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April 7, 2022

Why the Recovering America’s Wildlife Act Would Benefit Hunters and Anglers

This bipartisan effort to create dedicated funding for proactive conservation is the next major victory-in-the-making for the sporting community

Today, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee passed the Recovering America’s Wildlife Act in a bipartisan vote of 15-5. This brings us one step closer to securing a solution that has been championed by the hunting and fishing community since 2016.

“Passage of the Recovering America’s Wildlife Act would be a defining victory for wildlife, habitat, outdoor recreation, and our economy,” says Whit Fosburgh, president and CEO of the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership. “We applaud members of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee for this step today and urge lawmakers on both sides of Capitol Hill to take up and pass this bill without delay.”

It may not be a household name quite yet, but the Recovering America’s Wildlife Act is the next victory-in-the-making for sportsmen and sportswomen, on the scale of 2020’s Great American Outdoors Act. And we think you’re going to be hearing about it from every corner of the hunting, fishing, and conservation space over the next few months.

Here are five reasons why.

RAWA Would Save Taxpayers Money

A lack of federal conservation dollars, a changing climate, and declining habitat have all contributed to putting thousands of species at risk of being listed as threatened or endangered. Once a species reaches this point, recovery becomes significantly more uncertain, difficult, and expensive. Proactive efforts made at the early signs of decline are better for wildlife, cost less money, and are less restrictive to hunters and anglers. Plus, many habitat projects funded by the bill could improve natural infrastructure systems that prevent costly damage from extreme weather and other emergencies, like catastrophic wildfire.

RAWA Helps Species You Care About (and More)

State fish and wildlife agencies have identified more than 12,000 species in need of conservation action that would benefit from the Recovering America’s Wildlife Act. These include popular sportfish and game like the ruffed grouse, sage grouse, coho salmon, and sockeye salmon. If these sportfish and game were to end up threatened or endangered, it could lead to stricter bag limits or hunting and fishing moratoriums to save these species.

RAWA Would Supplement Hunter- and Angler-Sourced Conservation Funding

Currently, 80 percent of the funding for state fish and wildlife agencies comes from state hunting and fishing licenses and permits as well as federal excise taxes on hunting and fishing gear. While this funding model has worked for decades, more investment is needed. This is why pushing for passage of the Recovering America’s Wildlife Act is one of the TRCP’s top ten legislative priorities this year. The bill would amend the Pittman-Robertson Wildlife Restoration Act to provide an additional $1.4 billion per year—$1.3 billion for state agencies and $97.5 million for tribes—in dedicated funding to restore habitat, recover wildlife populations, and rebuild the infrastructure for both our natural systems and outdoor recreation opportunities.

RAWA Is Truly Bipartisan

The legislation has strong support on both sides of the aisle, with 32 co-sponsors in the Senate—evenly divided between parties—and hundreds of co-sponsors in the House.

RAWA Is the Win Some Lawmakers Need Right Now

This legislation has had momentum before, but the timing couldn’t be better for lawmakers who are up for re-election to bring a big win home for fish, wildlife, and habitat in a way that benefits not only sportsmen and sportswomen but Americans from all walks of life.

Take a few minutes to send your lawmakers a direct message urging them to support and pass the Recovering America’s Wildlife Act without delay.

 

Top photo by Roger Tabor/USFWS

2 Responses to “Why the Recovering America’s Wildlife Act Would Benefit Hunters and Anglers”

  1. Curt Nizzoli

    Where is this extra $1.4 billion coming from? Higher fees on us anglers and hunters who already pay for 96% of all conservation in this country? Your article completely omitted where this money is coming from….

    • Val Long

      The post preceding this state that anglers and hunters will pay for this as we pay a lot through fees and license for conservation already, however, I see this as federally funded and think the cost is well worth it and not that much spread out among all the public. Everyone loves wildlife, most of it anyway and I can’t see anyone wanting to loose these critter resources. Great Idea! This money supplements the money provided by anglers and hunters according to my reading.

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Why the Recovering America’s Wildlife Act Would Benefit Hunters and Anglers

This bipartisan effort to create dedicated funding for proactive conservation is the next major victory-in-the-making for the sporting community

Today, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee passed the Recovering America’s Wildlife Act in a bipartisan vote of 15-5. This brings us one step closer to securing a solution that has been championed by the hunting and fishing community since 2016.

“Passage of the Recovering America’s Wildlife Act would be a defining victory for wildlife, habitat, outdoor recreation, and our economy,” says Whit Fosburgh, president and CEO of the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership. “We applaud members of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee for this step today and urge lawmakers on both sides of Capitol Hill to take up and pass this bill without delay.”

