| TRCP News- The TRCP Leads Storm of BLM Protests in Wyoming
- Farm Bill Debate Stalls in Senate
- TRCP to Host Salmon Summit
- Idaho Roadless Draft Rule Nears Time for Public Comment
- National Wildlife Refuges Provide Economic Boost
- TRCP’s Life in the Open Nears Finale of Third Season
- Order the TRCP Calendar in Time for the Holidays
- The TRCP Welcomes Wanda Jackson
- The TRCP Leads Storm of BLM Protests in Wyoming
"Critical sage grouse range will be lost. Important winter range for mule deer and elk winter will be compromised. The Encampment River, a wild trout fishery of national significance, will be affected.” That’s how local outfitter Jeffrey Streeter assesses the impacts of oil and gas development recently proposed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in southeastern Wyoming. Streeter, an outfitter who has guided anglers on the Encampment River for more than 30 years, advocates responsible energy production in the North Platte Valley.
 | TRCP field representative Dwayne Meadows discusses concerns with a local resident who attended the meeting in Saratoga, Wyo.
Photo credit: Daly Edmonds
| Fortunately, the most harmful of the federal leases that concerned Streeter and a broad coalition of fellow Wyoming residents will not be headed to the auction block in December, as the BLM had originally planned. The BLM announced late last week that it had withdrawn 13 parcels, totaling approximately 28,500 acres, from its Dec. 4 energy lease sale, responding to formal protests filed by the TRCP and 87 other groups. The sale of these 13 parcels, located in southeastern Wyoming’s North Platte Valley, was deferred to allow the agency to update its resource management plan for the region and to address concerns raised by the state of Wyoming. Those leases would have opened irreplaceable mule deer range and trout waters to oil and gas development.
The TRCP’s efforts to inform and mobilize local communities resulted in a storm of protests from hunters and anglers, officials and citizens, alike. This unprecedented level of protest underscores the agency’s untenable approach to management of energy development on America’s public lands.
Notably, the Wyoming Game and Fish Commission joined Wyoming Gov. Dave Freudenthal in urging the BLM to withhold 28,000 acres from lease in the North Platte Valley. Numerous municipalities also denounced the scope of the December sale. The towns of Encampment, Riverside and Saratoga, as well as Carbon County, filed their own protests of the North Platte Valley lease parcels, which are located near the Medicine Bow National Forest.
TRCP Field Representative Dwayne Meadows grew up in Saratoga and has hunted and fished in the region since childhood. In November, Meadows convened public meetings in Carbon County to inform citizens about what was at stake. “The BLM never contacted the local government, outfitters or ranchers about this sale,” he said. “The public process was essentially nonexistent for the people and public land users who would be affected the most.”
The BLM’s flawed resource management policy is highlighted in its haphazard approach to this lease sale. Not only did the agency fail to publicize the sale to local government, outfitters or ranchers, but the sale was based on outdated planning documents. And energy development on these public lands would effectively limit their use to the energy industry – contradicting the multiple-use strategy that the BLM is federally mandated to follow.
“We all create our own legacy,” said Jeffrey Streeter. The TRCP couldn’t agree more. With that thought in mind, we’ll continue working with citizens like Mr. Streeter – whose livelihood depends on these public lands – and with all American sportsmen who dream of someday hunting mule deer or fly-fishing for trout in the sage-covered plains and wild rivers of the North Platte Valley.
This action is a result of hard work by the TRCP’s energy team and the TRCP Fish, Wildlife, and Energy Working Group and would not be possible without the support of our grassroots sportsmen’s coalition, “Sportsmen for Responsible Energy Development.” It demonstrates how your involvement can make a difference in the future of fish and wildlife.
Learn more about the TRCP’s energy initiative. Join Sportsmen for Responsible Energy Development..
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- Farm Bill Debate Stalls in Senate
 | The Farm Bill represents the single greatest federal investment in conservation on private land. | The TRCP’s efforts with its partners to grow conservation in the Farm Bill have bogged down in the Seante, where chances for quick passage of the Farm Bill looked promising in early November. The Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee unanimously passed its Farm Bill at the end of October and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid set his sights on the Thanksgiving recess as a realistic deadline by which to complete debate and vote on the bill.
