November 2011

A workshop, "Bringing Bison Back: America's Last Big Game Challenge," is scheduled for 1:00 to 3:00 p.m., Monday, March 12, at the 77th North American Wildlife and Natural Resources Conference in Atlanta, Georgia. It will examine the political, cultural and ecological steps necessary for bison to be restored, managed and valued as a wildlife resource on northeastern Montana's Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge (CMR) and other multi-jurisdictional landscapes.

The Great Plains of Montana once sustained bison herds that numbered in the millions. Like so many other wildlife...

Early this month, a bipartisan group of western U.S. Senators introduced a bill that would create a leasing program for renewable energy development on federal public lands. The Public Lands Renewable Energy Development Act of 2011 (S. 1775) is being led by Montana Senator Jon Tester and cosponsored by Senators John Risch (Idaho), Harry Reid and Dean Heller (Nevada), and Mark Udall (Colorado). The vision of the bill is to create a leasing pilot project that treats renewable energy similar to traditional sources of energy development, such as oil and gas, with the goal of reaching a...

Representatives from the energy industry, conservation groups and county planning offices recently told members of the Western Governors' Wildlife Council (WGWC) that efforts to create the western regional "Crucial Habitat Assessment Tool" (CHAT) are already paying huge dividends. The CHAT is envisioned as a West-wide, seamless mapping system that identifies the highest value wildlife habitat areas and the corridors that provide connectivity across the landscape. The western governors directed the WGWC to develop the CHAT as a non-regulatory means of protecting the wildlife that is...

In its seventh year, the Conservation Leaders for Tomorrow (CLfT) program is conducting 13 workshops?3 as professional development events for fish and wildlife agency personnel, 1 for U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) employees, and 9 for Juniors, Seniors and graduate university students majoring in natural resource management disciplines. To improve facilitation of the workshops, designed and administered to provide nonhunting participants with a good understanding of the relationship between consumptive outdoor recreation and conservation, two people were added to the program's full-...

On October 27, the Department of the Interior (DOI) and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) released a supplement to the Draft Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) for Solar Energy Development. The revisions make several key improvements to the plan by reducing the number and acreage within solar energy zones, establishing exclusion zones where development is incompatible with other resources, and clarifying the process for developing additional zones in the future, reports the Wildlife Management Institute. The conservation community that had voiced concerns about the potential...

On Wednesday, March 14, 2012, a special session focusing on the Wildlife and Sport Fish Restoration (WSFR)?Program?will be held at the 77th North American Wildlife and Natural Resources Conference. Titled "Wildlife and Sport Fish Restoration 75th Anniversary: The Wildlife Restoration Program" the special session (concurrent with three other special sessions immediately following the conference plenary) will provide a brief history of the WSFR, discuss how it has changed the way states manage wildlife, highlight effective partnerships, provide an economic perspective of the WSFR, and...

Copies of the limited (500), numbered edition of the classic book, An American Crusade for Wildlife, still are available.

To commemorate its 100th Anniversary, the Wildlife Management Institute (WMI) produced a new edition of An American Crusade for Wildlife by James B. Trefethen. The book is a Boone and Crockett Club title, but has been out of print for a number of years. Reprised by WMI with the Club's permission and solely for a run of 500 copies, the book is being made available to persons contributing $100 or more (tax-deductible, see below) to the...

During the week of March 26-30, Colorado State University (CSU) will again offer its annual Wildlife Management Short Course, mainly for laypersons and agency personnel without wildlife training.

The five-day short course, limited to 50 participants, is designed to provide an overview of principles of wildlife (including fisheries) ecology and management. Current programs and issues related to natural resources conservation also will be discussed. The short course consists of presentations by university faculty and personnel from various agencies and organizations. Field trips...