Changes Coming Soon for Atlantic Menhaden Harvesters

September 21, 2022

Fisheries managers are meeting in November to debate and adopt changes to the Atlantic menhaden interstate fishery management plan—anglers have weighed in, but many of our concerns won’t be addressed

In November, the Menhaden Management Board of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission will consider public comments submitted since August about proposed changes to the Atlantic Menhaden Interstate Fishery Management Plan. The draft addendum up for vote deals with reallocation of each Atlantic Coast state’s yearly menhaden commercial fishing quota and changes to various programs that give states opportunities to harvest additional quota throughout the season.

The plan and options proposed in this addendum are extremely granular—the average angler does not need to wade through and understand it all. What you do need to know is that the TRCP and our sportfishing partners have weighed in with the ASMFC on our preferred options, which we believe would best benefit recreational fishing, sportfish, and the overall health of our marine food web.

It is also important for anglers to understand how industrial reduction fishing fits into this reallocation math. Remember: Virginia is the only Atlantic state that still allows menhaden reduction fishing in its waters, and a single foreign-owned company—Omega Protein, operating out of Virginia—does all of the reduction fishing for menhaden on the Atlantic Coast. Most of the other harvesters who take menhaden out of the water, based on the state allocations up for vote, are fishing for bait that is then sold to anglers. This activity supports many small businesses in parts of the Northeast.

But many states, most notably Maine, have had to reckon with the mismatch of state allocations versus actual availability of menhaden in their state waters, forcing them to depend on conditional programs and quota transfers from other states just to maintain their bait fishing fleets. Virginia, meanwhile, holds much of the power within the fishery, even after years of debate about equity among states participating in the plan.

The numbers make this very clear: Virginia is allotted more than 78 percent of the coastwide quota now and, at worst, they will end up with 73.6 percent of the coastwide quota after the Menhaden Management Board chooses from the available options this fall. Does that sound fair for a fishery with 16 states participating?

The TRCP and our partners have been following this addendum planning process for the past year, and we’re supporting the options that most accurately reflect the current needs of the fishery and the availability of the menhaden resource along the coast, in order to lower states’ reliance on one-time programs and quota transfers that keep them limping from season to season. We’re also pushing for each menhaden taken out of the water to be counted toward the coastwide quota, a universally embraced best practice for sound fisheries management that (unbelievably) isn’t required in the menhaden fishery right now.

Our coalition has also expressed concerns about what’s not included in the proposed plan update.

This includes consideration of where commercial harvest should happen within the menhaden’s range. While the recent single-species stock assessment found the Atlantic menhaden stock to be above the biomass target, how that biomass is distributed and fished along the coast will impact predator stocks, including recovering populations of striped bass and bluefish that depend on the availability of various year classes of menhaden and other forage species throughout their range.

We believe that the fishery should be distributed throughout the menhaden’s known geographic range, not concentrated nearshore in sensitive nursery habitats at the center of their range, as it is now. With the fisheries’ effort and catch centered at the menhaden population’s natal area and focused on juveniles (ages 0-2), this prevents larger, more fecund individuals from existing in the stock.

Further, the fishery should not be dominated by industrial fisheries, but rather enable the growth of smaller-scale and local commercial and recreational fisheries.

Finally, we are concerned that the setting of the coastwide total allowable catch for the 2023 season may disregard vital ecosystem effects, because the latest menhaden stock assessment update did not use updated data on certain species which would impact menhaden availability in the water.

For example, the 2022 Atlantic Herring Management Track Assessment concluded that herring remain overfished at just 21 percent of their target biomass. The 2021-2022 total allowable catch of 194,400 metric tons of menhaden was set using species data from 2017, prior to the decline of the Atlantic herring stock. Herring is a primary alternative prey species to menhaden, so this depletion has likely had wide-ranging effects on both prey and predators since 2017, and these impacts will continue as the resource slowly rebuilds.

