Talking dollars and cents at our fifth annual Saltwater Media Summit
How do you measure a quality day on the water? By total fish caught? By your biggest catch? By how many hours were spent alongside friends and family?
What about in dollars and cents?
You may not realize the dramatic impact your recreational fishing dollars have on the U.S. economy—each year, the dollars you spend on fishing boats, guides, and gear generates $115 billion in economic activity. Saltwater anglers account for $70 billion of that. This money goes to support conservation and great public access to fishing and creates thousands of jobs that support coastal communities all across the country.
That’s why we chose to host our fifth annual Saltwater Media Summit at ICAST, the world’s largest fishing trade show, where media and business leaders can experience the full economic might of the recreational fishing industry. We’re gathering science and policy experts in Orlando, Florida, to show members of the media that important saltwater conservation issues—like red snapper management, reauthorization of the country’s major marine fisheries law, and Gulf Coast restoration—are impacting our local economies just as much as our access to quality fishing.
Want to know how $18.7 billion dollars in restoration dollars will be spent? Are you and your readers frustrated with short recreational seasons for Gulf red snapper? Do you wonder what Washington lawmakers could be doing to protect your saltwater fishing access? Our experts will discuss all that and more. We’ll be providing updates throughout the week, so follow the #TRCPSummit hashtag on Twitter, or stay tuned to Facebook and the blog for more information. To find us at ICAST, contact Kristyn Brady via email.
We wouldn’t be able to break big conservation stories at ICAST without the help of our generous sponsors. We’d like to thank Bass Pro Shops, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, NOAA Fisheries, Costa, Patagonia, Pure Fishing, the Recreational Boating and Fishing Foundation, Yamaha, the American Sportfishing Association, and the National Marine Manufacturers Association. Check out a full listing of our sponsors right here.
The TRCP’s scouting report on sportsmen’s issues in Congress
Both the House and the Senate will be in session this week.
Photo courtesy of Library of Congress.
Last week in the House, the Fiscal 2016 Interior Appropriations bill was yanked from the floor after debate over the Confederate flag became rancorous. It is not clear when (or if) the bill will come back to the House floor, with just six legislative weeks until the end of fiscal year 2015. The House also easily cleared H.R. 2647, the Resilient Federal Forest Act of 2015, last week in a 262-167 vote. The path forward for forestry legislation in the Senate is still unclear, although several hearings will occur this week in that chamber. Both the House and the Senate have now named their respective members of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) conference committee, which is expected to complete its work prior to the August recess. The House version of the NDAA includes harmful sage grouse language, and President Obama has threatened to veto the bill.
On the Floor
This week, the Senate is expected to complete consideration of legislation reauthorizing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (S.1177), which appears likely to consume the balance of the week’s proceedings on the floor.
This week on the House floor, discussion with center around a California drought bill, HR 2898, authored by Rep. David Valadao (R-CA). There is no other major legislation on the House floor, but according to Majority Leader McCarthy, other items are possible.
Public Lands Transfers Threaten Sportsmen’s Access: The Arizona Strip
In an increasingly crowded and pay-to-play world, America’s 640 million acres of public lands – including our national forests and Bureau of Land Management lands–have become the nation’s mightiest hunting and fishing strongholds.
This is especially true in the West, where according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 72 percent of sportsmen depend on access to public lands for hunting. Without these vast expanses of prairie and sagebrush, foothills and towering peaks, the traditions of hunting and fishing as we have known them for the past century would be lost. Gone also would be a very basic American value: the unique and abundant freedom we’ve known for all of us, rich and poor and in-between, to experience our undeveloped and wild spaces, natural wonders, wildlife and waters, and the assets that have made life and citizenship in our country the envy of the world.
In Part Three of our series, we head to a little known region of Northern Arizona.
Most of the 5 million annual visitors to the Grand Canyon, which lies just to the south, have no idea that just beyond the mighty Colorado River is located another, even wilder universe of slot canyons, sagebrush plains, lost rivers and Ponderosa pineclad mountains. The rugged Grand Canyon cuts off the Strip and makes this some of the most remote country in the Southwest, where bighorn sheep clatter in the scree, bison wander and turkeys thunder in high elevation aspen groves that seem utterly removed from the deserts below. It’s the Kaibab Plateau and the Vermillion Cliffs, the Poverty Mountains, the Parashant, all names that conjure up monster bucks in desert solitude.
