Val Geist on Game farm "hunting".

This from an interview by David Peterson and published in the Denver Huff Post:

Petersen: Aside from its role in the spread of diseases, what are your views on the game farming industry?
Geist: Game farming is utterly incompatible with the maintenance of free-roaming wildlife on this continent, standing in direct opposition to all four basic tenets of the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation and democratic hunting: (1) Wildlife "ownership" must be held exclusively in the public domain. The corollary is that wildlife must never become private property. (2) In order to save North American wildlife from extinction, we long ago outlawed market hunting and commercial trafficking in dead wildlife. But game farming depends utterly on developing a huge and growing legal market in dead wildlife, throwing the doors open to illegal marketing of wild animals as well. (3) The allocation of the public wildlife resource among private citizens must be regulated by due process of law. It's the American way. It's a way that works for all. And what does game farming give us? Wildlife allocation by financial privilege. Canned hunts make a mockery of ethical democratic hunting. (4) Fair chase! Neither the U.S. nor Canada allows the frivolous killing of wildlife. But what restraints against frivolous killing exist in the private sector? None. A canned shooter may buy as many animals as he or she wants and kill them for whatever reason, in whatever fashion, no matter how frivolous, immoral and disgusting.
You said it, Dr. Geist. Let's keep the hunt in hunting!

Sportsmen's Bill Stirring Controversy

From the WMI Outdoor News Bulletin:

 

The Sportsmen's Heritage Act (H.R. 4089) passed the U.S. House of Representatives by a vote of 274 to 146 on April 17.  Many groups are now pushing for action in the Senate, however, the bill's momentum has created a rift among some conservation organizations.  While many sportsmen's groups are touting the bill's importance to entrench hunting, fishing and shooting on federal public lands, others claim the bill is unnecessary and could undermine wilderness protection, reports the Wildlife Management Institute.

Read More >>

 

Concerns raised in addition to undercutting protection of wilderness areas are: creating loopholes in the National Environmental Policy Act (that could make it easier to close federal lands to hunting) and cutting the President's authority to create new national monuments that was first used by Theodore Roosevelt.

I hope all hunters will work together to fix these issues in the Senate- then we will have a truly landmark bill for the future of hunting.

Eric

We don't have fish and wildlife by accident

Outstanding op/ed from TRCP's Neil Thagard.

 

Wildlife and wild places are big business in Wyoming. More than $2.5 billion is generated here every year by outdoor activities ranging from hunting and fishing to camping and bird watching.
This didn’t happen by accident.

Read more: http://trib.com/opinion/columns/we-don-t-have-fish-and-wildlife-by-accident/article_e98c61f4-8e28-595d-a866-8d7667b6143b.html#ixzz1uwueD1uU
 

Jim Posewitz on Wisdom

Wisdom — Jim Posewitz on Vimeo
► 2:40► 2:40	vimeo.com/18398851Jan 3, 2011 - 3 min Jim Posewitz's determination and grit are inspiring to all of us — no matter what battles we're fighting.

Canned Killing: Don't Call It Hunting!

David Petersen Outdoorsman and author

Huffington Post

Among ethical hunters, the term "fair chase" implies a universal bottom-line of self-imposed fairness and morality. Fair chase hunting specifies the pursuit of wild, free-ranging game animals, and, together with limits on technology, assures wildlife a better-than-even chance of escape. Thus, the term hunting.

Meanwhile, another and wholly opposite term and mindset, "Canned hunting," was coined by fair chase hunters to condemn the sickly "sport" of paying thousands of dollars for the great soulful adventure and challenge of executing captive-raised, half-tamed wildlife on "game farms," several of which stain my longtime home of LaPlata County and surrounds.

...Jim Posewitz, hunter, retired Montana wildlife biologist, and founder of Orion: The Hunter's Institute. Canned hunting, says Posewitz, "is killing and nothing more. The worst thing it does is to trivialize the value of wild animals. A fenced shoot is just the sale of a fabricated image to people who have neither the skill nor the inclination to obtain the real thing. It's a threat not only to real hunting, but to our whole concept of wildlife conservation."

read complete article

Nuse to give talk on the Heritage of North Am Hunting

Come join me at the Bent Northrop Memorial Library in Fairfax, VT


Orion: The Hunters’ Institute~Thursday, May 10 @ 7pm.
Eric Nuse talks about the Heritage of North American Hunting. Orion is best known for its books and advocacy for fair chase hunting, hunter ethics and teaching hunting heritage.  In addition to running a consulting business, Eric works with the State Fish and Wildlife agencies on hunter recruitment, hunter safety and ethics issues, and has just published Volume 2 of Vermont Wild, in which he shares his experiences as a Vermont game warden.