Opening statements on the Senate floor barely had been completed when it became clear that the Farm Bill would be delayed. Democrats and Republicans could not agree on how many amendments would be allowed during the debate. Nor could they agree on the relevance of some amendments and whether these should be included in the discussion. Because Senate rules provide individual senators great power to prolong or stop debate, the Farm Bill essentially was stalled over a procedural disagreement. Mid-month, in an effort to break the stalemate, Senator Reid sought to invoke cloture, attempting to force the Senate to move forward with debate, but the cloture vote failed 55-42.
After returning for legislative business on Dec. 3, senate leadership has continued to give positive indications that a compromise may be reached. If that occurs, the Farm Bill potentially could be back on track for passage in December. The Senate will have to act fast before breaking for the Christmas recess.
The TRCP encourages you to call your senators and urge them to move the Farm Bill forward this year. Be on the lookout for further updates via TRCP emails and on our Web site for the latest developments on our effort to grow conservation in the Farm Bill.
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TRCP to Host Salmon Summit  |
To register for this free salmon summit email Joe La Tourrette at dipodomy@qwest.net.
Photo courtesy: BLM
| The TRCP will sponsor a regional summit, Angling 4 Oceans: Navigating a Future for Northwest Salmon, in Tacoma, Washington, Dec. 14, 2007. This summit is designed to bring together recreational angling organizations, state and federal marine fisheries representatives, business interests associated with recreational fishing, and state and federal policymakers.
Angling 4 Oceans: Navigating a Future for Northwest Salmon will focus on three themes: - Defining the challenges and opportunities facing the Pacific Northwest fishing community;
- Increasing interaction and information sharing among the recreational angling community; and
- Developing a lasting communications infrastructure to better organize recreational anglers in the Pacific Northwest.
The summit will bring together key recreational fishing interests to create a more pro-active effort in support of salmon restoration and management in the region. Communications tools will be developed that will allow for increased information-sharing among this community. The first step in this endeavor will be taken in Tacoma. There is no registration fee for the summit, but we need to know how many participants will be in attendance for seating arrangements and lunch accommodations. Please register by emailing the TRCP’s Pacific Northwest Field Representative Joe La Tourrette at dipodomy@qwest.net.
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- Idaho Roadless Draft Rule Nears Time for Public Comment
 | TRCP field representative Joel Webster
and his roadless area mule deer.
| Sportsmen soon will be able to participate in determining the future management of more than 9.3 million acres of Idaho’s national forest roadless backcountry. The Department of Agriculture is expected to release a draft management plan after Dec. 20 that the state of Idaho and the federal government have been developing during the past year.
The draft roadless plan, formally known as the Draft Environmental Impact Statement for the Idaho Roadless Area Management Rule, initiates a 90-day public comment period and a series of public meetings to be held during the months of January and February across Idaho, neighboring states and Washington D.C.
Active involvement by hunters and anglers is necessary to ensure the future of quality big-game hunting, fishing and outdoor recreation in the Gem State. Roadless areas provide important habitat for Idaho’s trout, steelhead and salmon; additionally, they secure range and important hiding cover for big-game animals, such as elk, mule deer and bighorn sheep. The TRCP will notify you of the times and locations of the public meetings and how sportsmen can make written comments. Stay tuned.
For more about the TRCP’s roadless initiative, visit our Web site.
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- National Wildlife Refuges Provide Economic Boost
| | Pelican Island, our first national wildlife refuge, was established by an executive order of
President Theodore Roosevelt on March 14, 1903. | According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, recreational use on national wildlife refuges generated almost $1.7 billion in total economic activity during fiscal year 2006. Titled Banking on Nature 2006: The Economic Benefits of Local Communities of National Wildlife Refuge Visitation, the new report documents the financial enhancement and was compiled by Service economists.
The study indicated that nearly 35 million people visited national wildlife refuges in 2006, supporting almost 27,000 private sector jobs and producing about $543 million in employment income. In addition, recreational spending on refuges generated nearly $185.3 million in tax revenue at the local, county, state and federal level. The economic benefit is almost four times the amount appropriated to the Refuge System in fiscal year 2006, and about 87 percent of refuge visitors travel from outside the local area.
"We've always known that national wildlife refuges enrich Americans' lives," said U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director H. Dale Hall. "This report reveals that the Refuge System, while admirably fulfilling its conservation mission, also repays us in dollars and cents. Those economic benefits go far beyond the system's mandated mission to ensure wild creatures will always have a place on the American landscape."
