Five Crucial Conservation Goals for Sportsmen

Bob Marshall sheds light on the most imperative issues facing outdoorsmen

Article by Bob Marshall. Uploaded on May 05, 2009

Photo by Wesley Allsbrook

When I was in college years ago, one of my professors used a simple but very effective symbol to illustrate the urgency underlying conservation issues that involve public lands: He lit a candle.

The candle represented public land; the flame represented the forward march of development. The longer the flame burned, the more land was consumed. So the longer we debated the issues, the more we lost.

But the bigger lesson came after the wick was snuffed out. The candle was smaller—and always would be. The point couldn’t be clearer: Our public resources are finite. Once consumed, they are gone forever.

That is the guiding principle sportsmen must keep in mind as they fashion a conservation agenda for the Obama years. The loss of public lands won’t automatically stop because a new guy is in the White House. Sportsmen need to act now. Here’s a game plan for the next four years—the fires we need to stamp out.

1 | Pass the Clean Water Restoration Act. Among the many accomplishments of the 1977 Clean Water Act was the protection given temporary and isolated wetlands, among the most important habitats for waterfowl and a host of other wildlife. But in 2006, the Supreme Court ruled that Congress had never intended the law to include those habitats, effectively putting more than 20 million acres of wetlands at the mercy of the dredge, drain, and cement crowd.

Conservationists in Congress reacted immediately by proposing the Clean Water Restoration Act, which specifically included those wetlands. But the Bush administration and its congressional allies blocked that initiative.

This is an easy but very important fix. Pass the Clean Water Restoration Act and provide a new wetlands guidance to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Environmental Protection Agency that will remove any ambiguity about what can and should be protected.

2 | Improve the Conservation Reserve Program. CRP, a section of the Farm Bill that pays landowners to grow wildlife habitat on marginal croplands, is the single most important and effective private-lands wildlife conservation program in history—but it’s in big trouble.

Over the last 18 months the push toward ethanol and other grain-based fuels resulted in exploding prices for corn, prompting many landowners to begin looking for bigger profits by putting CRP land into crop production.

But the problems were just beginning.

The 2008 Farm Bill reduced the CRP authorization from 39 million acres to 32 million starting in 2010, and did not sufficiently increase payment rates to compete with rising commodity prices. And while some 4 million acres of CRP contracts have expired in the last year and another 8.4 million will expire by 2010, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has not held a general sign-up for landowners since 2006. Then it began letting some landowners out of CRP contracts penalty-free.

Sportsmen must insist on a course correction for CRP. That includes more equitable adjustment of rental rates and improved incentive programs to encourage landowners to enroll, and urging the USDA to hold a general sign-up this year.

3 | Reform energy and mining programs on federal lands. Nowhere was the Bush administration’s business-first ideology more ruinous to sportsmen’s interests than in the areas of energy and mining development on federal lands. From Utah to Montana, West Virginia to Alaska, changed regulations stripped protections from prized fish and wildlife habitat that had been the law of the land for decades.

It was enough to send sportsmen’s groups—traditionally supportive of “wise use” of public land—into courtrooms, especially in the West. There was nothing wise about giving mining and drilling operations exemptions to environmental regulations. The nadir of this downward spiral came when the Bureau of Land Management was instructed to make sure fish and wildlife programs would not negatively impact energy development, reversing a standard and giving sportsmen’s interests the lowest possible priority.

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from buckhunter wrote 2 years 39 weeks ago

This great article as well as many others were in May's issue of F&S and is what makes it a top notch magazine. Keep up the good work.

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from Buck wrote 2 years 39 weeks ago

Sportsmen should be on the front line of conservation; some are. Even if we can't contribute greatly, we can be supportive. I'm often disappointed at the comments I read and hear. Many sportsmen seem to think conservation is for wimpy tree-huggers, or something like that.