It may not be a household name quite yet, but the Recovering America’s Wildlife Act is the next victory-in-the-making for sportsmen and sportswomen, on the scale of 2020’s Great American Outdoors Act. And we think you’re going to be hearing about it from every corner of the hunting, fishing, and conservation space over the next few months.

Here are five reasons why.

RAWA Would Save Taxpayers Money

A lack of federal conservation dollars, a changing climate, and declining habitat have all contributed to putting thousands of species at risk of being listed as threatened or endangered. Once a species reaches this point, recovery becomes significantly more uncertain, difficult, and expensive. Proactive efforts made at the early signs of decline are better for wildlife, cost less money, and are less restrictive to hunters and anglers. Plus, many habitat projects funded by the bill could improve natural infrastructure systems that prevent costly damage from extreme weather and other emergencies, like catastrophic wildfire.

RAWA Helps Species You Care About (and More)

State fish and wildlife agencies have identified more than 12,000 species in need of conservation action that would benefit from the Recovering America’s Wildlife Act. These include popular sportfish and game like the ruffed grouse, sage grouse, coho salmon, and sockeye salmon. If these sportfish and game were to end up threatened or endangered, it could lead to stricter bag limits or hunting and fishing moratoriums to save these species.

RAWA Would Supplement Hunter- and Angler-Sourced Conservation Funding

Currently, 80 percent of the funding for state fish and wildlife agencies comes from state hunting and fishing licenses and permits as well as federal excise taxes on hunting and fishing gear. While this funding model has worked for decades, more investment is needed. This is why pushing for passage of the Recovering America’s Wildlife Act is one of the TRCP’s top ten legislative priorities this year. The bill would amend the Pittman-Robertson Wildlife Restoration Act to provide an additional $1.4 billion per year—$1.3 billion for state agencies and $97.5 million for tribes—in dedicated funding to restore habitat, recover wildlife populations, and rebuild the infrastructure for both our natural systems and outdoor recreation opportunities.

RAWA Is Truly Bipartisan

The legislation has strong support on both sides of the aisle, with 32 co-sponsors in the Senate—evenly divided between parties—and hundreds of co-sponsors in the House.

RAWA Is the Win Some Lawmakers Need Right Now

This legislation has had momentum before, but the timing couldn’t be better for lawmakers who are up for re-election to bring a big win home for fish, wildlife, and habitat in a way that benefits not only sportsmen and sportswomen but Americans from all walks of life.

Take a few minutes to send your lawmakers a direct message urging them to support and pass the Recovering America’s Wildlife Act without delay.

 

Top photo by Roger Tabor/USFWS

March 24, 2022

The Key to Sage Grouse Recovery Is Partnership

One Farm Bill conservation program is a strong model for collaboration among federal, state, and local partners creating better habitat for sage grouse 

As most sportsmen and sportswomen know, a major conservation challenge that requires an even larger solution is the plight of the greater sage grouse. The sagebrush steppe ecosystem, which once spanned nearly 500,000 square miles across the Intermountain West, has shrunk by half, due to a variety of issues including invasive species, drought, land conversion, and development. These stressors have each contributed to population declines of over 95 percent and brought sage grouse to the brink of an endangered species listing in 2014.

The issue has been a political football in the years since, marked by court cases and management plan revisions, and all the while, Congress has included an annual rider in its spending bills to prohibit the use of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service funding for purposes of listing the bird as endangered. Ten Western states have developed sage grouse management plans across 65 million federal acres, but populations continue to struggle.

As any wildlife biologist or land manager can attest, the issues that threaten a species and its associated habitats do not exist in a vacuum—nor do effective solutions. That’s why the careful collaboration and negotiation of conservation measures for sage grouse on public land are not enough.

Fortunately, there are a handful of tools available to private landowners to boost sage grouse habitat. One, the Regional Conservation Partnership Program, was created in the 2014 Farm Bill and has quickly grown into our nation’s premier public-private conservation program addressing resource challenges on a landscape scale. Based on its early popularity, the program was expanded in the 2018 Farm Bill and subsequently authorized at $300 million annually.

One of the success stories that brought Congress to invest in the RCPP in the 2018 bill was an effort underway in California and Nevada to ensure the future of the bi-state population of greater sage grouse. Led by the Eastern Sierra Land Trust, 11 national, state, and local partners have been working to conserve the bird since 2002. In 2017, those groups together leveraged $16 million in partner funds to secure an additional $8 million in RCPP dollars for habitat restoration on the California-Nevada border, an RCPP project known as “Livestock In Harmony.”

