I have been thinking about how Liberland will dispose of wildlife and while I do not know how Europe does this I will base my analysis on American case law and the current laws in various states.
The reason why I doing this article is due to a discussion about wild boars I read in a Liberland signal group and felt that this topic needs to be addressed as no one was quite sure how the Croatian hunting laws would apply or if Liberland had hunting laws and what types of weapons are allowed by Croatia. With that I will begin.
In the United States hunting case laws began with the NY Supreme Court case Pierson v Post dating back to 1805 in which Mr Post was involved in a fox hunt in what is now Southhampton, NY pursing a fox which ultimately was shot and killed and by Mr Pierson. Mr Post sued Mr. Pierson claiming under English Common Law the fox was property since he was in pursuit of the fox. The court made the claim, “To acquire property in a wild animal, one must either capture it, mortally wound it, or otherwise reduce it to certain control,” and that, “pursuit alone vests no property or right in the huntsman.”
While this case is considered the foundation multiple cases went up to the US Supreme Court which culminated in the landmark case Geer v Connecticut which held that, “the wild game within a State belongs to the people in their collective, sovereign capacity; it is not the subject of private ownership, except in so far as the people may elect to make it so.” It is because of that case that more libertarians should be educated on for hunting AND fishing purposes as Martin v Waddell (1842) had already incorporated fish into the trust of the state.
This background brings me to my thoughts on the issue of hunting and fishing which will need to be addressed. Fishing is already regulated partly by the Danube Commission but like how a lot of the regulations that involve countries inside and outside of the EU there is not one unified regulation in this regard I would recommend Liberland adopt those regulations to keep the harmonization of whatever the basic standards of fishing regulations that have been established by the Danube Commission. In regards to hunting I want to point out a few different scenarios that I see could occur.
The first one is that Liberland adopt by default the Croatian hunting regulations. This one is the most straight forward, Liberland already has adopted by default Croatian regulations on drugs. I am paraphrasing this but the point is that whatever drugs are illegal in Croatia are also illegal in Liberland. With this we can then say Liberland can then lease out this “trust” to a DAO or to a hunting association that is not a DAO necessarily. This group would be responsible for issuing licenses, tags, bag limits, etc. This keeps the Liberland government from getting involved in regulating things that is has no business getting itself into. The only condition in this scenario would be that the regulations must be similar to Croatia but be tailored specifically to the environment of Liberland.
Another more radical scenario would be that there is no regulatory body at all. If an animal is on your land it is your property. If you want it you just take it with no questions asked. The problem with this scenario is that unless their is coordination between property owners the amount of wildlife will diminish overall. This is why the governing body requires tags and has bag limits to determine what the population of different species is in a given year because they may need to adjust the bag limits in the future. The issue I see from my personal view is that the government cannot in any way be responsible for these types of regulations.
My example I will be bringing up is the issue of black bear hunting in Florida. The Florida Wildlife Commission is the responsible body for regulating hunting and fishing regulations. Bear hunting has been banned since 1994 in an effort to increase their population, it worked but a little too well. The problem is their population numbers of black bear are extremely low to what the actual numbers are. Basic reasoning and math will tell you this even though I can personally attest to it myself having lived in that state for 30 years. In 2015 the FWC setup the first bear hunt in 21 years the rules were that a maximum of 320 bears were to be taken over the course of one week across the entire state. The reality is that 304 bears were taken in less than 2 days forcing the closure of the hunt over 5 days earlier than expected. This shows that the population estimates were extremely underestimated. The “animal rights” activists have unfortunately been successful at keeping the FWC from allowing any more bear hunts since then.
The good news is that the FWC has allowed another bear hunt to begin on December 6th this year. We shall see how long this hunt lasts as only 187 tags have been issued across 31 counties this time. The reason I bring up this example is the FWC is allowing itself to be controlled by the animal rights groups against the welfare of the people of the state in that bear attacks are on the rise as well damages that are being caused by bear to peoples private property. One could also make the argument that the welfare of the bears is being endangered because of their reliance on humans as a source of food. Their reliance on trash can raids, breaking into garages to raid the fridge or even swiping up a DoorDash order from the front porch is making the bears reliant on humans as their natural food sources are scarce because of their overpopulation in a given area.
I am speaking passionately about hunting and fishing because in my youth I was actively engaged in hunting and some fishing and see the need for conservation management of all wildlife. Oh and by the way in the entire US, feral hogs are open season, no seasons, bag limits, etc because of their prolific lives they are considered a public nuisance. However, that only applies to private property Wildlife Management Areas still have seasonal and bag limits that apply to feral hogs except for places like Texas and Oklahoma where feral hogs even in WMA’s are open season.
The issue of what weapons are to be used to take down any wildlife I will leave it up to the regulating body but I do not think there should be very many restrictions on the types of weapons and if this the only way we can secure everyone’s right to bear arms because of the way Europe operates then we need to ensure that those that wish to carry such arms is properly able to do so.
With this rant of mine almost done I want to circle back to the beginning of my argument there needs to be some sort of regulations on how wildlife is managed for the benefit of present and future generations of Liberlanders!