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This American Holiday is All About Your Right to Enjoy the Outdoors
National Hunting and Fishing Day is like Christmas, Independence Day, and Thanksgiving for sportsmen and women—so go enjoy the many gifts of the outdoors, cherish our American traditions, and give thanks
God put us in charge. At least, that’s what the Good Book says. Our human connection to nature and wildlife is so special, because we are at once a part of it, yet differentiated from it. The experiences we have with wildlife and wild places are vital to our existence, because they help us affirm our own uniqueness and value in life.
No one understands and appreciates this relationship more than American sportsmen and women. When a hunter or angler fairly and ethically pursues wildlife or fish, he is connecting with nature at a primal level—life and death are at stake. And with a respectful harvest of that animal, he is celebrating and appreciating what it has provided and taught him.
Theodore Roosevelt spoke of the virtues of a “strenuous life.” I believe he meant that life is an accumulation of experiences, big and small. Only by pushing ourselves in this pursuit can we know our full potential. Life is all around us, and sportsmen go out to meet it! It’s in the friction of water around your legs as you step into a stream, the crunch of frosty ground under your boot, the smell of a campfire, and the sound of laughter and tales being shared.
September 22th is National Hunting and Fishing Day, and it should be celebrated and appreciated—not just by hunters and anglers, but by all Americans.
Sportsmen are the original conservationists. Our traditions and passions for wildlife support a system found nowhere else on Earth, one that benefits all. The North American Model of Wildlife Conservation prioritizes professional science-based wildlife management, provides funding mechanisms through license sales and excise taxes that pay for conservation programs and, most importantly, holds that our fish and game resources are a public resource belonging to all Americans. Inherent in this truth is our democratic tradition of public lands, which goes back to the days of Roosevelt and others.
God put us in charge, therefore we are responsible. It is up to all of us, as sportsmen and women, to be vocal advocates for conservation of fish, wildlife, habitat, America’s public lands, and the sporting traditions we hold so dear.
In the spirit of this day, there are two things you can do to help guarantee that future generations have quality places to hunt and fish:
1) Go hunting or fishing. Just get out there. Live the strenuous life. Even better, take someone with you.
2) Speak up! Contact your lawmakers and elected officials to tell them why conservation and sportsmen are so important to our blessed country. Urge them to stand with sportsmen and women in celebrating our uniquely American traditions, on Saturday and every day.
This is a great place to start: Sign the Sportsmen’s Country petition at sportsmenscountry.org. Tell lawmakers that access promises mean nothing if our public lands are not well-managed for the next generation of hunters and anglers.
This was originally posted September 22, 2016 and has been updated. Top photo courtesy of Northwoods Collective.
House Committee Backs Public Land Access and Paying Down Maintenance Backlogs
Swift passage in the House and similar movement in the Senate would permanently secure the most critical tool for opening 9.52 million acres of landlocked public lands and address long-standing maintenance issues on public lands across the U.S.
Today, the House Natural Resources Committee took strongly bipartisan action to advance two pieces of critical public lands legislation: permanent reauthorization of the Land and Water Conservation Fund and the Restore Our Parks and Public Lands Act, a bill that would provide dedicated funding to address the maintenance backlogs in our national parks, Bureau of Land Management lands, and National Wildlife Refuge System.
“We want to thank Chairman Bishop and Ranking Member Grijalva for rolling up their sleeves and working together in bipartisan fashion for the benefit of American sportsmen and women,” says Whit Fosburgh, President and CEO of the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership. “The Land and Water Conservation Fund is the single most important federal program for conserving habitat on and expanding access to America’s 640 million acres of public lands; and the Restore our Parks and Public Lands Act provides the funding necessary to begin to ensure those public lands are being well-managed and maintained.”
The House bill would fully fund the Land and Water Conservation Fund at $900 million and dedicate 3 percent of LWCF dollars specifically to increasing public access on existing public lands. (Without further action, the program’s current authorization is set to expire on September 30.)
The TRCP and leading hunting app-maker onX recently revealed the results of a new study showing 9.52 million acres across thirteen Western states are entirely landlocked by private property. The report pointed to the LWCF as the best-available tool for policymakers to open and expand access to public lands.
