Election Endorsement and 2023 Legislative Report

Election Information: https://www.nj.gov/state/elections/vote.shtml

November 7, 2023 Election Day

LOHVNJ is proud to endorse Saddle River Mayoral Candidate Vin Blehl. Read all about Vin here: https://vin4mayor.com/ 

2022-2023 Legislative Report

At the start of the 2022-2023 legislative session Senate President Scutari and Assembly Speaker Coughlin made a decision to minimize environmental and animal protection issues. In fact, the following issues were considered a nuisance to Speaker Coughlin: bear feeding ban, courtroom animal advocate program, declawing, kangaroo protection, restoring the bow hunting safety buffer, puppy mills, wildlife killing contests, and more.

Notwithstanding the above, there were two legislative victories - a ban on gestation and veal crates and a cost of care bill (which deals with coverage of the financial cost of caring for animals who are victims of abuse).

These were widely supported by Republicans and Democrats. However, both parties had taken a hands-off approach to tackling the tough animal issues - LOHVNJ's issues.

At election time, LOHVNJ puts out a robust scorecard with voting records. However, in this election season, when all 120 legislative seats are up, a scorecard for only two overwhelmingly popular issues signed into law would provide no additional information to help our members make humane choices.

Even though it was a difficult session to get any of our bills heard, LOHVNJ and our sister organization, Animal Protection League of New Jersey, held 93 meetings with legislators. We developed momentum for our legislative priorities and, so far, held back the deer poaching bill. We'll watch this one during the lame-duck session after the election.

For the 2024-2025 legislative session starting in mid-January, we are already at work getting our priority bills pre-filed so we can hit the ground running. In addition to the bills listed above, we will be working to protect forests. Senator Smith's New Jersey Forestry Task Force, stacked with anti-deer individuals, produced a Framework Report that Smith is using to develop a bill we fear will have devasting effects on deer as well as destroying our forests. LOHVNJ and APLNJ commented on the Framework. See here:

https://aplnj.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/APLNJ-Comments-New-Jersey-Forest-Stewardship-Task-Force.pdf

http://lohvnj.org/NJFTF-LOHVNJ.pdf

LOHVNJ will also continue to fight for the Right Whale.

Please consider supporting all of LOHVNJ's ongoing work by clicking here.