Menhaden are increasingly important as bait to compensate for shortages of not only Atlantic herring but also river herring and mackerel, and they, of course, remain important as a food source for predators as well. This is why we’ll continue to push for a precautionary approach to quota-setting for the 2023 season, updated ecosystem data in the next stock assessment, and consideration of the current total allowable catch as a maximum value, not as a baseline.

There are a few limited opportunities for informed anglers to engage in the draft addendum debate before the end of September—if you’re interested in attending a public hearing to speak up for menhaden and sportfish, please email Jaclyn Higgins for more information.

Photo by Gaelin Rosenwaks. Follow her on Instagram @gaelingoexplore.

One Response to “Changes Coming Soon for Atlantic Menhaden Harvesters”

Edward Barrett September 23, 2022

They should restrict Menhaden netting in the Chesapeake Bay.

September 23, 2022 at 5:50 pm

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by: Guest Author Sean Saville

posted in: Habitat and Clean Water

September 15, 2022

Majority of Americans Support the Recovering America’s Wildlife Act

70 percent of survey respondents back proposed legislation that would create new source of conservation funding

A new survey conducted by Responsive Management finds that 70 percent of Americans support the Recovering America’s Wildlife Act, pending federal legislation that would allocate an additional $1.4 billion in annual funding to state agencies and Tribal land managers for wildlife conservation.

State-level wildlife conservation efforts in the United States have historically been funded largely by hunters and recreational shooters through an excise tax on their purchases of firearms, pistols, and ammunition. This funding mechanism was created in 1937 through the Federal Aid in Wildlife Restoration Act (often referred to as the “Pittman-Robertson Act” for the legislators who sponsored it.) Because Pittman-Robertson funding comes mostly from sportsmen and sportswomen, it has generally been used by state fish and wildlife agencies to manage game species. For instance, Pittman-Robertson excise tax revenues have helped to fund the recovery of whitetail deer, Rocky Mountain elk, wild turkeys, and many other iconic North American game animals.

While the Pittman-Robertson system has been a major success for almost a century, more than 12,000 wildlife species—including threatened and endangered species and other animals—remain in need of conservation and restoration. The Recovering America’s Wildlife Act is designed to address these needs and strengthen the current wildlife conservation funding model by redirecting $1.4 billion to state fish and wildlife agencies and Tribal wildlife managers for the conservation and restoration of wildlife and plant species of greatest conservation need.

In a time of stark political polarization, RAWA appears to be one of the few causes able to unite both Democrats and Republicans: The bill passed the U.S. House of Representatives with bipartisan support in June and has been introduced in the U.S. Senate, where it is expected to be voted on this month.

The survey conducted by Responsive Management marks one of the first major assessments of public opinion on RAWA. In the survey, respondents were first read a description of the legislation that explained the purpose of the bill and the funding source. They were then asked whether they supported or opposed the Recovering America’s Wildlife Act. A total of 70 percent of adult U.S. residents expressed support for RAWA, including 42 percent who indicated strong support, compared to only 5 percent who oppose the measure.

Reflecting the bipartisan support for the bill in the House, the survey found strong support for RAWA across the political spectrum, with majorities of Democrats (82 percent), Republicans (64 percent), and independents (64 percent) supporting the legislation.

Furthermore, the survey identified majority support for RAWA among every major demographic group examined in the research, including males and females; younger, middle-aged, and older residents; those of higher and lower education levels; and those in urban, suburban, and rural areas. RAWA was also supported by diverse outdoor recreationists, including 80 percent of wildlife viewers, 78 percent of anglers, 77 percent of birdwatchers, and 70 percent of hunters.

“I was initially surprised at how high the support for RAWA was in the survey,” said Responsive Management Executive Director Mark Damian Duda. “But the truth is that, over three decades of survey research, we’ve seen that Americans consistently back conservation issues. In fact, in the last several elections, upwards of 75 percent of the ballot measures on wildlife, habitat, and green issues around the country pass. When these issues are presented directly to the people, Americans tend to vote consistently in favor of conservation.”

