What Racine, Bartlett and Shumlin say about the Public Trust

The following is from the Gubernatorial debate held at Sterling College and comes from the VtDigger website.


Margolis: Another question that has some peculiar importance to the Northeast Kingdom. This question will first go to Susan Bartlett who sponsored a bill to save a famous moose, whose nickname I will not reveal. I don’t want to get into the details of the situation but one aspect of the legislation that was passed and I believe everyone here voted for it, has created a concern for wildlife officials and not just in Vermont. The law didn’t just save this moose. It transferred the ownership of the moose and 200 white-tailed deer living inside the impoundment up here in Irasburg, transferred to title of those animals to the owner of the land and that’s a violation of the public trust doctrine, which goes back to about the Magna Carta, which holds that all animals belong to all the citizens of the state. Again, without rehashing the particulars of this case, would each of you as governor uphold the public trust doctrine in the future and will you support officials who are trying to enforce the laws regarding wild animals?