The proposal would extend Oregon’s legal protections against killing and abusing pets to other animals.
Rae Deng
Published June 2, 2026
Image courtesy of Kaspars Grinvalds, accessed on Canva
Claim:
A measure to ban fishing and hunting may end up on Oregon’s November 2026 ballot.
Context
Tracking and capturing an animal, as long as it does not cause intentional or reckless injury, would still be legal in the unlikely event that the proposal becomes law. Supporters have said they don’t expect the measure to pass and that their goal is to change attitudes on animal rights and welfare.
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In spring 2026, rumors spread online about a ballot initiative in Oregon that would allegedly ban hunting and fishing in the state.
Discussion about the alleged measure appeared on blog sites and in online petitions, as well as on social media platforms such as X, Reddit, Facebook and Threads.
These posts reference a real proposal known as Initiative Petition 28 that would, in fact, ban hunting and fishing. IP28 would ensure that Oregon’s laws against abusing, neglecting and killing pet dogs and cats would extend to all vertebrate animals — even those seen as pests.
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Proposed initiatives in Oregon will appear on the November ballot if they receive more than 117,173 signatures of support before July 2. As of May 29, 2026, the group behind the animal rights proposal, Yes on IP28, had collected 126,115 signatures of support, according to the Oregon secretary of state’s website. As of this writing, the state office had not yet certified the signatures, which must happen before IP28 can make it to the ballot.
As such, we have rated this claim as true. (It’s worth noting that tracking and capturing an animal, as long as it does not cause intentional or reckless injury, would still be legal under the law. However, because traditional definitions of hunting and fishing involve a dead or injured animal, we have still opted to go with a true rating.)
While many posts on social media raised alarm about the proposal’s impact on people’s hobbies and livelihoods, backers of IP28 have repeatedly said they don’t expect the legislation to pass. For example, David Michelson, one of the chief petitioners behind IP28, said in a filmed 2025 interview that the campaign was less about passing the initiative and more about shifting public attitudes on animal rights and welfare.
“For our campaign, what a win looks like is so different than what some other campaigns would call a win because we know that this isn’t going to pass in 2026. But we still feel like we’re winning when we’re having those conversations,” Michelson said (see 1:02:27).
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The initiative would also raise standards of welfare for all animals under human care to the same standards Oregon uses for pets and establish a fund to help transition people away from livestock farming and other jobs that involve killing animals.
The proposal, annotated
The certified ballot title — the description of the measure that would be used on the ballot — clearly states that it “criminalizes breeding practices, injuring/killing animals, including for food, hunting, fishing.”
The full 10-page proposal, also known as the People for the Elimination of Animal Cruelty Exemptions (PEACE) Act, is available on the Oregon secretary of state’s website.
Section 4, Page 3 contains the specific changes to the law that would, if passed, outlaw hunting and fishing. As the website for Yes on IP28 states, anything italicized in the language of the proposal would be removed upon passage, and anything bolded would be added:
(1) A person commits the crime of animal abuse in the first degree if, except as [otherwise authorized by law] necessary to defend against the threat of immediate harm to oneself, to other humans, or to other animals, the person intentionally, knowingly or recklessly:
(a) Causes serious physical injury to an animal; or
(b) [Cruelly c]Causes the death of an animal.
[(2) Any practice of good animal husbandry is not a violation of this section.]
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In other words, the law as of this writing bans “cruelly” causing the death of an animal, except as otherwise authorized by law and during the practice of “good animal husbandry,” which includes “accepted practices of veterinary medicine or animal husbandry,” per pages 2 and 3.
IP28 would ban causing the death of nearly any animal, regardless of how “cruel” or humane the killing is and regardless of whether the death happened due to hunting, fishing or farming. Exceptions exist for veterinary care and self-defense. An “animal” is defined by both current and proposed legislation as “any nonhuman mammal, bird, reptile, amphibian or fish” on Page 2.
The activists behind IP28 also readily state on their website that their proposal would effectively make hunting, fishing and trapping illegal. Here’s their response to the question of whether the petition would “look to criminalize hunting, fishing and trapping” (emphasis ours):
1. To be clear: does this petition look to criminalize hunting, fishing and trapping?
This petition does propose a ban on any intentional injury of an animal except for self-defense and in the case of any veterinary care. That would include banning slaughterhouses, hunting and fishing, and experimenting on animals. The initiative works by extending the legal protections our companion animals have currently to all other animals statewide (except for invertebrates, which are not legally considered animals under Oregon law).