On November 5, U.S. Department of the Interior Secretary Sally Jewell announced the release of a new report documenting the economic impacts of recreational visits to national wildlife refuges across the country. The report, Banking on Nature, found that the 46.5 million visitors to refuges in 2011 generated $2.4 billion in sales in regional economies supporting more than 35,000 jobs, according to the Wildlife Management Institute.

The House-Senate Farm Bill Conference Committee began meeting on October 30, but so far progress has been slow on crafting a final piece of farm legislation. There continues to be substantial disagreement over the size of the nutrition program covered by the bill. The Senate-passed version cuts nutrition programs by $4 billion over the next ten years, while the House version calls for a $40 billion reduction over the same period.

Wildlife Management Institute Western Field Representative, Chris Smith, shared thoughts on the implications of the Public Trust Doctrine (PTD) for state fish and wildlife agencies, kicking off an in-depth analysis of the PTD sponsored by Polson Institute for Global Development at Cornell University. Smith's presentation, hosted by the Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future, was the first in a series of discussions through which practitioners and scholars will explore the opportunities and constraints related to this fundamental element of conservation law.

State fisheries and wildlife agencies need a consistent definition, description, and accurate dataset of habitat types to understand where conservation is most needed and anticipate the effects of climate change on forested, agricultural, and freshwater systems across the region. Current, digital habitat maps are essential for effective implementation of State Wildlife Action Plans.

In completion of a 2010 Regional Conservation Need project, The Nature Conservancy has just released the report "Flow Recommendations for the Tributaries of the Great Lakes of New York and Pennsylvania.

Conservation Briefs is a compilation of short news stories of interest to Outdoor News Bulletin readers. The stories will cover a number of issues that have developed in the past month or provide updates on issues that were featured in previous ONB editions. Each story will include links to online resources for more details on each topic. This edition's stories include Secretary Jewell's speech at the National Press Club, FWS endorsement of the lesser prairie-chicken plan, the BLM's latest draft EIS's for sage grouse, and the SPORT Act.

This month:

The Transactions of the 78th North American Wildlife and Natural Resources Conference will be available to download in PDF format from the WMI Store on November 22. The volume includes plenary keynote addresses by Steven Williams, Daniel Ashe and Jim Sterba.

When you visit your physician's office, you expect that measures of blood pressure, heart rate, cholesterol and other basic data is collected in a similar, standardized manner, no matter if you are in Alaska or Florida. However, until recently, simple data collection in freshwater fish sampling was not standardized. Through the efforts of Cooperative Research Unit scientists and the American Fisheries Society (AFS), this traditional approach is changing and a new online database has been launched to improve how research findings are compared and shared.