“Something we understand well as wildlife managers and representatives of state agencies is that wildlife conservation transcends party politics, and this polling demonstrates that,” said Ron Regan, Executive Director of the Association of Fish & Wildlife Agencies. “The Recovering America’s Wildlife Act is the single most impactful wildlife conservation bill in a generation.”

The scientific, probability-based survey was conducted August 25 to 28, 2022, and used a random sample of 1,002 United States residents ages 18 and older. The survey was fielded through a combination of telephone (including landline and cellular numbers) and online interviews. (The use of supplemental online interviews allowed for greater representation of younger residents, as research indicates that younger people are less likely to complete a telephone survey than they are to complete a survey online.) For the entire sample of adult U.S. residents, the sampling error is at most plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.

Learn more at responsivemanagement.com.

by: Aaron Field

posted in: Habitat and Clean Water

September 14, 2022

What Hunters and Anglers Need to Know About the CRP Improvement Act

New legislation could boost the acreage and impact of hunters’ favorite Farm Bill conservation program

The Conservation Reserve Program is one of the most effective and impactful Farm Bill conservation programs ever implemented, and recently introduced legislation has the potential to make it even better. Proposed by Senators Thune (R-S.D.) and Klobuchar (D-Minn.), the bipartisan Conservation Reserve Program Improvement Act would add landowner incentives that have the potential to boost CRP acreage and improve wildlife habitat and water quality, leading directly to more and better opportunities for hunters and anglers.

Unlike other important U.S. Department of Agriculture conservation programs, the CRP did not get a recent boost in funding.

Legislation that is introduced before the massive Farm Bill, like the CRP Improvement Act, helps hunters and anglers push for the programs that mean the most to us just as debate is heating up. Here’s what you need to know about this bill.

Conservation Reserve Program Basics

Introduced as part of the 1985 Farm Bill, the CRP pays farmers to retire highly erodible farmland from production. Its original goals were to reduce soil erosion and support farm income, but it quickly became clear that the CRP was just as valuable for wildlife and fisheries as it was for farmers. By returning marginal cropland to grasslands, wetlands, and forests, the CRP created millions of acres of wildlife habitat while also filtering water, sequestering carbon, and preserving biodiversity.

Despite this success, reduced rental rates, complicated application processes, and a lack of cost share flexibility has caused some landowners to avoid applying. Conservation-minded groups have worked for years to add commonsense flexibility and improved incentives to the program in ways that don’t compromise its conservation benefits. Now, the CRP Improvement Act could make some of this happen.

What the CRP Improvement Act Does

The new legislation continues the trend of added flexibility, targeted application, and improved outcomes in the CRP. Specifically, the CRP Improvement Act would:

Reinstate cost sharing for mid-contract management. Periodic management of CRP through weed control, prescribed fire, or targeted grazing or mowing is necessary to maintain quality habitat, so landowners in CRP contracts are required to perform management activities near the midpoint of their ten- or 15-year contracts. Unfortunately, federal cost sharing for mid contract management was eliminated in the 2018 Farm Bill, leaving landowners on the hook for these costs and discouraging new enrollment. The CRP Improvement Act reinstates this cost share for all approved practices other than grazing and haying, which will lead to both more enrollment and better management and environmental outcomes.
Add cost sharing for CRP grazing infrastructure. Depending on how and where it is applied, livestock grazing can be beneficial or detrimental to wildlife habitat. The grasslands of the Great Plains evolved with grazing, which supports wildlife by maintaining plant diversity there. The CRP Improvement Act provides cost sharing for grazing infrastructure, like fencing and water development, “if grazing is included in the conservation plan and addresses a resource concern.” Having fencing and water in place makes CRP lands more valuable as emergency livestock forage reserves during drought, adding an incentive to farmers and ranchers. And after grazing infrastructure is set up, landowners are less likely to convert grasslands back into cropland at the end of a CRP contract. In the long term, this seemingly small investment has the potential to support more grass-based agriculture and more diverse farming operations, benefiting both rural economies and wildlife.
Permanently authorize the State Acres for Wildlife Enhancements (SAFE) initiative. SAFE enrolls acreage and encourages management practices that benefit priority wildlife in individual states. These practices are chosen by local biologists and tailored to a specific region. As an example, the states of South Dakota and Minnesota have used SAFE to prioritize enrolling tallgrass prairie acreage for pheasant habitat and water quality. In Georgia, SAFE acreage has been targeted toward native pine savannas, excellent habitat for bobwhite quail. Specific Farm Bill language that prioritizes SAFE ensures that the CRP is much more than a land retirement program and is a win for hunters and anglers nationwide.
Increase the CRP rental payment limitation. Enrollment in the CRP by an individual landowner is currently capped by a $50,000 limitation for rental payments. This limitation has not changed since the original Food Security Act of 1985, and simply doesn’t reflect current farmland rental rates. By raising this limitation to $125,000—still less than if that $50,000 limit had been tied to inflation when created—the CRP Improvement Act would allow conservation-minded landowners to enroll more of their land in the CRP. This has the potential to create more contiguous habitat and remove a barrier to enrolling high-impact acreage.

What to Watch for Next

The CRP Improvement Act is a great example of bipartisan legislation that builds on the success of Farm Bill conservation programs. It is being proposed at an excellent time, just as all parties gear up for the 2023 Farm Bill. There are a couple of things hunters and anglers should keep in mind, both in this bill and in upcoming Farm Bill discussions.

Adding flexibility, production value, and management incentives to the CRP is a great way to gain support from farmers and ranchers, but we have to ensure that it doesn’t reduce the CRP’s conservation value. For this bill to be successful, any haying, livestock grazing, or associated infrastructure needs to be well-planned and targeted toward conservation outcomes. The same must be true for future Farm Bill proposals.

Other tweaks to the CRP—like increased funding, more competitive rental rates, and a better application ranking process—are still needed. But this bill is a clear demonstration that across-the-aisle partnerships on commonsense legislation are still possible. We need to promote this kind of cooperation, and we should keep a close eye on upcoming proposals that would modify the Farm Bill conservation title—for better or worse. Hunters and anglers need to show a united front in support of quality habitat nationwide and supporting the CRP Improvement Act is a good start.

Photo by @NickMKE on Flickr.

by: Michael O'Casey

posted in: Habitat and Clean Water

September 13, 2022

Four Major Threats to Restored Big Game Populations in the Northern Great Basin

This third installment of a four-part series on the Hart Mountain National Antelope Refuge gives a big-picture look at the basic ecology of the region and identifies some of the management challenges the refuge faces today. Read on to learn what is limiting the health of big game populations within these unique public lands.

Thousands of petroglyphs scattered across the black basalt rim-rock convey the importance that the Hart Mountain region has long held as a place for wildlife and hunters. The drawings, some of them from more than 6,500 years ago, show how the Northern Paiute fished, hunted, and lived along the shore of the Warner Lakes, at the base of the mountain, and moved higher to hunt pronghorn and big game during the summer.

Later, in the 1920s, biologists recognized the region as the potential cornerstone of an ambitious plan to re-establish abundant herds of pronghorn antelope. This was reliant on the area’s unique ecology.

The Hart Mountain National Antelope Refuge lies in the heart of the Northern Basin and Range ecoregion and is part of the greater sagebrush steppe ecosystem, which occupies more than 165 million acres across 13 Western states. The Cascade Mountains create a rain shadow that anchors sagebrush, bunchgrass, and forbs as the dominant vegetation. Elevations are high, between 4,500 and 8,017 feet at the top of highest point on the refuge, Warner Mountain. This high-elevation, semi-arid climate creates a region known for extremes.

