A letter emailed by Randall Luthi to the Field & Stream editorial staff:

I read Bob Marshall’s July 29 blog, “Conservation Update: Some in House Want Bristol Bay, West Coast Opened to Drilling.”  I believe some additional information would be helpful to Field and Stream readers.

First, Mr. Marshall apparently misconstrued the subject of the E&E TV interview he references. The overall subject of the interview was a bill that was being debated by the U.S. House of Representatives, H.R. 6082, which would allow more oil and natural gas leasing off the U.S coasts through 2017. An offshore oil and gas lease is similar to a fishing license. It provides an opportunity for a company to explore in a specified geographical area for oil and natural gas. Leases are issued through a bidding process in which companies bid for the right to obtain a lease. The revenue generated from the lease sales provide substantial income to the U.S. Treasury and, where Congress has provided, a source of revenue to the coastal states as well. The offshore industry is generally the second largest source of revenue to the U.S. Government. Issuance of the lease does not guarantee that oil and/or natural gas will be produced, but only the ability to look. Companies must still obtain permits for seismic and geological, drilling and production activities. All laws concerning environmental protection and coordination with various interest groups still apply.

Sportsmen wondering why certain House members -- who claim to be the sportsmen's voice in Congress -- keep pushing to open up oil drilling in some of the nation's most sensitive fishing areas can get a good idea from this recent interview with Randal Luthi on Environment and Energy TV.

Luthi claims that the push by the House GOP to lift the Obama Administration's protection from Alaska's Bristol Bay and the coasts off Washington, Oregon, California and Maine is the right thing to do -- even though his industry already has access to more than 75 percent of the nation's offshore waters.

American Rivers, a group tightly focused on river conservation and restoration, is reaching out to the people who know rivers best: America’s fishermen. The Angler’s Fund offers fishermen an opportunity to help the venerable group (established in 1973, at a time when pollution, dam-building and devil-may-care insults to our waters was at an all-time high) in a mission to remove obsolete dams, restore fisheries and flows, and prevent pollution on all of our running waters.

American Rivers lays claim to some remarkable success stories--the dramatic removal of the Elwha Dam in Washington state, and the recovery of the once spectacular salmon and steelhead runs there is only one of many--and they are now seeking to broaden their base to the most obvious constituency.

There’s good news, and there’s bad news that leads to good news. First, the good news:

Sportsman’s groups from Ducks Unlimited to the Louisiana Wildlife Federation and everywhere in between were celebrating the passage of the RESTORE Act last week. Land Tawney of the National Wildlife Federation said, “The RESTORE Act is the culmination of years of work from hunters and anglers all across the nation, all working to restore the Gulf.”

If the Act had not passed, the estimated $5-$20 billion in fines being collected from British Petroleum and other companies for their role in the oil spill would have gone to the U.S. Treasury, and been placed in a fund to clean up and mitigate future spills. It’s a staggering amount of money, and it is needed, right now, to begin the work to restore a coast that, even before being bathed in oil in 2010, with fisheries shut down for months and still-being-calculated damage to shellfish, water quality and pelagic fisheries, was washing away so fast that it is known to be the world’s fastest disappearing landmass.

We got a close haircut with a pair of sheep shears, our shiny boots and new blue jeans are gone, but we can still dance pretty well.

The Senate has passed a version of the Farm Bill that, in a time of crushing deficit, hunters and fishermen can at least live with. Conservation programs took a hit, losing $6 billion in funding. You say “Farm Bill” to most people and you’ll see their eyelids slowly start to close. But whether we recognize it or not, what’s in the Farm Bill, and what gets funded or cut, is of vital importance to hunting and fishing. A lot of what is there makes up the backbone of what we know as American conservation.

One of the hardest losses was the reduction in the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) from 32 million acres to a cap of 25 million. That’s a tough one for bird and waterfowl hunters, especially in the Midwest, where high prices for corn and other grains are encouraging farmers to bring land into production that for the past few decades might have been important nesting and security cover, not to mention places for us to hunt. There are currently 29 million acres enrolled in CRP, so we are looking at a loss of at least 4 million acres, maybe more since crop prices, driven up by the ethanol subsidies and 7 billion very hungry human beings, are expected to remain at record highs and CRP is, of course, a voluntary program--if you can make more money farming your ground than enrolling it in CRP, you farm it.

On May 31st, Congress gave the much-despised Federal Flood Insurance Program an additional 60 days of life. They did it because, even though it is common knowledge that the Program is an epic money-waster, 5.5 million Americans (including me and a lot of people reading this) who live in flood-risk areas depend on it for a safety net.  Nobody wants to see the program die, and nobody wants to see it continue as it is written now.

It's a 1960's era nanny-state debacle that encourages people to build homes and businesses in places where they’ll be wrecked by floods, over and over again, while the rest of the dry-land dwelling American public picks up the tab to the tune of $38 billion in claims since the program began; $200 million every year, often to rebuild structures that have been flooded out numerous times. The program went $18 billion into debt after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The cost of the record-breaking 2011 floods to U.S. taxpayers is as of yet uncalculated. How do we fix this flabby devil of a federal entitlement?  That is a question that every American taxpayer, hunter, fishermen, and outdoor recreationist needs to understand.