164 Park Street
Fairfield, Vermont 05455
We can be reached at
802-827-3945 or email.

Sportsmen Paying the Freight for 75-years

by Chris Lawrence
Metro News Online, Charleston

When you want to talk about the heyday of hunting and fishing in West Virginia and in the United States, we are very fortunate to be living in it right now.    If you ask any hunter in his fifties or over, you'll find a far different story about hunting and fishing as a kid than the children of today who hunt and fish will tell.   Today's abundance of all species of wildlife in the U.S. is one of the single greatest tributes to conservation in the history of mankind.    It's here because you and I paid for it.

The year 2012 marks the 75th Anniversary of the Wildlife and Sport Fish Restoration Act in the United States.   The results of the excise taxes we pay when we buy firearms, ammunition, archery, and fishing equipment is directly tied to the abundance of not only game species, but even to critters we don't hunt in our world today.

"The funds allowed a transformation in how we managed wildlife," said John Organ with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service at a recent conference of professional wildlife managers in Charleston. "Up until 1937 the model for managing wildlife was restrictive laws and regulations designed to string out a dwindling supply of wildlife." 
more:
note: John is a Board member with Orion

Environmentalists, sportsmen are formidible as partners

GEORGE SMITH:
Kennebec Journal
Our greatest disappointment continues to be our inability to win public support and funding for Maine's beleaguered Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife. We came to realize that we cannot let the negative members of our respective constituencies ...
See all stories on this topic »
Kennebec Journal

Front is the best of the Last Best Place

By Randy Newberg

Congressman Denny Rehberg has asked Montanans to tell him more about the Rocky Mountain Front Heritage Act and the remarkable, five-year public process behind the collaborative effort to conserve public lands along the Front. He's holding a listening session in Choteau today at 2:30 p.m. in the Choteau Public Schools auditorium.
He's going to hear two things, loud and clear: Montana sportsmen are committed to conserving the Front, and they will welcome the Congressman's support in keeping this sportsman's paradise just the way it is.
The Front is that expansive, rough country that'll take your breath away every time you drive U.S. Highway 200 south of Great Falls. It's a wellspring of clean, cold water; a place that supports significant livestock grazing; and an important lure for tourists who give a boost to traditional small-town economies.
But more than anything, it's a sportsman's paradise. Montana's Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks tallies some 90,000 hunter days along the Front and some $10 million spent by sportsmen in nearby communities each fall. Many more days and dollars from fishing, camping, and hiking.

...This is what Congressman Rehberg will hear: The Front is the best of the Last Best Place — and we want to keep it just the way it is.

Read more:

Randy is a board member of Orion and owner of On Your Own Adventures in Bozeman, MT

The Man in the Arena - 102 years ago today

April 23, 1910 - Sorbonne, Paris

The famous quote from the speech
"Citizenship in a Republic"

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."

Read the entire speech

http://www.theodore-roosevelt.com/trsorbonnespeech.html

Let's Put a Bounty on Stupid

 

The Range Blog

Ben Long | Apr 04, 2012 12:00 PM

What is more stupid than bailing the ocean? Paying someone to bail the ocean.
Yet it seems the Utah Legislature thinks that’s a good idea. Worse yet, Utah lawmakers are co-opting the state’s sportsmen to pay for this folly. If you are a sportsman anywhere between Alaska and Arizona, watch your wallet. This trend ain’t contained to the Beehive State.
A pseudo-conservation group, Sportsmen For Fish and Wildlife, is spearheading biologically bankrupt anti-predator schemes that are guaranteed to waste millions of dollars and undermine legitimate wildlife management.

...
A hundred years ago, Theodore Roosevelt demonstrated the idea of good sportsmanship by refusing to kill a bear caught in a Mississippi trap. Roosevelt’s Legacy, called the North American Wildlife Model, has several provisions. Among those, wildlife belongs to everyone, not a privileged class; wildlife management is based in science; wildlife is not squandered wantonly.
Today, SFW is making a mockery of the Roosevelt Legacy, bankrupting America’s wildlife management in more ways than one.