Some sportsmen seem to be proud of acting macho, being short-sighted, or a red-neck. Their attitude is we'll just take names and kick butts to get what we want. With that attitude our great grandkids will have no guns, no place to hunt, and not much wildlife or wild-land left.

I hope I'm totally off-base, but I worry about the future of hunting and fishing with the current attitude of many people, and some sportsmen.
Buck@score-your-hunting.com

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from labrador12 wrote 2 years 39 weeks ago

Maybe sportsman need to take personal control, and get over more government solutions. I've got ospreys and eagles fishing in my beaver pond, which is part of the wetland reserve program. Ospreys, and eagles are now more common than they were a hundred years ago, as are beavers, canada geese, wolves, and dozens of other species. Soon, for our own good, guns, trucks, and probably labradors will be taken from us by well meaning politicos. Perhaps F&S should do some stories about places like Oil City Pa., where environmental pollution was rampant, but now is home to a dozen pairs of eagles. Green groups are not the friend of sportsmen, but their foes.
Eagles and ospreys are top of the food chain animals. The proliferation of these formerly extint animals is a testiment to the high quality of todays environment. The water is way cleaner, the fish they feed on are way less polluted, and prey is abundent. Just like gun laws, continue to enforce what we have, new regs just invite less freedom.

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from BigBuckeye wrote 2 years 39 weeks ago

Bob Marshall's diatribe against the former Bush Administration and his lovefest for the Obama Administration is sickening. Where does Bob think all the outdoor gear still manufactured in the US will be made when Obama passes Cap and Trade? And where will all the sportsmen work and make a living to fund their outdoor activities? Cap and Trade will Kill manufacturing in the US. And, when the Mideast pipeline gets shut down, all that western oil land will look pretty good. We all need to coexist and balance outdoor activity and conservation with sound resource use. Boob's boat is listing to the conservation at all cost side. Finally, does he really think the metro-sexual never shot a gun, caught a fish, or spent a night in the wild Obama really gives a whit about us outdoor types? I'll bitterly cling to my gun, rod and reel, and knife and go to church thank you very much.

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from 60256 wrote 2 years 38 weeks ago

I was very happy to see the actual descriptions of the acts and waht they do. You always hear about so-and-so was passed, but sometimes i don't know what that is. Thank you F&S for the great article.

Nate

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from tybays wrote 2 years 38 weeks ago

Bob Marshalls recommendation to pass the Clean Water Restoration act and reform energy and mining on federal lands is wayy oof base. These public lands yes are relied upon by all americans for food, energy and hunting. Keep in mind if you pass these acts ranchers and farmers will suffer and many could go out of business. Whom do you think provides water for all the publics wildlife..ranchers and whom feeds many of the wildlife farmers and ranchers. We mange these lands at no cost to the tax payer. Our country is dependent upon enegry produced from private and public lands don't kid yourself mining has a very minor impact on the land when considering the actual footprint of even the largest of open pit mines. These mines provide thousands of jobs and revenue to our country. Oil and gas does not have as big of an impact as most profess. I'm a hunter myself and I'm ashamed of many hunters whom profess to be conservationist by supporting radical environmental agendas that will stop hunting after they have taken away the ranchers, farmers and miners. I know many hunters who claim that the Gila Wilderness was a great place to hunt when there was cattle on most of it, but now in many areas it is devoid of game. Ask yourself where the best hunting is and most would agree it is on or near private land. Why because the private sector does a better job of land management. Please don't be foolish enough to think that more oversight by our government is a good thing.

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from thinkaboutit wrote 2 years 38 weeks ago

I will address only one point made by this author. Pass the Clean Water Restoration Act?! It would truely have a huge negative impact on wild life. Esp. in the west where so much of the land is publicly owned but is managed by ranchers, and other natual resource users. Ranchers have a vested interest in not only maintaining the ecosystem but improving it. Without water and forage for their livestock they would go out of business. There is much greater access to water and therefore better utilization of the forage because ranchers ( building tanks and pipelines ) have established these sources of water. Wildlife has greatly benifited from the ranchers efforts.
I would would urge Bob Marshall to really research this issue. If it passes we all loose.