The National Wildlife Refuge System encompasses 97 million acres and 548 national wildlife refuges.
While the primary purpose of the Refuge System is to conserve native fish and wildlife and their habitat, priority is given to hunting, fishing, wildlife photography, wildlife observation, environmental education, and interpretation. According to the National Survey of Fishing, Hunting and Wildlife-Associated Recreation, more than 87 million Americans, or 38 percent of the United States' population age 16 and older, pursued outdoor recreation in 2006 and spent $120 billion that year pursuing those activities.
To see the entire Banking on Nature 2006: The Economic Benefits of Local Communities of National Wildlife Refuge Visitation report, please click here.
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- TRCP’s Life in the Open Nears Finale of Third Season
 | Ken and friends hunt turkeys in Iowa. |
Season three of TRCP’s Life in the Open ends with the calendar year; make sure you don’t miss any of the excitement. Tune into VERSUS this week for the last new episode of the season. Join host Ken Barrett as he travels around the globe hunting wildebeest and zebra in Africa and chasing Wyoming cutthroat trout.
Click here to find air times and/or your VERSUS channel number.
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- Order the TRCP Calendar in Time for the Holidays
Still don’t have the perfect holiday gift for your favorite hunter, angler and T.R. buffs? Why not give them the TRCP calendar, Hunting and Fishing in America 2008?
Containing striking images by nature photographer Dusan Smetana, historical Roosevelt images and T.R. quotes, this calendar makes an attractive, yet practical, gift. Remind those who love the outdoors or the joys of the water and woods all year long, while also helping to support the TRCP in its mission to guarantee everyone a place to hunt and fish.
To ensure delivery before Christmas, please place orders by Sunday Dec. 16, 2007.
Click here to buy now.
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- The TRCP Welcomes Wanda Jackson
 | Wanda Jackson,
Database & Membership Coordinator |
Wanda Jackson joined the TRCP in fall of 2007. As TRCP Database & Membership Coordinator, Wanda brings to the TRCP a fundraising and database background inherited by her work with Public Broadcasting and several years of member and customer relationship management.
Wanda grew up surrounded by wetlands and farmlands in Eastern Arkansas, where she developed a sincere passion for the great outdoors. Recently relocating to the Nashville area, she anticipates developing her core passion into a token for the greater good. She feels that being part of TRCP will allow her to do just that and maintain values that are most important to her.
She is the mother of Alana, a very dynamic three-year-old, who shares her love of the outdoors and freshwater fishing. Wanda’s favorite pastime is being at the lake with her daughter and husband, Alvin, a passionate hunter.
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Updates from TRCP Partner Organizations - News from the National Conservation CommunityAmerican Sportfishing Association
The Future Fisherman Foundation aims to reconnect today’s youth with the outdoors and nature is through the Physh Ed National Fishing and Boating Grants Initiative, which provides grants to kindergarten through grade 12 teachers to implement fishing and boating units in their PE classes. More>> |  | Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies
Stay up to date by reading the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies blog, Conservation News. More>> |  | BASS/ESPN Outdoors
BASS and Costa Del Mar recently combined to create the Costa Del Mar / BASS Conservation Scholarship Program. In its inaugural year, the 2006-2007 scholarships made a difference for four students. More>> |  | Coastal Conservation Association
Read the latest edition of TIDE Magazine. More>> |  | Delta Waterfowl
Read the Winter 2007 edition of Delta Waterfowl Magazine. More>>
|  | Ducks Unlimited
DU provides 30 helpful tips for duck hunters this season. More>> |  | Federation of Fly Fishers
While it is cold outside, start thinking about summer. Conclave 2008 will be July 24-26, in Whitefish, Montana. More>> |  | Izaak Walton League of America
Authorization for seven new locks on the Upper Mississippi and Illinois River system, long opposed by the Izaak Walton League of America, overcame one final obstacle in the U.S. Senate. More>> |  | Mule Deer Foundation
Mule Deer Foundation's 20th Anniversary Celebration will take place February 6-9, 2008. More>> |  | The Nature Conservancy
The Nature Conservancy offers you tips for eco-friendly holidays. More>> |  | Pheasants Forever
Just in time for the holidays, Pheasants Forever has the perfect gift sure to satisfy the hunter, dog lover, farmer or conservationist in your family, advance tickets to Pheasants Forever's National Pheasant Fest 2008. More>> |  | Quail Forever
Quail Forever announces that Douglas A. Bensman of California, Missouri, has been named the organization's new regional wildlife biologist in Ohio, after spending the past two years as a private lands conservationist with the Missouri Department of Conservation. More>> |  | Quail Unlimited