The refuge acts as an elevational island, which sets the vegetation apart from the lower and drier surrounding Bureau of Land Management lands. At its highest elevations, Hart Mountain accumulates considerably more winter snowpack and acts as a sponge that trickles out water throughout a lifeline of streams and wet meadows during the summer growing season. Snowmelt facilitates abundant growth of aspens, mountain mahogany, bitterbrush, chokecherry, and even ponderosa pine stands, which provide key summer range, forage, and cover for countless species.

Years ago, many groups—including the National Audubon Society and Boone and Crockett Club—worked together to advocate for hundreds of thousands of acres of this high-value habitat to be set aside for wildlife and managed as part of the National Wildlife Refuge System. Today, more than 800,000 acres on the Hart-Sheldon Refuge complex are managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service with a one-of-a-kind mission to manage for wildlife above all other uses.

But this land of extremes also presents significant challenges for wildlife managers. Over the past two decades, populations of mule deer, bighorn sheep, and sage grouse have been declining both on the refuge and across the region. There are many reasons for this, but a few causes stand out as particularly concerning to the health of big game in the sagebrush steppe ecosystem—here are four.

Climate Change

Climate change is taking a toll on wildlife habitat across the West, and the Northern Great Basin is seeing some of the most drastic impacts. The spread of invasive annual grasses, such as medusahead, ventenata, and cheatgrass, diminish native plant communities, reduce the forage available to wildlife and livestock and—perhaps most concerning—alter the historic fire regimes that once helped to maintain the sagebrush steppe. Invasive annuals dry out much quicker during the growing season and create finer fuels that ignite quickly, compared to native perennial bunch grasses. Once invasive annual grasses gain a toehold, they tend to increase the frequency, intensity, and spread of fires, which can damage or replace critical sagebrush and bunchgrass that is more adapted to infrequent, patchy fires.

Rangeland ecologists are also seeing increasingly prolonged and persistent drought cycles in the Intermountain West. These droughts are tough on mule deer, bighorn sheep, and all other wildlife, because they shorten the growing season and decrease the availability of key nutrients needed to sustain pregnant does and ewes through the long winters.

In much of its range, western juniper has increased tenfold in the past 130 years. And rapid expansion of encroaching juniper forests is exacerbated by all of the conditions mentioned above. Warming temperatures, increased CO2 in the atmosphere, changing fire regimes, and historic overgrazing have all helped junipers spread, and their long, deep taproots steal from the limited water available to native plants during a drought. Additionally, these juniper forests can create places where predators have a much better advantage over prey species like sage grouse, mule deer, and bighorn sheep, upending the balance in the food chain.

Wildlife managers need additional resources to fight these effects of climate change.

Recreational Changes and Increased Public Use

One lesson of the COVID-19 pandemic was that our public lands are a treasured resource, and people are enjoying them in ever-growing numbers and a myriad of ways. Trail runners, mountain bikers, OHV users, equestrians, wildlife watchers, and hunters increasingly compete for a limited amount of space that also serves as habitat for wildlife. The public use of the refuge—and all public lands in the West—has increased drastically since the turn of the 21st century. Hunting seasons and tag allotment on the refuge are tightly regulated to limit the level of habitat disturbance, but more people are using the refuge for hiking, biking, and wildlife watching than in recent history. Right now, these activities come with less regulation aimed at limiting impacts to big game.

Energy Development

Last year, Oregon signed into law House Bill 2021, which requires the state to transition to 100-percent clean energy by 2040. While this is needed to combat the effects of climate change, there are growing pressures to site renewable energy projects on landscapes within the Great Basin, where solar and wind energy potential is high. Future renewable energy projects will need to be carefully planned to ensure that they limit and/or mitigate for any impacts to important wildlife habitat, including winter range, stopover areas, and migration corridors. The lands within the refuge are off-limits to energy development, but adjacent habitat could be considered for development under existing BLM management plans, thus affecting the refuge’s big game.

