New Mexico Land Commissioner Stephanie Garcia Richard has enacted a ban on coyote-killing contests across 9.5 million acres of state trust land. This prohibition extends to other non-protected species as well. The decision has been met with approval from the Sierra Club Rio Grande Chapter.

Mary Katherine Ray, Wildlife Chair for the Sierra Club Rio Grande Chapter, expressed support for the commissioner's decision. "We applaud Land Commissioner Garcia Richard’s announcement prohibiting the competitive killing of our state’s wildlife on state trust land," Ray stated. She criticized these events as "organized wildlife massacres" that fail to align with modern scientific principles of wildlife management.

Participants in these contests often claim they help control animal populations, but biologists have found that killing large numbers of coyotes only temporarily reduces their population for the current season. Coyotes tend to respond by producing larger litters.

"The research is clear; killing coyotes at random does not increase game populations like deer, nor does it reduce conflict with humans," Ray explained. She warned that disrupting coyote social structures could lead to more inexperienced young coyotes turning to livestock as prey.

The Sierra Club's Rio Grande Chapter plans to back bipartisan legislation aiming to ban organized killing contests statewide during the upcoming New Mexico legislative session. Similar legislation passed in the Senate in 2017 but did not reach a vote in the House.

"It is not easy to define obscenity, but as a Supreme Court justice once noted, we know it when we see it. Killing contests are obscene," Ray concluded.