Conservation Gets the Rusty Machete Treatment

AFFTA Board Member Tom Sadler lays out the gory details of the latest round of conservation funding cuts.

The funding cuts don’t put conservation programs on life support, instead they just left the corpse on the floor to bleed out.

If the hunting and fishing community does not step up and express outrage over this assault on the very foundation of our traditions then we only have ourselves to blame.

Read More (Via: Dispatches from the Middle River)

Comments

[deerhawk]

Over the last few years I have worked closely with my local .org's as well as State and Federal gov's on Environmental Policy's ranging from Dam Removal, Species Re-Introduction and Monitoring, Logging and impacts that these things have had, and continue to have, on Rivers/Streams etc.
I have sat through my share of meetings both with group members and employees, as well as Board, State and Federal elected officials. I have seen the long faces of the people who write grant proposals when there funding is denied. I know from personal experience the dashed hope when a particular project is denied when you know how much good it will do.

Certainly working with these Gov groups has it's place, I have seen the wheels turn in some positive directions, but it is also my experience is that FAR TO MUCH reliance is levied on this expectation of "free money from the Gov". Perhaps there needs to be another direction taken, perhaps the American Public needs to finally see this phenomenal resource around them and become Pro-Active, not only from a "hands on" working perspective, but from a financial one as well.

I concur, the amount of money that Outdoor Sports generates should not be discounted, but when you have such huge gaps (for instance, a recent study I did locally pitting logging against outdoor activitys in the per acre revenue stream, outdoor was somewhere's around $6-8.00 where as an acre of loggable timber was in the $150 k range) in competition for the same space, a group of folks who want to help flora or fauna start at the back of the pack, sometimes even down the street from the track tied to a post....very difficult.

Joe Public needs to stand up and take back his rightful ownership of this place we call home.
This wonderful gift that we have been given Stewardship over
That will free us from the dark mire of what a lot of us know as "Government Funding".