Read the entire post

Public Trust Under Attack in AZ

March 28, 2012
To all Arizona RMEF Members
The Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation (RMEF) became aware of House Bill 2072, an act related to Big Game Tags and Permits introduced to the Arizona Legislature, earlier this month. The RMEF, representing over 5,500 members in Arizona and over 185,000 in the US, went on record opposing the bill in a letter to Arizona Governor Janice K. Brewer.
RMEF is now appealing to you, our members in Arizona, to make your voice heard on this poorly crafted legislation. HB 2072 would allocate a significant number of Arizona’s most prestigious and already limited permits to a “conservation” organization, most likely, Arizona Sportsmen for Wildlife, the primary advocates of this legislation. This action would undermine one of the most basic tenants of the North American Wildlife Conservation Model…that hunting is an opportunity for all. The allocation of 330 special permits for auction and raffle in a state with already limited public opportunity would be nothing short of a travesty and it will take away tags from those who participate in the public draw system.
The absurdity of HB 2072 does not stop there. This bill allows the “conservation” group selling these permits to exclusively retain an unreasonable percentage of the gross proceeds from the sale of these permits to cover administrative and operating expenses. The RMEF is proud to report that an average of only 8% of all Governor’s and Commissioner’s permits RMEF offers nationwide is retained for administrative purposes. 92% of the gross proceeds have been returned to the states and conservation projects to be invested only in benefiting wildlife and their habitat.
In Arizona specifically, RMEF currently returns 100% of the sale proceeds from the one special elk permit we sell. RMEF actually loses approximately $3,500 annually through direct expenses associated with handling the AZ elk permit. While RMEF believes it is appropriate for organizations to recover direct expenses associated with selling special permits, we firmly believe that private, non-profit entities should not take public assets to support their operational expenses. We operate RMEF the old fashion way, we work for what we get. We are not guaranteed any tags or licenses to create operational revenue.
As a member of RMEF and resident of Arizona it is time to contact your legislator and make your position known on HB 2072, or any similar legislative attempts to take public wildlife from the public. Please act today as this legislation would significantly impact your opportunity to hunt your prized big game species in your home state.
Sincerely,
M. David Allen President and CEO Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation

Man is an integral part of the animal kingdom

"Man is an integral part of the animal kingdom. As our environment becomes less livable for the subjects of the kingdom, it also becomes less suitable for the king. The status and trends of species diversity and the condition of fish and wildlife populations are the litmus tests of a healthy human environment."
Thomas Kimball, past director of the Colorado Division of Wildlife  1981

This quote ended an op/ed piece by Bill Geer with National Wildlife Federation titled:

Address climate change with science, not opinion polls

Wolves as a Public Trust Resource

From the Wildlife Conservation Science & Policy blog:

by Jeremy Bruskotter
On 30 September my colleagues and I published an article in the journal Science that argues that the wildlife trust doctrine (a branch of the broader public trust doctrine) may provide a legal means for interested citizens to compel states to conserve wolves (or, for that matter, other controversial, imperiled species). What follows is a brief discussion of some of the major points presented in the paper (Bruskotter, J. T., S. A. Enzler, and A. Treves. 2011. Rescuing Wolves from Politics: Wildlife as a Public Trust Resource. Science 333:1828-1829).  We begin with a brief primer on the wildlife trust doctrine.

A Primer on the Wildlife Trust
The wildlife trust doctrine–a branch of the broader public trust doctrine that deals specifically with wildlife–was established in a series of court cases that provide the foundation for state-based conservation of wildlife that some refer to as the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation/Management.
more: 

Disagreement over the Public Trust Doctrine’s application to Wolves

 This past September my colleagues (S.A. Enzler & A. Treves) and I published an article arguing that the public trust doctrine could provide a legal means to force protection of wolves were state policies found lacking (Bruskotter et al., 30 Sept. 2011, p. 1828).  This article prompted two recent replies published by Science last month from L. David Mech and David Johns (17 Feb. 2012, p. 794).  Contrary to our assertion, Mech contended that “state governments have not shown ‘hostility toward wolves’”.  He defended this statement noting that “teams of highly qualified scientists set wolf recovery criteria” and state management plans pledged to maintain wolf populations at or above 150% of recovery goals.  Further, Mech argued that monitoring by the FWS ensured that “the wolf can be relisted anytime if necessary”.
more: