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  • May 22, 2012

    Hero for a Day 2012: Assessing the Health of an Ohio River Tributary

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  • May 22, 2012

    Conservation Update: Report Shows Energy Companies Sitting on 70 Percent of Leases

    by Bob Marshall

    Sportsmen's groups got some new ammunition in their fight against the energy industry's push to open more public fish and wildlife habitat to development: A new Department of Interior report shows that 70 percent of public areas under lease by energy companies currently are "inactive" - meaning they are neither producing energy or part of an approved or pending development plans.

    This helps put the lie to claims by energy's friends in Congress that public lands "locked up" for fish and wildlife are creating a supply problem causing high gas prices.

    Read Full Post | Comments (27)
  • May 15, 2012

    Hero for a Day 2012: Building a New Shell Reef in Tampa Bay

    Tampa Bay Watch volunteers bagged two tons of oyster shells and laid them down to form a new reef, which will reverse erosion from boat wakes and wave action. For more information, visit our Hero For a Day page.

    Read Full Post | Comments (0)
  • May 11, 2012

    House Goes After Trout Stream Protections--Again

    by Bob Marshall

    Are they crazy or brilliant?

    That's a question Trout Unlimited and a growing number of sportsmen are asking about the House leadership after it launched yet another attempt to block a proposed new wetlands guidance that could restore protection to millions of acres of wetlands, including headwaters of trout streams across the West.

    The latest effort comes from the House Appropriations Committee, which voted along party lines for a measure that would prevent the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers from spending any money to implement the guidance, expected to be issued by the Obama Administration in the next few months.

    Two House GOP budgets previously contained similar policy directives, neither of which made it through Congress. But the fact this try came so late in the game – and from a different vector – makes many conservationists nervous.

    Read Full Post | Comments (55)
  • May 4, 2012

    What Do You Do With Unwanted Fish?

    by Hal Herring

    I’ll get right to the point. I’m looking for information, and maybe even an informal poll. Do you or your fishing buddies throw unwanted fish on the bank to die rather than letting them go? If so, why do you do it? If not, how often do you see this happening?

    Now I’ll tell you why I want to know.

    I just got back from a spur-of-the-moment family trip over to the Missouri River, with a stop in Great Falls for a few groceries, some circle hooks and bank sinkers, and a hundred pack of nightcrawlers. The river was rising fast on a scorching 87-degree day, but the water temperature was still in the upper 40s, and the fishing was sporadic for the first day. My son and daughter and I have waded and swam (in the summers) most of our fishing holes, so we kind of know where the runs are that are deep enough to hold catfish, walleye, sauger, sturgeon. None of which were biting on Sunday. 

    Read Full Post | Comments (49)
  • April 20, 2012

    Heritage Act Has Sportsmen's Groups Facing Off

    by Bob Marshall

    It’s called “The Sportsmen’s Heritage Act of 2012,“ but this House-passed bill (H.R. 4089), has some of the nation’s highest-profile sportsmen’s groups facing off as the measure travels to the Senate.

    At issue are sections of the bill which would open portions of roadless areas in the west to motorized traffic, such as ATVs, as well as other uses prohibited by the Roadless Rule. (Editor's note: See Hal Herring's blog post on roadless areas remaining in the U.S.)

    Most sportsmen’s groups, such as the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, and wildlife managers have long opposed such openings, pointing to these undeveloped areas as key reservoirs of fish and wildlife in some of the nation’s last remaining pristine habitats. Hunting guide organizations as well as most western hunters also oppose openings, because roadless areas protect traditional wilderness hunting and fishing experiences accessed by only by hoof or foot.

    Read Full Post | Comments (25)
  • April 19, 2012

    Our Last Wild Places, and Why They Need to Stay Wild

    by Hal Herring

    I’m lucky to spend a lot of my time with all kinds of people, from ranchers and tactical firearms instructors to conservation leaders, from liberals to libertarians. I like conflict and argument, and I’ve never been the kind of person who thought that everybody should agree, or that my friendship with anybody depended upon us agreeing on every issue.

    I’ve tried hard to understand the objection some hunters have to roadless areas and wilderness, but so far I have not been able to do that. I spend as much time as possible with my kids in roadless areas, and most of my best hunting and fishing experiences have been in those kinds of places, designated wilderness, or not.

    Read Full Post | Comments (30)
  • April 16, 2012

    Conservation Update: Wildlife Leaders Join Opposition to Wilderness Release Bill

    by Bob Marshall

    As the rhetoric heats up during this election season, so do the lies about what's at stake in the push by the oil and gas lobby to open public lands previously closed to that type of development. My favorite is the characterization of any one opposed to "drill now, drill everywhere" as "environmental extremists" who want to "lock away public lands."

    Coming in a close second are those politicians trying to tell sportsmen that opposition to opening protected backcountry to development is a move by (and I paraphrase again) "extremist environmental groups to keep sportsmen out of the forests."

    But as sure as a wise old gobbler will hear you blink your eyes on a still April morning, you're going to hear those claims through early November. Well, here's some ammunition to shoot back when those "oil and gas extremists" start fibbing:

    Read Full Post | Comments (29)
  • April 13, 2012

    Hunting, Fishing, and the Pursuit of Happiness

    by Hal Herring

    Ten years or so ago, a good friend of mine made a movie called The Naturalist, about an eccentric wanderer of Arkansas’ Buffalo River country. Kent Bonar, the subject of the film, was raised in the woods by his grandfather and a bunch of old-time coon hunters and hound dog men.

    Bonar has remained true to the tradition. He keeps a half dozen hunting dogs, doesn’t drive, lives in a falling down house in the woods, and spends his days walking, carrying a light pack, a falling axe, a pistol and his pencils and paper, pausing to sketch and describe every aspect of the plants, animals and fish of this country where he was born, raised and chose to never leave. Bonar is an artist of the first order (although he stoutly rejects the term “artist,” saying he just draws what’s already there) and is also known, these days, as “the John Muir of the Ozarks.” He’s a fierce and irreverent advocate for conserving the Buffalo River country.

    Read Full Post | Comments (11)
  • April 12, 2012

    Conservation Update: The Oil Stopped Two Years Ago, but the Spill Continues

    by Bob Marshall
     
    In the coming weeks, media groups will be publishing and broadcasting special reports marking the second anniversary of the start of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. But what Ryan Lambert and other Louisiana coastal sportsmen and guides want the nation to know is that the spill isn't over.

    "The oil and gas might have stopped flowing, but the spill is still going on for us," said Lambert, who runs Cajun Fishing Adventures in Buras, La. "We're still seeing the impacts every day.

    "My fishing business is still way down. We still see some (isolated) patches of oil, some tar balls on the beach, some dead birds and dolphins.

    "BP likes to say they made it all right. The spill is over. Everything is cleaned up. They're wrong. It's not over, and it probably won't be over for years. And that's when we'll finally know how much damage it did."

    Read Full Post | Comments (17)
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