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from HuntrRancher wrote 2 years 38 weeks ago

Come on folks, wake up! Bob has it all wrong, sadly. The Clean Water Restoration Act has nothing to do with clean water and everything to do with control. The federal government wants to control ALL water, whether it is a mud puddle in my pasture or a prairie pothole full of rain water. Water, as with our other resources, should be managed by the state's and individuals who own them, NOT big brother. We need to take a deep breath and put some effort into understanding just how deep radical environmentalism has seeped into our country. Do you want to have wild places where you can actually GO, or do you want desolate places where no person is allowed to roam? These are the kind of choices we face. Let's not be deceived.

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from Victor1000 wrote 2 years 37 weeks ago

I am amazed that Bob's credentials of being a hunter proves "Global Warming" oh yeah that one didn't fly "Climate Change" is REALITY. I was taught that when one has a hypothesis, it should always start with, "At our present level of ignorance we believe the following to be true" There have been many flat earth consensus in history and I am concerned that if this isssue is not subject to debate we will get it wrong, as I am sure the soldiers fighting the Civil War could have told you of the extra hot summers during their lifetimes, must of been all the muzzle loader Carbon

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from bryantdc wrote 2 years 36 weeks ago

What really bothers me about this article is that everything that Mr. Marshall is suggesting is based on us begging the government to do something. This has several problems.

First, any solution arrived at will be a long time coming. Government acts slowly and if protection is indeed needed now then waiting to get a rubber stamp from Uncle Sam doesn't make much sense.

Second, the solutions suggested carry un-intended consequences. There are many cases (some reported and many that go unmentioned) of property owners filling in ponds and cutting down trees to avoid having thier property declared as some "protected" status, destroying the very habitats that they were intended to protect.

Aside from not working, as many comenters have noted, these regulations grant a good measure of control over that land, effectivly stealing the land from it's rightful owners. It's not hard to imagine this power being used to close off vast amounts of land to hunting and fishing. Should certain members of the Greener-Than-Thou movement have their way it would be off-limit to any human presence at all.

There is a better way! Where are the calls for people to set aside a portion of thier own land for public sporting use? Where are the calls to establish land trusts as hunting and fishing preserves? Where are the calls for people to go out and clean up woods and wetlands? Where are the calls for people to educate others about the importance of our wild places? Where is the call to introduce hunting, shooting, fishing, etc. to more people? Why didn't Mr. Marshall think that any of these independent solutions were worth mentioning?

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from Dakota.Woman wrote 2 years 36 weeks ago

Good article, Bob. I've been carrying on for decades about the need to do what you say now, so welcome to the parade. We do need the Clean Water Restoration Act, but we need to make sure that it addresses the matter realistically. We never had "pure" water, anywhere, regardless of whether or not Europeans had been here. The current act refers to lands 'untouched by the hand of man', as if my People aren't human &/or don't count. Tabloka cheshli! / Bull! What we need to make sure of is that the Act insures the preservation & restoration of wetlands so that Nature's one great water filter operates properly, and to insure habitat for all the many kinds of People that live in wetlands - Standing People (plants, mushrooms), Winged People, no-leg People, 4-Legged People, as well as us 2-Leggeds. For the most part, ranchers/farmers do not manage these waters with an eye to chemical pollution (herbicides, pesticides), sad to say. If it were up to most of them, they'd extinct many species. I farmed & ranched most of my adult life & I had a good system on my land. And seemed forever to find some dumbass knocking at my door asking if he could kill off the coyotes, the magpies, etc. on some idiot pretext or other. I always made a profit & I never let them on my land, nor did I slaughter indiscriminately. But then, I'm Traditional, and we First Nations of Turtle Island did just fine here for some 60,000 years without the 'assistance & guidance' of Europeans. We didn't extinct each others' food, shelter, or clothing supplies.. We surely didn't do it for 'sport'. We "SHOWED" respect because we knew from the beginning that we are not the most important part of the biosphere - we just the part with the potential to do the most damage. Noblesse oblige, I think. Obama strikes me as someone who really cares about something other than himself & his cronies, so I have hope we will make considerable progress during this Administration. It is to pray for. And I do. Mitakuye oiasin - All, my relatives. Islands only 'appear' to be separate from the rest of the world.

