The National Park Service (NPS) and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) have initiated an environmental impact statement (EIS) process to determine how to proceed with recovery of grizzly bears in the North Cascades Ecosystem (NCE) in north central Washington. The USDA Forest Service and the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife are cooperators on the EIS. Without active recovery efforts, the FWS predicts that the population is likely to disappear. The EIS will explore a number of options from "no action" to restoration of bears into the area.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) recently announced that it would be holding a sign-up for general Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) acres later this year. This is the first enrollment opportunity for general CRP since 2013, according to the Wildlife Management Institute.

I suspect I'm not much different from many in the wildlife conservation community that can harken back to a youth where we were touched, perhaps both literally and figuratively, by wild birds through our backyard feeders. My parents had many feeders distributed around our home and we welcomed the typical northeastern cadre of chickadees and juncos, titmice and cardinals. Dad also was known to hang a couple rib cages from one of the deer he harvested ? much to the delight of the nuthatches and woodpeckers, and to the chagrin of some of my friends who came to visit.

The Fish & Wildlife Business Summit recently concluded its 2015 meeting hosted by O.F. Mossberg & Sons in Middletown, Connecticut. This annual gathering of state, federal, industry, and NGO leaders focuses on strengthening relationships to better implement the Wildlife and Sport Fish Restoration (WSFR) program. The Wildlife Management Institute (WMI), in its ongoing commitment to support user-based conservation funding, facilitated the eighth annual meeting of the group.

The North Atlantic Aquatic Connectivity Collaborative (NAACC) plans to improve the network of rivers and streams in the northeast by addressing the problems of fragmentation and obstructed flow through barriers such as culverts and bridges. Federal and State agencies, the University of Massachusetts Amherst, The Nature Conservancy, and conservation organizations throughout 13 states are leading the effort with funding from the North Atlantic Landscape Conservation Cooperative (NALCC) and DOI Hurricane Sandy Mitigation funds.

The  U.S.