by Bob Marshall

Sportsmen, take a bow.

Fish and wildlife finally had a good week on the conservation front because your hard work resulted in this news Friday afternoon:

The Obama administration has found a way to fund an extra million CRP acres targeted for wetlands and grasslands, and will reshuffle upwards of 70 percent (almost $30 million) of the Migratory Bird Conservation Fund (MBCF) so it goes to work on the prairie pothole region.

Those headlines were rare sweet relief for the conservation community, which has spent most of the last 14 months as the favorite piñata of so-called deficit hawks in congress as well as at the administration. In 2011, the House of Representatives attempted to eviscerate decades-long conservation programs that have proven to be money makers for the economy. And last month President Obama's 2013 budget showed no funding for the Wetlands Reserve or Grasslands Reserve  programs.

by Hal Herring

(Editor’s Note: The Debutante Hunters won the Shorts Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival after this post was written.)

Sometimes it seems to me that conservation in the American West is like a Rocky Mountain river, wild with snowmelt, tumultuous and dramatic, with some new, obvious, challenge every second. But Southern hunting and fishing, and the conservationist ethic they spawn, seem more like a southern river, broad and slow and deep, shadowed with history and tradition.

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 Hal Herring

“I truly believe that the Rocky Mountain Front Heritage proposal is one of the most thoroughly thought out plans I have ever seen. It doesn’t offend anyone or any group in any way. It truly leaves one of the world’s grandest remaining landscapes intact for future generations to experience and enjoy.”  -Roy Jacobs, hunter from Pendroy.

Have you ever driven south along the Rocky Mountain Front from Babb, Montana, with Chief Mountain towering from the plains, the peaks and snowfields of Glacier Park staggering off to the west? Or drift down the near-empty highway, pulling over to glass for grizzlies in the distant aspen thickets bonsai’ed by fierce wind, cold temperatures, snow and summer’s parching heat? You can stop in Browning for gas and a Coke before travelling across the ether-clear Badger Creek to the Two Medicine River. Then you can head to the willow-enclosed Dupuyer Creek, passing the signs beckoning you westward at every washboard turnoff -- Swift Dam, Blackleaf Canyon, Ear Mountain, Teton River, Sun River. It's a country vast enough for a lifetime of exploring and then some.