Wild Horses and Burros

Despite the legal classification as “wild” on federal land, free-roaming horses and burros are non-native, feral livestock that do not have any natural predators and can create significant detrimental impacts to native ecosystems within sagebrush steppe habitat. Currently, there are an estimated 86,000 wild horses and burros on BLM and national forest lands, which exceeds the agencies’ Appropriate Management Levels by more than 300 percent. The quality of habitat for wildlife in many places within the West is declining as a result.

These impacts are elevated by a changing climate. Native species like bighorns, mule deer, and pronghorn antelope are being negatively affected as they compete for limited forage and water resources.

Similar to the threat from energy development, the Hart and Sheldon refuges themselves are protected—the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has utilized its wildlife-first mandate to remove all wild horses and burros from both refuges in recent years—but neighboring BLM lands continue to suffer. This affects the bigger picture for game species in the region and underscores the importance of preserving the wildlife-focused management of these important refuge lands.

All photos by Sage Brown. Find him on Instagram @sagebrown.

Stay tuned for the final blog in this series, where I’ll outline some ways the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service can improve wildlife habitat on the refuge by revising its Comprehensive Conservation Plan, which was created in 1994 and is long obsolete.

by: Andrew Earl

posted in: Habitat and Clean Water

August 26, 2022

Eight Conservation Priorities Congress Needs to Tackle by the End of the Year

Lawmakers have a lengthy to-do list before the end of the 117^th Congress in December. Here’s what they should do for hunters and anglers.

Invest in Conservation Through Annual Appropriations Bills

Atop the to-do list for Congress is continuing to fund the government prior to the end of this fiscal year on September 30. While the House has passed a slate of appropriations measures, the Senate has not held hearings on any funding legislation for the year ahead. This, combined with election-year politics, means that Congress will likely negotiate a continuing resolution, a short-term extension of current funding levels into early December.

While that means no meaningful cuts to programs of importance, it also may delay planning and implementation of recent conservation investments through the Great American Outdoors Act, Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, and Inflation Reduction Act. It is critical that we eventually do more than extend current funding so agencies have certainty in their resources and capacity to plan and administer programs effectively.

Boost CWD Research and Management

Earlier this spring, our major ask was Senate introduction of the Chronic Wasting Disease Research and Management Act, which had moved quickly through the House in fall 2021. Now that the bill has been introduced and championed in the Senate, lawmakers should move quickly to advance this legislation by year’s end. We’re headed into an exciting deer season that could be overshadowed by the threat of CWD in some parts of the country—particularly in states like Alabama, North Carolina, and Louisiana, where cases were confirmed for the first time earlier this year. If passed, the bill would provide $35 million annually to state agencies for CWD suppression and an additional $35 million for research into the disease and management techniques. It also directs the U.S. Department of Agriculture to carry out a public review of its Herd Certification Program, which is the federal standard by which states accredit captive cervid operations as “low-risk” for CWD spread. This step is critical to hold captive deer facilities accountable for CWD outbreaks.

Advance Grasslands Conservation Solutions

We’d also like to broad support in the Senate on the recently introduced North American Grasslands Conservation Act, which would help kickstart the voluntary protection and restoration of grasslands and sagebrush shrub-steppe ecosystems by private landowners. There’s urgency right now to maintain these systems for agriculture, wildlife habitat, carbon sequestration, and future generations of hunters and anglers, while supporting ranchers, farmers, Tribal Nations, and rural communities. And since the Grasslands Act is modeled off the very successful North American Wetlands Conservation Act, which is well-known among waterfowl hunters, sportsmen and sportswomen will be important voices in this debate. We’re continuing to work with lawmakers on both sides of the aisle to build momentum around the bill.