Image courtesy of BLM.
You’ll need your extra water and your best boots, because the Strip is a sprawling place where the deer densities are low (population estimates are around 2,000 animals most years) but you’ll find some of the largest bucks on earth. As you hunt, you’ll see the same country traversed by the pioneers who launched from Fort Smith, Arkansas, bound for the Colorado River and westward on the Beale Wagon Road. At Laws Spring you can study the pictographs left by hunters like yourself hundreds and thousands of years ago. The most unique fact about this country, other than the fact that it is ours for the roaming, is that you will see it much as those long-ago hunters saw it.
In 2012, Arizona passed Senate Bill 1332, demanding the transfer of all federal lands to the state and giving the state the right to sell them to promote development. Arizona Proposition 120, a ballot measure defeated by two-thirds of Arizona voters, would have amended the state’s constitution to “declare Arizona’s sovereignty and jurisdiction over the air, water, public lands, minerals, wildlife, and other natural resources within the state’s boundaries.” What the legislature proposed is a fundamental and radical remaking of Arizona, with no regard for the quality of life or natural resource protection that the public lands have provided for more than a century. It is hard to imagine the price that would be paid for the Arizona Strip, but the outcome would be clear: a state where access to the best hunting and other recreation is reserved for those wealthy enough to buy what once belonged to all of us.
Image courtesy of BLM.
While sportsmen were successful in defeating the vast majority of land transfer bills across the nation during the 2015 legislative season, Arizona proved to be difficult territory and two problematic measures were passed. One bill was a resolution, urging the United States Congress and the Dept. of the Interior to hand over public lands directly to the state. The other bill established a study committee “to examine processes to transfer, manage and dispose of federal lands within Arizona.” A third bill, vetoed by the Arizona Governor, would have entered the state into a compact designed to aggressively seek control of public lands from the federal government. All of these bills threaten public access to public lands because the state of Arizona, if successful, simply could not afford to retain and responsibly manage these lands and would likely find it necessary to sell them to private interests. Looking forward, hunters and anglers will be engaged with the Arizona study committee process to show lawmakers and the public that land transfer is a losing proposition. Sportsmen are also planning to step up our Arizona involvement in 2016 to prevent radicals from advancing additional measures that would threaten our public lands hunting and fishing traditions.
Stay tuned. In the rest of this 10-part series, we’ll continue to cover some of America’s finest hunting and fishing destinations that could be permanently seized from the public if politicians have their way.
The TRCP’s scouting report on sportsmen’s issues in Congress
Both the House and the Senate will be in session this week, the first of four legislative weeks before the August recess and eight weeks from the end of fiscal year 2015.
Photo courtesy of Library of Congress.
This Month at a Glance July is expected to see consideration of a Highway Bill solution (the highway trust fund expires July 31); there is also some appetite to reauthorize the Export-Import Bank’s charter, which expired on July 1. The Senate could also soon see action on a nuclear deal with Iran, and both chambers will begin conference proceedings on the Fiscal 2016 National Defense Authorization Act.
On the Floor
This week, the Senate will be considering reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (S.1177).
Conservation Funding Alert: This week, the House will resume consideration of the Fiscal Year 2016 Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act (HR 2822) on the floor, and is expected to vote on a variety of amendments throughout the week. You can review all the amendments currently filed here.
The Week in Full:
Tuesday, July 7
The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee will hold a hearing to examine S.1694, which would authorize phase III of a project to improve water management in the Yakima River basin.
Wednesday, July 8
House Committee on Agriculture hearing on energy and the rural economy: the economic impact of exporting crude oil.
Full House Appropriations Committee Markup of Fiscal Year 2016 agriculture spending bill .
Full House Natural Resources Committee Markup – A list of bills will be posted once available.
Thursday, July 9
Full House Natural Resources Committee Markup, continued from Wednesday.
House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology hearing on examining the EPA’s regulatory overreach.
House Committee on Energy and Commerce, Subcommittee on Energy and Power hearing on HR 702, legislation to prohibit restrictions on the export of crude oil.
