2025 Legislative Session Recap
The 2025 session of the Idaho Legislature started up on January 6 and adjourned at 3:46pm on April 4. From a conservation perspective, things were mostly average, with good and bad bills coming through.
IWF was active in the Statehouse throughout the session. Through working with legislators, providing testimony on bills, and – most importantly – through the advocacy of our supporter base, we are able to make a meaningful impact for the values of sportsmen and women, as well as the fish, wildlife, habitat, and public access that we all depend on. As a result of our action alerts, supporters sent nearly 1,500 emails and made even more phone calls to legislators, ensuring their voices were heard on the issues that matter most.
There were a couple of bad bills that were introduced this session that stalled early in the process. House Bill 196 would have put a five-year moratorium on doe hunting across much of the state. Setting seasons in this way would reduce the flexibility of professional wildlife managers, and our clear preference is for decisions of this nature to be made by the Fish and Game Commission. Thankfully, the bill never got a hearing. Senate Bill 1078 was also concerning and would have made the Director of IDFG a Governor appointee – currently, the Commission appoints the Director. While there are other departments across the state which have Governor-appointed directors, IDFG is unique in that the Citizens Initiative of 1938 created an independent Fish and Game Commission with a mandate to lead the Department. It is difficult to see how this could be accomplished if the Commission is unable to hire and fire the Director. IWF joined with other partner groups in testifying against this bill, which died in Committee. Subjecting IDFG priorities to changing political winds is an outcome we would prefer to avoid.
For all the issues on the public lands front cropping up nationwide, we didn’t see too much legislation come through this session. House Bill 101 would have required that any access point to public land vacated at the county level be replaced by equivalent access. This bill was killed, largely due to concerns over county-level finances, and IWF will be working to address these concerns and hopefully pass a similar bill in coming sessions. Senate Joint Memorial 104 did call for the transfer of the Camas National Wildlife Refuge to the state, which IWF opposed.
Moving onto State land, House Bill 129 would have extended the amount of time that the Land Board has to acquire land with Land Bank funds (funds generated from the sale of IDL parcels) from five years to ten years. IWF supported this bill as it could have been a positive for access, as hunters and anglers have broad access to IDL land, but the bill was ultimately killed.
House Bill 195, which was later slightly amended to become House Bill 302, had to do with the translocation of wildlife. The bill would have required that anytime IDFG relocated wildlife, approval was required by the County Commission. Apart from jeopardizing popular programs such as pheasant stocking, IDFG does not have holding facilities for wildlife at scale. The bulk of translocations are in reactive – not planned in advance, and the cost would have run very high if the Department were required to hold a moose, for example, for the 30 days that it would take the County Commission to determine whether to permit the transfer. While we always encourage cooperation and coordination with landowners in the event of wildlife transfers, this bill would have been a significant impediment to translocations and would have resulted in a significant increase in euthanized animals. The bill was never heard in Committee.
Another bill we tracked was House Bill 57, which would have created the first dedicated pool of funding for non-motorized recreation through a moderate increase to the price of the Parks Pass. While IWF is not a trails organization and understands that significant thought needs to be applied to any new trail through wildlife habitat, access to Wilderness areas often relies on trails for pack animals and other travel and some maintenance of these trails is necessary. While we supported the bill for this reason and HB 57 passed out of Committee with strong support from the public, it ultimately died on the House floor.
One bill we opposed that was ultimately signed into law was House Bill 128, which will require that IDFG permit sabots during traditional muzzleloader seasons. This is a better version of a bill that came through last year, which would have mandated that sabots, 209 primers, and pelletized powders be permitted in muzzleloader seasons, but still sets hunting technology in statute which is not the process we prefer to see.
There were a handful of good bills that we supported as well. House Bill 1013 is a nod to our trappers, and will permit a licensed hunter who has not yet gone through trapper education to participate in trapping if they go with a licensed outfitter who is also a trapper. Given that this should expand access to trapping without raising safety concerns, we supported this bill. Senate Bill 1003 will prohibit anyone with an unpaid fine for a Fish and Game violation from purchasing a license until they have paid or are on a path to paying that fine – this should help encourage additional compliance with regulations. House Bill 82 was a clean up bill from HB 592 from last year – the first bill we’ve seen that allocated funding for nonlethal deterrence of predators on private land. This will be one of the many tools in the toolkit to help reduce depredations.
Overall, IWF advocated either for or against a wide range of bills that came through this session. As we look towards next year, we will seek to be a resource to agencies, interest groups, legislators and others to help inform issues, head off bad ideas before they become legislation, and encourage bills that will benefit Idaho’s fish, wildlife, habitat, access, and our outdoor heritage.