Modernize Forage Fish Management

To build off the success of the Magnuson-Stevens Act—which has been instrumental in addressing overfishing and maintaining fish stocks over the past 50 years—anglers need Congress to debate and advance the Forage Fish Conservation Act. The new legislation would ensure that federal fisheries managers account for the needs of forage fish and the predator species that depend on them. It would establish management plans for river herring and shad in the Atlantic and address the needs of sportfish and other predator species in existing forage fish management plans. It would also require that managers assess the possible impacts of newly proposed commercial fishing for forage fish, including the effects on other fisheries, anglers, and the marine ecosystem. Since its introduction in October 2021, there has been little action on the bill. Anglers can speak up for this solution right now by clicking here.

Fund Proactive Conservation of At-Risk Species and Habitat

The conservation community is still awaiting final passage of the Recovering America’s Wildlife Act, which would be a win for particularly at-risk habitat and species, including ruffed grouse, greater sage grouse, coho salmon, and sockeye salmon. After House passage this summer, we need the Senate to act next to carry this legislation, which would make generational investments in fish and wildlife restoration, over the finish line.

Expedite Natural Infrastructure Projects That Improve Habitat

As part of the month-long negotiations around the Democrat’s reconciliation package, passed earlier this summer, Senator Manchin secured a commitment from Majority Leader Schumer that the Senate would vote on a suite of permitting reforms. Senator Manchin released a list of his priorities in that discussion soon after.

A permitting reform package could be attached to a moving legislative vehicle—most likely a forthcoming short-term funding bill. Generally, Republicans are very supportive of measures to expedite permitting processes and would likely use the opportunity to advance reforms to increase the pace and scale of forest management in the West. Similarly, there are many Democrats that see permitting reform as an opportunity to advance the deployment of renewable energy. However, don’t count everyone to fall in line. Some members have pushed for any permitting legislation to go through regular order and vowed to oppose the proposal if it fails to achieve environmental justice goals. This could create a difficult intraparty headache that Democrats will be eager to avoid ahead of November’s midterm elections.

It’s possible that like an omnibus spending package, a vote on a full permitting reform proposal waits until the lame duck session. The TRCP and partners across the conservation community are closely tracking these negotiations for possible threats, and opportunities, for conservation.

Pass a Water Resources Development Act with Habitat Benefits

WRDA is a biennial piece of legislation that authorizes water infrastructure and management projects that ensure flood control, maintain navigable waterways, and promote ecosystem restoration.

The TRCP worked with partner groups to shape the House and Senate 2022 WRDA bills to ensure they account for the needs of aquatic ecosystems and continue to improve the state of our natural infrastructure. Our team worked closely with Western lawmakers to include a provision in both bills for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to study the benefits of utilizing natural infrastructure approaches for headwater restoration to achieve drought and fire resilience downstream. Beyond that, TRPC has been actively reminding decision-makers of the importance of investing in the health of the Everglades—one of the largest wetlands systems in the world, which is vital to South Florida’s water supply.

The House and Senate passed their respective 2022 WRDA reauthorization bills earlier this year. Staff from committees in the House and Senate are in the process of reconciling differences between the two versions of the legislation and could send a final bill to the president’s desk in September. .

Conserve Public Lands in the National Defense Authorization Act

The NDAA is our nation’s annual military spending bill, but it has often been a vehicle for conservation policy. The House of Representatives passed their version of the legislation in mid-July, which includes a handful of conservation victories like the Colorado Outdoor Recreation and Economy Act and Grand Canyon Protection Act. The Senate has yet to consider their own measure before the full chamber.

TRCP and the broader conservation community are closely tracking the NDAA and working with lawmakers toward inclusion of the bills into a final negotiated package. Like WRDA, the NDAA follows a similar conference process to align the House and Senate-passed bills.

Stay Informed

The conservation community has a lot to celebrate from the 117th Congress, but we’re far from done. Sign up for our weekly Roosevelt Report to stay on top of these conservation issues as Congress closes out the year.

Changes Coming Soon for Atlantic Menhaden Harvesters

Fisheries managers are meeting in November to debate and adopt changes to the Atlantic menhaden interstate fishery management plan—anglers have weighed in, but many of our concerns won’t be addressed