Receive free shipping from QU store on items ordered before December 14th. More>> |  |
Quality Deer Management Association
Learn more about upcoming QDMA events. More>>
|  | Trout Unlimited
Trout Unlimited formally protested a host of federal Bureau of Land Management energy lease sales across Wyoming, including leases that could imperil important trout fisheries in the North Platte, Green and Yellowstone River drainages. More>> |  | Trust for Public Land
Voters across the country approved 34 of 55 conservation funding measures on the ballot, generating $1.4 billion in new conservation funding this Novembers. More>> |  | Whitetails Unlimited
Buy Deer Camp tickets at the Whitetails Unlimited Web site. More>> |  | Wildlife Management Institute
Read the latest issue of the Outdoor News Bulletin. More>> |  | The Wildlife Society
TWS announces that their latest technical review, Impacts of Wind Energy Facilities on Wildlife and Wildlife Habitat, is now available for purchase at www.wildlife.org. More>> |  |
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Grassroots Action  | Thank you to all the TRCP partners who took action and voiced their opinions on the Moab Resource Management Plan in Utah. We had an extremely impressive response rate of 7.7%. Thank you for speaking in favor of responsible land management. Click here to check out our current campaigns. |
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Featured Conservation Leader Charles S. Potter, Jr., President & CEO, Max McGraw Wildlife Foundation  | Charles S. Potter, Jr.,
TRCP Board Member | Who got you involved with hunting and/or fishing? When?
My parents were my role model. Both of them hunted, fished and loved the outdoors. I grew up on a small farm north of Chicago, Illinois, that in the fall attracted enough ducks to keep a young boy interested and had fence rows along the fields edge providing perfect habitat for pheasants. (Today, the fence rows are still there, but the massive influx of predators have wiped out the pheasants.) From my earliest childhood memories, I was sitting in a duck boat with my mother and father on our marsh placing decoys or walking a trail watching Labradors chase pheasants. Weekends on our farm wedded me to a love of the land and a life commitment to conservation causes.
What is your most memorable experience afield?
Having had the good fortune to have traveled and hunted or fished throughout much of the world, I have been blessed with memories of astounding numbers of birds, great fighting fish and remote wilderness. My passion for duck hunting and watching ducks has been with me since childhood, but of greater interest is the management of ducks. I have memories of being lost in the northern Canadian wilderness, of sinking a duck boat at the mouth of the Mississippi river and of hunting ducks on the Big Horn river in Montana when it was 38 degrees below zero, with ducks tolling through the steam of a hoar frost; these do not top what happened on the first Saturday of December of this year. I have spent nearly a decade developing a property in southern Illinois for waterfowl. My goal being to provide a place where the birds could find sanctuary and food for their fall and spring migration, where our family could carry on its generations old traditions and introduce friends to the same. This process involved creating hundreds of acres of wetlands, miles of dykes, a multitude of food plots and managing water levels on a constant basis. I did not know if all this would really work, but creating a high quality duck marsh from scratch has been a life long goal. When dawn broke, cloudy and blustery, as I ventured out to the marsh a sight unfolded that made it all worthwhile. Clouds of mallards and other puddle ducks erupted from the hundreds of acres of flooded marsh grass and food plots. As the many thousands of birds swirled, they formed a black mass that took on the form of smoke as they moved off in the dim light. A place that had been a river bottom grain and cattle farm a decade ago was now a waterfowl paradise, a place that will create memories for years to come.
What do you think are our most pressing conservation issues today?
Our most pressing issues today are to enable society to understand and embrace the need for land management and for hunting and fishing to be accepted as core values in America with an opportunity for all whom so desire to participate. I was fortunate to have had parents who instilled in me the values of and an appreciation for wildlife and places wild. This is a part of America’s heritage that must be defended and embraced so that our wildlife, fisheries and natural places will remain important and intact.
What is your approach to facing conservation challenges?
In approaching conservation challenges we must find common ground amongst the variety of conservation organizations, agencies and their supporters. The building of coalitions is the key to providing a united force. We have suffered greatly from our inability to enact legislation and to protect lands as a result of entities lacking the ability to come together. Each entity must have a distinctive mission to survive, but we will lose the fight if we do not work together.
