by Bob Marshall

When it comes to wetlands protections, it's hard for sportsmen to find any heroes in Washington these days. We have a House majority that spent last year shouting its opposition to restoring protections to 20 million acres of vital wetlands stripped by the Supreme Court, and vows to continue that assault this election cycle. And we have a president who makes a lot of noise about helping--but then doesn't follow through.

So as Congress returns to work this month, sportsmen's conservation groups find themselves fighting on two fronts in the battle to restore protections to those temporary and isolated wetlands. Here's the situation:

When the GOP blocked attempts to correct those court rulings with the proposed Clean Water Restoration Act, conservationists were cheered when the Obama Administration stepped in last spring sending its agencies a proposed new wetland "guidance"--spelling out which wetlands they could protect. This wouldn't put protections back on everything, but it would help.

by Bob Marshall

Word from Washington yesterday indicates the omnibus spending bill will arrive on President Obama's desk without policy riders attached by the House GOP and favored by some Senate Republicans that would weaken environmental protections for wetlands and other fish and wildlife habitat.

The Congressional Quarterly reported "Senate Energy-Water Appropriations Subcommittee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said the language included in the spending bill (HR 2354) that passed the House in July will not be part of the final omnibus measure under negotiation."

Republican lawmakers have opposed a new wetlands guidance from the Obama Administration that would restore protection to some of the 20 million wetlands left open to development by Supreme Court decisions in 2002 and 2006. Wildlife officials say the wetlands affected--called isolated and temporary or "intermittent"--are essential to waterfowl nesting grounds on the prairies and riparian habitat in the west, responsible for 50 percent of the wild trout populations and essential to big game herds.

by Chad Love

Powerful ag interests are pushing Congress to drastically limit the number of acres that can be enrolled in the Conservation Reserve Program.

From this story on argusleader.com:

Soaring crop prices are coaxing landowners across the Midwest and Great Plains to put Conservation Reserve Program acreage back under the plow, and Congress is considering reducing the program even further. A farm bill that leaders of the congressional agriculture committees drafted this fall would cap the $2 billion-a-year Conservation Reserve Program at 25 million acres nationwide, down from the current limit of 32 million acres. When the program was created in 1985, the government was allowed to enroll as many as 45 million acres.

by Bob Marshall

There's been little for sportsmen to thank Congress for lately, what with our public servants taking a $615 million bite out of conservation programs just last week in the name--falsely--of cutting the nation's deficit.

So news that Senators John Barrasso (R-Wyoming) and Dean Heller (R-Nevada) want to permanently remove protection from 20 million acres of critical wetlands is even more egregious. This is the latest attempt to prevent Congress from addressing Supreme Court rulings in 2001 and 2006 that said the original Clean Water Act was not meant to protect "isolated and temporary wetlands." Unfortunately for sportsmen, it meant one-fifth of the nation's wetlands and as many as 2,000,000 miles of small streams would now be open to draining and development. These just happen to be among the most critical to waterfowl, including the prairie pothole region where most North American ducks are raised.