September 2018

The Blue Ribbon Panel on Sustaining America’s Diverse Fish & Wildlife Resources issued two key recommendations for state wildlife agencies: 1) to increase funding for fish and wildlife conservation and 2) to increase the relevancy of conservation to a wider audience. The first recommendation led to the introduction of and advocacy for the Recovering America’s Wildlife Act (RAWA) in the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate, and the second recommendation led to the development of the National Conservation Outreach Plan (NCOP) to promote the relevancy of wildlife agencies to a broader audience. The Outreach Plan is now moving forward with a public awareness campaign under the overarching theme of “Making It Last”.

The American System of Conservation Funding is the funding strategy that has supported scientifically based management of our nation’s fish and wildlife resources for the last 75+ years. This “user pay – public benefit” system has been incredibly successful, but the number of hunting and angling participants paying into this system are on the decline while the general population in the country is increasing. Evaluating the current American System of Conservation Funding and identifying opportunities to increase funding for fish and wildlife conservation, as well as broaden the user groups supporting this successful system, is a critical step forward for those who care about funding conservation in the future.

On September 10, Department of Interior (DOI) Secretary Ryan Zinke issued a memorandum reaffirming the authority of the states to exercise their broad trustee and police powers as stewards of the Nation’s fish and wildlife species on public lands and waters under the jurisdiction of the Department. In announcing the memorandum at the annual meeting of the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies, DOI Deputy Assistant Secretary, Aurelia Skipwith, said the memorandum is intended to clarify the relationship between the states and the DOI bureaus and offices, to strengthen joint state-federal conservation partnership, and enhance the public’s opportunities to enjoy the benefits of the Nation’s fish and wildlife.

The Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies (AFWA) passed a resolution in support of landscape conservation during their 108th Annual meeting earlier this month. The formal recognition marks a milestone in the growing acceptance and use of collaborative, landscape-scale conservation to aid in the recovery or avoidance of federal Endangered Species Act listings, help reduce conflicts, mitigate key stressors and improve regulatory certainty.

When I was in college and thinking about a career in wildlife, I knew that a field biologist wasn’t my path and that I was intrigued with the idea of wildlife policy. At the time, there were limited options to develop an educational background in that field so I cobbled together course work in general public policy (VERY different from wildlife policy) and took a Natural Resource Law course (which was outstanding but our text was a law book dense enough that it helped me recognize that I didn’t want to head off to law school!). While we got general background in key wildlife policies and laws within our core classes, I knew even then that having a text with comprehensive history and details specifically related to wildlife policy would have been useful. And not just to me with an interest in policy, but also to every other wildlife major because laws and policies affecting wildlife management would have an impact on every wildlife student’s future career.

The USGS Wyoming Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit is leading research on the effects of dams and water diversions on burbot populations, a popular sport and food fish and species of conservation concern. Burbot are the native top predator in many of the region’s waters and are culturally significant to the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho American Indian Tribes. The Wyoming Unit suspects that burbot entrapment into irrigation waters is linked with burbot out-migration from the closest dam-augmented lake (Bull Lake) during high flow releases.