“Sportsmen are depending on Congress to act swiftly and see that the LWCF is permanently reauthorized with full, dedicated annual funding and that a comprehensive public lands maintenance backlog fund is established to benefit all of our land management agencies,” says Fosburgh. “We hope this commendable move by the House Natural Resources Committee is the first step toward getting these priorities passed into law.”.
Photo courtesy: The Trust For Public Lands
New Mexicans: Ensure Our Public Lands Are Managed Responsibly
This is YOUR chance to play a role in how our public lands are managed and ensure that sportsmen and women have a say about the places where we love to hunt and fish
The BLM’s Carlsbad Field Office encompasses over two million acres across southeast New Mexico, including the Guadalupe Mountains, Pecos River, Delaware River, and the Black River. These landscapes provide some of the finest hunting, fishing, and outdoor recreation opportunities in the state, as well as important habitat for big game and fish.
Currently, the Bureau of Land Management is revising the plan that will determine the future management of these lands. The Carlsbad Field Office’s Draft Resource Management Plan was released in August with a 90-day public comment period, and sportsmen and women must get involved to ensure that the best habitats are conserved and that these lands are managed responsibly for multiple-use.
Please attend one of eight local public meetings in the next few weeks (see schedule below). These events will offer updates on the planning process, allow the public to share their ideas and opinions on the draft plan, and explain ways for interested citizens to stay involved.
The best way to see that our priorities are included in the plan is to have a presence and provide input at these meetings. Meeting dates, locations, and times, as well as suggested talking points are listed below.
Thank you for taking the time to support our public lands, and I hope to see you at one of the following meetings.
Where and When
| Meeting Location | Date | Time | Address |
| Carlsbad | September 17 | 12:30 – 3pm; 5:30 – 8pm | Pecos River Village Conference Center, 711 Muscatel Avenue |
| Artesia | September 18 | 12:30 – 3pm | Central Valley Electric Cooperative, 1403 N. 13th Street |
| Roswell | September 18 | 5:30 – 8pm | Holiday Inn Roswell, 3620 North Main Street |
| Hope | September 19 | 5:30 – 8pm | Village of Hope, 408 South 2nd Avenue |
| Albuquerque | September 20 | 12:30 – 3pm | Holiday Inn Albuquerque, North I-25, 5050 Jefferson Street NE |
| Jal | September 25 | 12:30 – 3pm | Jal Community Center, 109 W. Panther Ave |
| Hobbs | September 25 | 5:30 – 8pm | New Mexico Junior College, 5317 N Lovington |
| Midland, TX | September 27 | 12:30 – 3pm | Midland County Centennial Library, 2503 Loop 250 Frontage Rd |
Suggested Talking Points
- Conserve big-game seasonal habitat and migration corridors: Elk, mule deer, and antelope utilize a variety of landscapes throughout the year, and the long-term health of these areas—particularly those contiguous, high-quality wildlife habitats that are not yet developed—should receive special consideration under the plan.
- Additional resources for responsible stewardship: Funding for the reclamation and restoration of abandoned and orphaned well sites and energy infrastructure should equal that spent on new development. Additionally, the agency should provide the resources necessary to effectively monitor and enforce existing rules and regulations.
- Responsible energy development: Oil and gas development on these lands should be conducted thoughtfully and in balance with other multiple-uses. Wildlife-dependent recreation and the hunting and fishing opportunities in places such as Serpentine Bends, or on the clear waters of the Black River, Delaware River and Pecos River should be safeguarded as this area undergoes further development.
Photo courtesy of BLM New Mexico
Roadless Rule for Alaska Should Follow the Examples Set in Idaho and Colorado
If the forest service and Alaska are going to develop a state-focused roadless rule, they should stick to the standards set by previous efforts
Sometimes the world of public lands policy makes me feel like I’m helping my young daughter with her latest Lego set. She and I might spend hours assembling a boat or car, one piece at time until it’s completed and functional, and then she’ll play with it for a few days before deciding that it’s time to tear it apart and start all over again.