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from Clay Cooper wrote 2 years 35 weeks ago

Mr Bob Marshall
I response to #4 Address climate change, where did you get this information?

Must be right out of Al Gore’s book of how to make billions off the gullibly stupid!

Let’s set the facts here shall we, for those of you who are Scientifically unchallenged and don’t watch CNN etc to get there daily thoughts, you will find the oceans are not warming, in fact they are cooling. You will not here about the ratio of O2 vs. CO2 interring and exiting the US and how the ocean which happens to be 2/3rds of the planet is gobbling the CO2 up! You will not here how the Sun every 11 years the north and South Pole will flip causing solar flares which affect the earth. The Earth’s magnetic field also flips, but with less regularity. Consecutive reversals are spaced 5 thousand years to 50 million years apart. (http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2001/ast15feb_1.htm). There was a scientist showing a graph over the years monitoring the Suns and Earths temperatures. On the graph when the Sun got hotter the Earth got warmer and when the Sun cooled so did the Earth, so go figure!

Bottom line

I don’t believe in all this Global Warming nonsense, hell they have problems in predicting next week’s weather forecasts and 30 years ago we were headed into an ice age.

This year the Forest Service has closed the Forests in my area to ATV travel except in one place. I have traveled thru those closed areas and found the trails are growing over and the animal population has become scarce and moved toward towns and farms etc.

Perhaps -H.L. Mencken said it best
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and thus clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”

If you want to know about how Government destroyed habitat look at the everglades how the cut a ditch thru a swamp and the result of doing so and what happened In 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt established the Grand Canyon National Game Preserve on the Kaibab Plateau.

Read these links about the Kaibab and it will change the way you think and give you factual knowledge in conservation.
http://depts.alverno.edu/nsmt/youngcc/research/kaibab/kaibab.html
http://depts.alverno.edu/nsmt/youngcc/research/kaibab/story1.html
http://depts.alverno.edu/nsmt/youngcc/research/kaibab/story2.html
http://depts.alverno.edu/nsmt/youngcc/research/kaibab/story3.html

Sadly to say about people, there are those hell bent for leather headed to their doom and even so they see the truth,

“It is natural for man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren till she transforms us into beasts ... For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth, to know the worst, and to provide for it.”
-Patrick Henry

“When a well-packaged web of lies has been sold gradually to the masses over generations, the truth will seem utterly preposterous and its speaker a raving lunatic.”
-Dresden James

“We have now sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men.”
-George Orwell

“In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”
-George Orwell

“Either you repeat the same conventional doctrines everybody is saying, or else you say something true, and it will sound like it's from Neptune.”
-Noam Chomsky, MIT Institute Professor (linguistics), and neo-Nazi of a sort

“If 50 million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.”
-Anatole France

“The few who understand the system, will either be so interested in its profits, or so dependent on its favors, that there will be no opposition from that class. The great body of people, mentally incapable of comprehending the tremendous advantages, will bear its burden without complaint.”
-Rothschild Brothers of London, 1863-Jun-25, in a letter to fellow members of the establishment

“What luck for the rulers that men do not think.”
-Adolf Hitler

Final word:

For every Global Warming you can come up with I can find factual evidence it’s not happening!

Carbon credit?

Go figure who gets the money!

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from Clay Cooper wrote 2 years 33 weeks ago

http://www.geekoffice.com/option,com_seyret/task,videodirectlink/Itemid,...

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