Challenging the Use of GPS Tracking Devices on Hunting Dogs Without Environmental Assessment (2018)

In 2016, the Animal Legal Defense Fund sued the California Fish and Game Commission, challenging the agency’s decision to allow hunters to outfit hunting dogs with GPS tracking devices and “treeing switches.”

The lawsuit, filed in California state court on behalf of the Public Interest Coalition, alleged that the Commission violated the California Environmental Quality Act in failing to examine a range of ways their decision would significantly impact wildlife.

Our lawsuit petitioned the California court system to prevent the Commission from allowing GPS collars until it properly examined the unlawful toll its decision will have on the welfare of California’s wildlife heritage. In response to the lawsuit, the Commission revisited the amendment. Subsequently, the lawsuit was dismissed.

But at the end of 2017, the Commission voted again to allow GPS collars and treeing switches. And once again, the Commission failed to conduct a proper environmental analysis, and did not consider the impact of the changes on the welfare of individual wild animals or other environmental impacts.

The Animal Legal Defense Fund sued the Commission once again in 2018, this time as a plaintiff in the lawsuit along with Public Interest Coalition and Friends of Animals.