Wildlife Law, Regulation, and Falconry was written as a reaction to the draconian and, in many cases, unconstitutional regulations wildlife users have labored under for approximately one hundred years. Falconry (the art and sport of hunting with a trained bird of prey) regulations in particular exemplify how far laws and regulations have strayed from our constitutional system of free and limited government due to the falconry community’s small population and subsequent lack of representation – i.e. it is too weak to defend its interests. The book was written to show how 19th and 20th century radical statism – which is deeply entwined in contemporary laws and regulations across the political landscape – has wreaked havoc upon our system of government and individual rights.

The analysis of wildlife law and regulation provides an excellent illustration of how we’ve been led astray by statism and how we might make corrections to our course. Where we might pursue social peace and harmony, which are the very ends of government, and where reasonable regulation can prevail based on the concept that access to our natural resources is a right, but that the principle of sustainable use, framed within socially responsible liberty and enlightened self-interest, must guide management.

The book addresses the overreaching power of our Federal government, which has been led astray by statist doctrines and animal rights religious fanaticism. U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, having been infiltrated by these influences, has stretched the Migratory Bird Treaty Act out of proportion and has used its power in ways that have proven destructive of citizens’ rights and liberties.

It is our hope that we might recover our Founding principles before our constitutional system of limited government is irrecoverable. History informs us that all republics have succumbed to authoritarianism and the loss of the republic when the rule of law and the love of liberty are abandoned.

There are excerpts from this book in North American Falconry and Hunting Hawks by Hal Webster and Frank Beebe, Western Sporting Publications, 9th Edition, 2013.

I. Audience: Users of wildlife, fish & game officials, political representatives, attorneys, and jurists seeking constitutional principles applicable to wildlife law and regulations will find this work beneficial. In addition, constitutional scholars might find this a useful source of constitutional principles applied to a specific real-world scenario with direct consequences on citizens’ rights.

II. Major Benefit: This work provides a deeper insight into fundamental constitutional principles unavailable in most publications related to wildlife law and regulation. More broadly, it points to major failings of an aging constitutional republic that is showing signs of severe decay in its foundational underpinnings, and offers some suggestions on how to reverse the trend before our system of government eventually implodes.

III. Distinct Differences of Proposal from related works: Related works focus on precedent, or reference historical wildlife law for comparison’s sake, rather than providing principled legal philosophical positions as the basis for analysis of the reasoning behind such law and regulation – as all good analysis of law should do. Wildlife Law, Regulation, and Falconry uses constitutional and republican principles to help seek an understanding of law, and uses precedent as examples that help reveal the purpose of law – which all court opinions are meant to do – so that informed citizens will wish to comply given the social good it provides to each individual.

IV. Source of the Material: Sources begin with Roman and British wildlife and property law, then Enlightenment period Natural Law political philosophy used by the Founding Fathers, onto nineteenth and twentieth century American legal precedent, and finally, contemporary wildlife legal publications (with Wildlife Law: Cases and Materials, by Goble & Freyfogle, Foundation Press, 2002, referenced extensively in this work).