Predator-on-public-land vehicle ban fails in committee after split vote; supporters seek to close 'torture' gap

House Bill 331 — aiming to ban the intentional use of vehicles to injure or kill predatory animals on public land — failed to advance from the Agriculture, State & Public Lands & Water Resources Committee after a tie vote Thursday night.

Representative Schmidt, the bill sponsor, told the committee the measure was designed to stop the practice of using snowmobiles, ATVs, trucks or other vehicles as weapons to repeatedly run over predators on public land. “All it basically does is make it illegal to use a vehicle … as a weapon to kill any wildlife including predators on public land,” Schmidt said. He emphasized that the bill would not change a landowner’s ability to control predators on private land and that government trappers and agency aircraft operations would remain exempt.

Why it matters: supporters said the bill would close what they called a final…