Yesterday the Senate Agriculture Committee passed its 2018 Farm Bill out of committee with strong conservation provisions. The bipartisan bill maintains overall conservation funding on private lands and strengthens conservation compliance that will help protect soil, water, and wildlife. The bill also fully funds the Voluntary Public Access program that helps to enhance public hunting and fishing access on private lands.
Currently, provisions in the House Farm Bill do not match the Senate version. MWF and our conservation partners will continue to work with Congress to build a bipartisan conservation title that pulls the best features from the House and Senate bills into a Farm Bill that that will help protect soil, water, and wildlife on private lands for years to come.
Some in Congress are once again playing political games with the National Defense Authorization Act, the annual bill that lays out the nation’s defense spending priorities.
They are trying to include a “rider” in the bill that would block the Interior Department from making an Endangered Species Act determination on the greater sage-grouse for ten years. This would undermine cooperative federal and state agreements and tie the hands of people working on the ground to protect sage-grouse habitat. It would threaten implementation of sage-grouse conservation plans developed by states and the federal government in 2015 after years of extensive local collaboration with conservationists, ranchers, the energy industry, and other stakeholders.
In response to this effort to hijack the national defense bill, the Montana Wildlife Federation joined our colleagues from eight other Western states in a letter to Congress to remove this rider, noting that the Defense Department has clearly stated that the 2015 sage-grouse conservation plans would not impact military training, operations, or readiness and the provision is not needed.
The anti-sage-grouse rider is unrelated to military readiness and unnecessarily complicates both sage-grouse conservation and our national defense. Congress should move the national defense bill forward without the sage-grouse rider. This will ensure our national defense while allowing conservation to move forward. Guaranteeing functional sage-grouse habitat across the West, a strong outdoor economy, and provide stability to industry and local ranching communities.
John Bradley, MWF, Eastern Montana Field Representative
A brown trout caught by an angler on the Kootenai River in February is the likely result of an illegal fish introduction, according to FWP officials. During the Fish and Wildlife Commission meeting on April 19th, the Commission moved to approve a proposal that would require anglers to immediately kill and report any brown trout landed in the section from Kootenai Falls to Libby Dam.
If a brown trout population was able to become established in the section, there would likely be negative impacts to the Kootenai’s world-class rainbow trout fishery and to threatened bull trout populations. In many cases, non-native species are known to out-compete native species for space and resources.
MWF Conservation Director Nick Gevock testified at the Commission meeting in favor of the proposed regulation change.
“We are doing this because this is the right thing to do” Gevock Said. “We don’t want to establish an incentive for people to do unauthorized introductions.”
FWP will now look to determine where the brown trout may have come from and whether a population is currently being established.
Today, the University of Montana released their 2018 Crown of the Continent poll. Commissioned by the University’s Crown of the Continent and Greater Yellowstone Initiative, the annual poll asks Montanans a variety of questions about public land and conservation. The 2018 results demonstrate once again that Montanans from all walks of life remain strong in their support for public lands and our outdoor heritage. The poll shows that hunters and anglers are especially supportive of conservation.
80 percent of Montana hunters say they have hunted on public lands in the last five years, and 93 percent of Montana anglers have fished public lands.
87 percent of Montanans cite public lands as positively impacting hunting and fishing opportunities in the state, with 85 percent noting the importance of these lands for wildlife habitat.
Considering several specific issues, the poll found:
76 percent of Montanans support setting aside some existing federal fund for the Land and Water Conservation Fund, which protects public lands and public access. Senator Jon Tester, Senator Steve Daines, and Congressman Greg Gianforte have all supported such funding.
Only 11 percent of Montanans support eliminating protection for wilderness study areas, as proposed in legislation by Senator Steve Daines and Congressman Greg Gianforte.
73 percent of Montanans support the Blackfoot Clearwater Stewardship Act introduced by Senator Jon Tester to protect public lands and increase recreational access in the Seeley Lake area.
Responding to the poll, Dave Chadwick, executive director of the Montana Wildlife Federation, said “This survey affirms once more how much Montanans value conservation, and that support just keeps growing. The survey also spotlights how conservation sentiment is just blowing up around several specific proposals that would affect Montana’s public lands. We hope that our decision-makers in Washington will heed the wishes of Montanans as they work on public land issues.”
Members of my generation, the millennials, have a unique perspective on many issues. This includes our views on wildlife conservation. Many of us love to hunt and fish, but we also see the need to conserve the full, complicated ecological web of all fish and wildlife. And while many of us don’t pay much attention to the goings-on in Washington, every once in a blue moon, some major new policy catches our eye. That’s what happened to me recently when I saw the words ‘Congress’ and ‘Wildlife’ in the same headline. After reading up on the Recovering America’s Wildlife Act, I realized this rare bill was something that all outdoors enthusiasts on either end of the political spectrum could agree on.
Since 1937, hunters and anglers have gladly paid a small excise tax on all their gear for the express purpose of funding state wildlife agencies through the Pittman-Robertson and Dingell-Johnson Sportfish and Wildlife Restoration Acts. In fact, up to 75% of agencies’ total budgets, are generated by taxes on hunting and angling equipment. As most MWF members know well, the funds provided through Pittman-Robertson and Dingell-Johnson have been crucial to the recovery and management of Montana’s wildlife, ensuring that we have plenty of hunting and fishing opportunity. With enough funds to adequately monitor game species such as deer, elk, or black bears, Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks can set appropriate harvest quotas so that game populations keep producing enough animals for a yearly hunt. On the fishing side, Dingell-Johnson funds have supported Montana’s best-in-the-nation wild fisheries. The same wildlife conservation success story is true across the country.
However, hundreds of non-game species – species that are part of the ecological web on which elk, deer, cougars, and trout rely, lack adequate conservation funding from Pittman-Robertson and Dingell-Johnson. As a result, they are much more likely to be in decline, and eventually listed under the federal Endangered Species Act.
The Recovering America’s Wildlife Act (H.R. 4647) is a critically important solution to this funding gap. This bill would take existing funds generated from energy leases on federal lands and waters and send them to the states for management of species in need of conservation attention. These funds are badly needed to prevent non-game species from further population declines, and also protect game species and maintain state control of wildlife.
While the Pittman-Robertson Act has served the outdoors community well through its 80-year tenure, it is badly in need of more support. The Recovering America’s Wildlife Act is an outdoors bill for the millennial age. It would put our at-risk wildlife on track to recovery, and ultimately improve hunting and angling opportunity for generations to come. Unlike many of the polarizing issues that our political system argues about, this bill unites people from every end of the political spectrum. Introduced last December, the bill already has nearly 40 cosponsors, both Republicans and Democrats. I encourage my fellow millennials, as well as hunters, anglers, and other conservationists of all generations, to join me in calling on our congressional delegation to support this bill.
by Niall Clancy, MWF Member
Originally from Hamilton, Niall Clancy is currently studying fisheries management at Utah State University. Reach him at niallgc66@gmail.com.
Jeff Lukas
Elk Campaign Manager
Jeff Lukas is a passionate conservationist who has been fishing and hunting his entire life. Whether it’s floating a small stream chasing trout, pursuing elk in the high country, or waiting in a blind for ducks to set their wings, Jeff is always trying to bring more people afield to show them what we are trying to protect. He loves being in the arena, and he will never shy away from conversations about the beautiful and unique corners of Big Sky country.
