, campers — account for 94% of total U.S. wildlife conservation funding. Even under Pittman-Robertson, hunters’ most-cited conservation fund, almost 74% of its revenues now come from non-hunters. The USFWS’s most recent national survey found wildlife watching on public lands nationwide contributes an annual $250 billion to the economy. Only 6 percent of users are hunters. From critical breeding habitat to key refueling stopovers, the removal of “unnecessary” protections and enforcement is the epitome of death-by-a-thousand-cuts to an already highly vulnerable system. In a world with almost 8 billion people using resources as if we have several extra planets in our pocket, to get serious about protecting Nature we must discard the nostalgia that re-animates how we exploited wildlife decades ago.
With 73 percent of wildlife populations on the planet having disappeared in the last 50 years, one does not reverse that trajectory by randomly killing animals. We have solutions. (And the funds; just ask the 250 billionaires in California). What is missing is political will and creative thinking. California’s outdoor recreation economy generated $88 billion in 2024; of those revenues, funds from hunting was 0.05 percent. San Diego County is the most biologically diverse in the continental U.S. On the flip side it hosts 200 imperiled species. The NWRS is an intricate lifeline for migratory species, every link degraded produces irreversible consequences throughout its range. We are indeed all connected, why not find more ways to celebrate that without killing anything?
Speak Up for Those Who Can’t
99.3 percent of Californians are not hunters. They are the hikers, birders, photographers, and families who fund these refuges and deserve responsible governance that reflects their values. June 26 is the deadline to comment on this rule. Now is not the time to despair and retreat, public comment still plays a pivotal role in decisions and lawsuits. Go to Regulations.gov/docket/FWS-HQ-NWRS-2026-1223. Tell them this proposal is not based in science or common sense, and serves a small minority with a disproportionate impact. Speak for those who can’t. The more we stay silent, the more our lifeline, Mother Earth, pays the price.
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Renée Owens is a wildlife conservationist and longtime resident of east San Diego County. She is a recipient of the National Geographic’s Research and Exploration Award and received a Special Commendation from the City of San Diego for her volunteer activism. She spends her free time photographing wildlife and hiking with her canine kids.