Map of the project area of the Regional Conservation Partnership Program.

 

In the five years since this RCPP investment was awarded, the locally led partnership has made significant funding and technical assistance available to farmers and ranchers to enroll in agricultural and wetland easements. It has also carried out ecosystem restoration, optimized water use, supported outreach and education, and more.

The project wraps up in June 2022, and we look forward to seeing the progress made on local sage grouse populations as well as the surrounding landscape generally. As improvement projects have done for many bellwether species, restoration of sage grouse habitat will have far-reaching benefits for all sagebrush species.

Of course, implementation of the expanded RCPP hasn’t been without hurdles. The TRCP and our partners—some of whom are involved in project implementation—hear concerns about application timelines and costly requirements for the share of funds not being contributed by the federal government. Especially as lawmakers begin to develop the 2023 Farm Bill, it’s critical that the U.S. Department of Agriculture is able to get authorized funding out the door and onto the landscape now, or risk Congress providing a much smaller sum to the program in the years ahead.

For more information on the RCPP and other Farm Bill conservation programs, visit trcp.org/farmbill.

 

Top photo courtesy of the USFWS / Tom Koerner via Flickr.

March 23, 2022

Video: The Importance of Grasslands to Deer

Why hunters should support a historic effort to restore grasslands and sagebrush ecosystems 

A new video featuring Ryan “Cal” Callaghan of MeatEater highlights the importance of grasslands and sagebrush habitats for deer and other big game, as well as the threats to these rapidly disappearing landscapes.

Produced by the National Deer Association, with support from the TRCP and a coalition of leading conservation groups, the video points to the North American Grasslands Conservation Act as a much-needed tool for restoring healthy, intact grasslands that offer deer forage, cover from predators, and areas to raise their young.

The North American Grasslands Conservation Act is modeled after the highly effective North American Wetlands Conservation Act (NAWCA), which has been successfully restoring waterfowl habitat since 1989. The new legislation, expected to be introduced this spring, would direct $350 million in funding for private landowners to restore and conserve what remains of the most threatened ecosystem on the planet—our continent’s shrublands, sage steppe, savannahs, tallgrass prairies, and shortgrass prairies.

Learn more about the coalition effort at ActForGrasslands.org.

Click here to take action in support of the North American Grasslands Conservation Act.

 

Top photo courtesy of the USFWS / Tom Koerner via Flickr.

March 17, 2022

Anglers Need Louisiana Lawmakers to Create Pogie Boat Buffer Zone

A commonsense measure with bipartisan support would keep disruptive industrial menhaden harvest activity farther away from Louisiana beaches

As the Louisiana legislature convenes this week, there is already momentum behind a measure meant to safeguard the state’s beaches, barrier islands, fisheries, and coastal economy. Anglers have been pushing for it since last summer: Decision-makers need to create a regulated buffer zone along Louisiana’s beaches that would restrict the industrial harvest of menhaden—an important forage fish locally known as pogies—to deeper waters.

To recap, restricting purse-seine operations in the surf zone would reduce habitat impacts and conflicts between pogie boats and anglers. The two foreign-owned companies behind industrial menhaden fishing in the Gulf have said they don’t and can’t operate their boats in shallow waters, where they are at risk of running aground, but anglers and charter boat captains regularly witness pogie boats within a half-mile of shore—often leaving dead redfish, sharks, jacks, and other fish behind. And every other coastal state has safeguards in place to protect their shorelines against the abuse of commercial pogie fishing.

A bill in the legislature ultimately died last year after it had strong support in committee. Since then, fisheries managers not only failed to extend a proposed half-mile buffer zone to a full mile, but they actually weakened the proposal, setting into motion a public comment period on a quarter-mile restricted area. Meanwhile, the concerns about damage being caused to Louisiana’s surf zones by these foreign-owned companies have only increased.

This is our time to secure a durable solution for habitat and sportfish that rely on pogies for food. We aren’t asking the reduction fishing industry to catch any fewer fish. We are asking for some simple, reasonable protection of our beaches—many of which have been recently restored to support coastal tourism and spending on activities like recreational fishing.

Take just a few minutes out of your day to reach out to your elected officials using TRCP’s simple advocacy tool and help us move pogie boats out of the surf zone and into deeper water, where there is less chance of damaging our shores and less impact on sportfish.

 

Top photo courtesy of Healthy Gulf via Flickr.

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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