A decade ago, Michigan voters overwhelmingly passed a ballot initiative requiring the management of wildlife to be on the basis of sound science. Based on sound science and with go ahead from the state legislature and governor, the Michigan Department of Natural Resources authorized a mourning dove hunting season in 2004, making it the forty-first state to have instituted a dove season. After a single season, in which fewer than 30,000 doves were taken from a fall population of more than 4 million, anti-hunting factions rallied to ban mourning dove hunting. With a war chest of at least $29,000, much of it coming from sources outside the state, they gathered more than the 159,000 petition signatures necessary to enable a referendum on this November's ballot. This caused a dove hunt moratorium and terminated sales of $2 dove hunting stamps until the issue is reconsidered, reports the Wildlife Management Institute (WMI).

In terms of total numbers, distribution and number of birds shot annually by hunters in the United States?more than 20 million, from a fall population in excess of 400 million?the mourning dove is the country's number one game bird. Nesting a number of times each year, the mourning dove has a 60-percent annual mortality rate. In other words, in most parts of the dove's range, hunter harvest has minimal impact on the species.

However, despite Michigan's successful and foresighted ballot initiative of the mid-1990s, science has taken a back seat in the current contest. For the upcoming vote, ballot lines have been drawn.

Because of its plaintive coo, the mourning dove was designated a songbird by the Michigan legislature back in 1905. By House of Representatives Resolution 244 of March 25, 1998, the mourning dove was officially declared the Wolverine State's bird of peace, although why Michigan had a need for a bird of that distinction is not clear. With enactment of a dove hunting season in 2004, the state's bird of peace ironically became a game bird, not a songbird.

There is further irony that the bird of peace concept is mainly borrowed from early Christianity, which proclaimed that the white, olive branch-toting turtledove symbolized peace. The turtledove isn't found in North America. North America has the mourning dove, so conveniently ipso facto, it has a bird of peace in the hearts and minds of individuals and legislatures compelled to embrace such anthropomorphic symbolism.

The fight over Michigan's game bird of peace has become infused with hyperbole and nonresident dollars.

The dove is the issue, say the ban proponents. "The overwhelming statewide support for the petition drive shows that mainstream Michiganders want to restore the century old ban on the bird of peace," said Fund for Animals president Michael Markian from his New York office. From Washington, DC, Wayne Pacelle, president of the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), proclaimed it "morally wrongSto shoot" and kill these gentle birds as a casual act of target shooting." (The referendum petition was run by the Committee to Restore the Dove Shooting Ban?a front for HSUS.) Peggy Ridgway, president of the Michigan Audubon Society chimed in that "The use of toxic lead shot to hunt doves creates yet another negative to our already burdened environment." And James Bull, president of the Detroit Audubon Society, took his best shot by reminding that "President George W. Bush, while dove hunting with an experienced guide, shot an American kestrel and was fined for the error."

Hunting is the issue and poorly hidden agenda, say the opponents. Marc Somers, of the Lansing-based Citizens for Wildlife Conservation, implores voters not to be duped by "national anti-hunting extremists groups [that] have invaded Michigan, pumping millions of dollars into a campaign to chip away at your rights to hunt," and warning of the insidiousness of the antihunting threat in the state and beyond.

"It appears," observed Pat Ruble, WMI Midwest field representative, "that what is most at stake is the decade-old public mandate in Michigan to manage wildlife based on sound science, not on emotionalism, paranoia, overblown rhetoric and campaign dollars from outside special interests."