--Chad Love

Can hunting endangered African species help save them? That's the question the news segment that aired last night on 60 Minutes is asking.

From this story on cbsnews.com:

The scimitar horned oryx . . . the addax . . . the dama gazelle - three elegant desert antelope that you'd hope to see on a journey through Africa, except that their numbers are dwindling there. Which is why Lara Logan went to Texas -- yes, Texas. There, on large grassland ranches, some exotic species that are endangered in the wild have been brought back in large numbers. But there's a catch: a percentage of the herd is hunted every year by hunters who pay big money for a big catch.

by Hal Herring

The sunlight had lost its power. My son Harold and his buddy Austin were overdue by a couple of hours at least. They were supposed to be swimming and fishing their way down a couple of miles of winding creek to the next paved road, where they could walk back into town to Austin’s house. Austin’s father was worried about them, and so was I, so I rode with him in his big flatbed, banging down a two-track that was as close as you get to the creek in a truck.

We yelled for them and honked the horn a couple of times. It was late August, and the big cottonwoods of the creek bottom were just starting to turn yellow. The willows and chokecherries there were a massed wall of green, one of the thickest places I know of, a haunt of whitetails, an occasional black bear, more rarely, a grizzly or two. We headed back to the pavement, parked on the bridge and waited, the cool water of the creek rippling below us, wondering silently how much trouble two boys, 11 and 13, could get into in all that jungled bottomland between here and the next road.

by Bob Marshall

$615 Million Cut from Conservation

Sportsmen got a sneak preview of how much Congress values their issues earlier this week, and it wasn't pretty: House and Senate appropriators agreed to cut $615 million from key fish and wildlife conservation programs that support public hunting and fishing--not to mention the overall quality of human health.

The cuts were contained in the 2012 “minibus” spending bill, so-called because it will only keep the government running another four weeks, rather than a regular "omnibus" spending bill which would have provided funding through the end of the fiscal year. 

Among the drastic cuts announced:

• Wildlife Habitat Incentive Program cut by $35 million.

• Wetlands Reserve Program cut by approximately $200 million.

By Bob Marshall

Let the Super Committee Hear from You

Sportsmen who care about the future of their traditions have an important job over the next week: Let the congressional Super Committee on the budget know that more cuts in conservation programs will only increase the deficit, not lower it.

The Super Committee is the bi-partisan group charged with outlining $1.2 trillion in budget cuts over the next decade by Nov. 23rd. Failure to agree would trigger automatic cuts of the same amount, most of which would come out of defense and domestic spending. Congress already has cut conservation spending by 30 percent earlier this year, putting vital fish and wildlife programs on the edge of collapse.

Conservation groups fear the Super Committee is considering even more damage--but they worry those automatic cuts could be just as severe. The frustrating thing is that, as mentioned in many previous posts here, conservation spending actually turns a profit for the nation's treasury. So it's time for sportsmen to contact their congressional delegations and tell them "Hands off of conservation funding.” You can find out who your reps are, and how to contact them here.