Such a process resembles the current situation of public land management in Alaska, where a carefully crafted conservation plan has been working with success since its establishment seventeen years ago, but the Forest Service must return to the drawing board to create a new plan for managing 14.7 million acres of some of the world’s most productive salmon and Sitka blacktail deer habitat.
And in this case, rather than the few hours it takes to rebuild my daughter’s plastic toys, the decision to scrap this carefully crafted policy will require millions of public dollars and years of committed work by our already overworked management agencies.
That’s right, the U.S. Forest Service recently announced that it has agreed to work with the state of Alaska to develop a state-specific rewrite of the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule, which is designed to conserve undeveloped backcountry public lands that have never been roaded or developed. These areas in the Tongass and Chugach National Forests provide enormous benefits right now for hunters, anglers, and the commercial fishing industry, and the current roadless rule is doing its job of ensuring they continue to do so.
With that said, since it is now clear that a new plan will be rewritten for Alaska, we want to outline how this process must unfold in order for it to succeed. About a decade ago, the states of Idaho and Colorado followed a similar path and developed state-based rules for roadless areas within their borders, and the TRCP played a leading role in seeing that these efforts produced plans that benefitted wildlife, conserved habitat, and safeguarded quality hunting and fishing opportunities.
Below are the lessons learned along the way that the Forest Service and state of Alaska must heed if they hope to develop a workable and supportable Alaska roadless rule.
Must-Dos for Roadless Rule Planning
First, in order to generate broad buy-in and support, an Alaska roadless rule must be, on balance, as strong as or stronger than the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule. In order to do this, any new allowances for development in roadless areas must be counterbalanced with increased conservation measures. This was the approach taken in both Colorado and Idaho, where negotiations for provisions allowing new roads, more aggressive timber harvest, and mineral extraction in some areas resulted in additional safeguards for what were deemed the highest value roadless areas. This model enabled solutions-focused stakeholder groups to collaborate over the management of these lands and develop an end product with support from multiple interests. A similar expectation must be established for an Alaska roadless rule to help drive cooperation and compromise, and the rule’s ultimate success.
Second, any changes to the current management of roadless areas must result from a collaborative process that includes pragmatic representatives from a wide array of state and national stakeholder groups. The Forest Service’s memorandum of understanding with the state of Alaska indicates that the state will establish a state-driven collaborative to develop recommendations on the management of these lands. Both the Idaho and Colorado roadless rules succeeded, however, because the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the U.S. Forest Service, and the states themselves supported the inclusion of stakeholders representing both state and, critically, national interests in the collaborative process. Because of this diverse level of involvement, these management rules were able to pass muster and be supported both locally and nationally.
Finally, the rule-making process should require as much public participation as possible. The success of Idaho and Colorado rules was dependent on strong public participation, and a number of key refinements to these rules were suggested by the public. The USFS should not only embrace and fully consider input from a broad range of voices, but also hold public meetings in the lower 48, in addition to the state of Alaska. Right now, the planned public meeting schedule does not include any meetings outside of Alaska, despite the fact that these lands are owned by all Americans. Ample commenting opportunities for the public to weigh-in officially will ensure that a variety of perspectives and interests will be heard in the planning process.
We’ve been here before, and if policymakers are serious about developing a roadless rule for Alaska that will be supported by stakeholders and provide for balanced management, they would do well to heed the lessons learned in the Idaho and Colorado roadless rule processes. With so much at stake, there’s no excuse to reinvent a proven model.
Photos courtesy: Forest Service Alaska Region, USDA
HOW YOU CAN HELP
CHEERS TO CONSERVATION
Theodore Roosevelt’s experiences hunting and fishing certainly fueled his passion for conservation, but it seems that a passion for coffee may have powered his mornings. In fact, Roosevelt’s son once said that his father’s coffee cup was “more in the nature of a bathtub.” TRCP has partnered with Afuera Coffee Co. to bring together his two loves: a strong morning brew and a dedication to conservation. With your purchase, you’ll not only enjoy waking up to the rich aroma of this bolder roast—you’ll be supporting the important work of preserving hunting and fishing opportunities for all.
$4 from each bag is donated to the TRCP, to help continue their efforts of safeguarding critical habitats, productive hunting grounds, and favorite fishing holes for future generations.
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