Why are you involved with the TRCP?
I believe the TRCP is the force capable of developing policy on behalf of the conservation community to create changes of magnitude in the way wildlife, fisheries and our natural lands are managed and funded. The TRCP represents a new era in cooperative conservation that will leverage the collective power and ideas of its numerous partners to achieve unprecedented success for the conservation world.
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BookshelfBackcast by Lou Ureneck
 | While father and son fishing trips can be the stuff of American legend, they can also turn out to be the stuff of anger, love and self-discovery. In his memoir of a fishing trip through the Alaskan wilderness, Lou Ureneck brings to life the struggle to reclaim the trust of his teenage son, Adam, following his divorce. Told against the backdrop of the Alaskan wilds, Backcast is the remembrance of a fishing trip that carried a father and son from the mountains of Alaska to the Bering Sea. Part adventure story, part reconciliation with life’s unexpected turns, and part commentary on the healing power of nature, “Backcast” explores the world of a man confronted by the hard choices divorce can bring to create a moving meditation on fatherhood.
For more information, please click here.
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If You Did’t Bring Jerky, What Did I Just Eat?: Misadventures in Hunting, Fishing, and the Wilds of Suburbia by Bill Heavey For nearly a decade, Bill Heavey, an outdoorsman marooned in suburbia, has written the “Sportsman’s Life” column on the back page of Field & Stream. If You Didn’t Bring Jerky, What Did I Just Eat? is the first collection of Heavey’s sidesplitting observations on life as a hardcore (but often hapless) outdoorsman. Whether he’s hunting cougars in the southwest desert, scheming to make his five-year-old daughter fall in love with fishing, or chronicling his father’s slow decline through the lens of the numerous dogs he’s owned over seventy-five years, Heavey neatly blends humor and pathos.
For more information, click here.
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Photo GalleryCheck out How Your Fellow TRCP Partners Fared this Season We need your photos. We are working to expand the photo gallery on our Web site and would love to include your photo. Please send the photo with information on how and where you got what’s in the shot. If we pick yours for our next newsletter, we’ll send you a TRCP hat too.
Send photos to info@trcp.org.
Electronic photos only please.
Tim Carter of the Sheet Metal Workers Local 66 had this to say about his photo,"I was a little embarrassed for the guys on your Web site having to hold up their bait for a picture. So I sent you a picture of a real fish that we caught this summer ... a 40 lb. King caught on the Kenai river in Alaska."
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View the rest of the TRCP Partner Photo gallery here.
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Roosevelt Reflections1907: A Big Year for Public Lands
by Ken Barrett To waste, to destroy, our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead of using it so as to increase its usefulness, will result in undermining in the days of our children the very prosperity which we ought by right hand down to them amplified and developed.
Theodore Roosevelt,
Message to Congress, December 3, 1907
 | T.R. speaks to a crowd in 1917.
Photo courtesy LOC | One hundred years ago, President Theodore Roosevelt was on a roll establishing national forests throughout the country. In March 1907, he was stopped from establishing any additional forests in six western states by an act of Congress, who was reacting to protests by special interest groups and local citizens who wanted to exploit the vast western lands for their own interests. While Congress limited Roosevelt’s ever-increasing desire to declare more public lands in the West, this didn’t hinder him from setting aside lands in other states, including the Tongass National Forest in Alaska, our largest national forest with more than 17 million acres. T.R. didn’t only set aside national forests; he also established national monuments and nation bird reservations, some which would become part of our National Wildlife Refuge System. 1907 was also the year that old forest reserves were officially renamed “national forests.”
Today, there are approximately 190 million acres in America’s national forest system, spread over nine regions of the United States, and Teddy put approximately 140 million of those acres in place. That’s an area approximately the size of Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Ohio combined.
Just think about it for a moment, that’s an area the size of the entire northeastern United States. If Teddy hadn’t established those public lands when he did, it’s pretty safe to say that where we now have places to hunt and fish, open and accessible to every citizen, we may well have something far different. I shutter to think what it would be.
In the days, months and years ahead, TRCP Partners will be called upon to voice their concerns and opinions about the future of America’s lands and waters. When that happens, I, for one, will think about T.R. and his huge gifts to us, asking myself, "What would Teddy do?" I don’t believe that question will be very difficult to answer.
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