Senate Energy and Natural Resources will hold a hearing to examine mitigation requirements, interagency coordination, and pilot projects related to economic development on Federal public lands.
Angling Community Knows Just What to Do with $18.7B Oil Spill Settlement
Leaders of the Gulf of Mexico’s recreational fishing community reaffirmed their commitment to improving the region’s fisheries and access opportunities following the announcement of an $18.7-billion settlement between BP, the five Gulf States, and the federal government for environmental damages and lost revenues resulting from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil disaster. According to details released today, BP will pay $5.5 billion in Clean Water Act penalties, and at least $5 billion to Louisiana alone, for injuries determined through a Natural Resource Damage Assessment. Funds will be paid over 16 years. BP will also commit $232 million to any future damage.
The Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership and its sportfishing partners—the American Sportfishing Association, Coastal Conservation Association, and Center for Coastal Conservation—have been working closely with the Gulf’s angling community, state and federal agencies, researchers, and conservation groups since 2010 to identify and advance projects and initiatives to sustain and improve fisheries using oil spill recovery funds.
Image courtesy of Louisiana’s GOHSEP.
“Exactly five years ago, oil was still spilling into the Gulf, closing and limiting recreational fishing and making the future of Gulf fisheries uncertain,” says TRCP Center for Marine Fisheries Director Chris Macaluso. “This settlement gives us a clearer picture of what the future of Gulf fishing will look like, by allowing state and federal agencies and research institutions an immediate timeline and definitive budget for selecting the projects and initiatives that will protect and restore damaged ecosystems. It is critical that we get to work restoring, protecting, and improving habitat now, rather than after a decade or more of litigation.”
“Louisiana is losing critical fish habitat on a daily basis, and it’s very important that projects to restore our coast and curb land loss move forward to the design and construction phase as quickly as possible,” says CCA Louisiana Executive Director David Cresson. “Our organization remains committed to representing the saltwater fishermen of our state in ensuring that barrier islands, reefs, marshes, science centers, and fisheries management are at the top of the lists of projects built with these unprecedented conservation funds.”
In 2013, TRCP and its partners released the report “Gulf of Mexico Recreational Fisheries: Recommendations for Restoration, Recovery and Sustainability,” which broadly identified steps to improve habitat, fisheries science, data collection, and boost angler confidence that damages would be repaired. We followed up that report with a list of 25 specific Gulf-area projects that would help accomplish these broad goals, including barrier island restoration efforts in Louisiana and Alabama, Gulf-wide fish tagging and catch-and-release mortality reduction programs, water quality improvement efforts in Florida and Texas, and the restoration of oyster reefs throughout the Gulf. These projects remain a priority today.
Image courtesy of Patrick Quigley.
“Saltwater recreational fishing is enjoyed by more than 3.5 million Gulf residents, and many more who visit the area each year,” says Jeff Angers, president of the Center for Coastal Conservation. “Wise investment of this settlement will give anglers in the region a chance to have better management of our fisheries, better places to fish, and better access to wonderful fishing opportunities. Gulf anglers remain committed to working with state and federal officials to ensure fisheries conservation is given top priority.”
“Recreational fishing in the Gulf accounts for more than $10 billion in annual contributions to the region’s economy and supports nearly 100,000 jobs,” says Mike Leonard, American Sportfishing Association’s ocean resource policy director. “This economic activity came to a grinding halt in the spring and summer of 2010 due to the oil spill, and it can only be sustained or increased by building better fisheries science and management and better habitats that attract fishermen. This settlement allows us to make commitments to improve the Gulf’s fisheries for generations to come.”
HOW YOU CAN HELP
CHEERS TO CONSERVATION
Theodore Roosevelt’s experiences hunting and fishing certainly fueled his passion for conservation, but it seems that a passion for coffee may have powered his mornings. In fact, Roosevelt’s son once said that his father’s coffee cup was “more in the nature of a bathtub.” TRCP has partnered with Afuera Coffee Co. to bring together his two loves: a strong morning brew and a dedication to conservation. With your purchase, you’ll not only enjoy waking up to the rich aroma of this bolder roast—you’ll be supporting the important work of preserving hunting and fishing opportunities for all.
