Outdoor commentary and legislative issues.
It’s almost time to polish up the shotgun, warm up the retriever with some practice throws and don that camouflage as we near the season for hunting ducks and geese in Michigan! Area wildlife managers have been working hard all summer to make sure that migrating waterfowl have great habitat conditions on Michigan’s state game and wildlife areas this fall.
Available for Comment on Today’s Report in New York Times
West Bend, WI – The United States Concealed Carry Association (USCCA), which is the country’s largest and fastest growing association whose sole focus is the responsibly armed American, said today that with childen across the country returning to school all options should be on the table to allow teachers to defend themselves and others.
The New York Times reports today that a proposal under consideration would allow Education Secretary, Betsy DeVos, to approve any state or district plans to use grant funding for firearms and firearm training. A subsequent report by CNN said Trump Administration officials pushed back on the report stating that the department received a letter from the Texas state Department of Education asking if the funds from a federal grant program could be used to purchase firearms. While no action was taken by the Department, DeVos thinks that Congress should take action to clarify whether using the grant funding to buy guns is permissible
Tim Schmidt, the President and Founder of the USCCA, who has been a vocal supporter for allowing trained teachers to protect themselves, made the following statement:
“Too many lives have been lost because murderous maniacs know that schools are soft targets where the teachers and students inside don’t have the ability to protect themselves. Our government should be doing everything possible to protect our children and that includes allowing, and supporting, trained, licensed teachers and administrators to arm themselves. In countless situations across this country, concealed-carry permit holders have been the front lines of defense against evildoers because they have the necessary knowledge, training and experience to protect those around them. In an emergency situation, seconds matter and a well-trained, responsible gun owner can save lives in an active-shooter situation.
“A number of school districts across the country in states like South Dakota, Texas and elsewhere are already allowing trained school officials with concealed carry permits to protect themselves and others while at work. The federal government should be supporting those efforts and ensuring every possible option is being considered to keep our children safe.” Read more
BELLEVUE, WA – A federal district court judge in Michigan has allowed a Second Amendment Foundation lawsuit against the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services to move forward, challenging the agency’s requirement that foster parents keep firearms and ammunition locked up, so as not to be immediately accessible, and thus useless for self-defense.
One of Central California’s most ancient fish, the green sturgeon, now has a plan that will steer it toward recovery. NOAA Fisheries released a final recovery plan under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) on August 21, 2018. The plan is non-regulatory and identifies steps that will guide state and federal actions to promote recovery of the green sturgeon’s threatened southern population.
Federal Protection
NOAA Fisheries biologists divided the green sturgeon into two distinct populations segments based on what we know about the species. In 2006, the southern population – covering Central California – was listed as threatened under the ESA. The northern population was more abundant so ESA-listing was not warranted at the time.
As part of the ESA protection for the southern population, NOAA Fisheries has been working with the states of California, Oregon, and Washington, other federal agencies, and non-governmental organizations to identify actions that will aid in the recovery of the southern population of green sturgeon.
Plan for Recovery
The recovery plan identifies a number of research, monitoring, and outreach actions for the southern population aimed at restoring fish passage and habitat, reducing sources of mortality, and addressing known threats including climate change, predation, and contaminants. Most recovery efforts focus on threats to freshwater and estuarine spawning and rearing habitats — the areas that are considered the greatest impediments to recovering the species.
“The recovery plan is a key step in promoting public awareness of green sturgeon and encouraging participation in restoring the southern population,” says Joe Heublein, a NOAA Fisheries biologist who coordinates the multi-agency recovery effort. Read more
By Frank Sargeant, Editor
The Fishing Wire
This is the final in a three-part series on Climate Change or Global Warming. It steps beyond the causes fulminating much disagreement across the nation to look at what is already being done, and what reasonably can be done in the near future to alleviate some of the more obvious and damaging results. While our interest here has been primarily the impact on anglers, boaters and outdoorsmen as well as the industries they support, the issues obviously reach far, far beyond recreational and business issues.
So, we are faced with a climatologic root-canal, following up our environmental colonoscopy.
We can assuredly argue over what is causing the rapid change, but it’s difficult to logically deny it’s happening. World temperature charts go up very rapidly starting about 1975, after wavering up and down for the century before that.
There’s no question glaciers and permafrost are melting. There’s no question sea level is rising.
There’s no question snook are moving north along Florida’s coast, that dogwoods are blooming earlier, confusing both turkeys and turkey hunters, that manatees are found far north of where they used to be along the coast–several have popped up off Cape Cod in recent years.
Global Warming appears to be irrefutably underway. Who’s to blame or how long it will last may inspire some arguments, but the thermometer does not lie. The question is, what can be done about it, if anything?
Few of us want to pour U.S. taxpayer billions into the pockets of hostile, shaky, inept or corrupt governments with a demonstrated inability to govern effectively in an effort to stem climate change impact in the Third World. We are already parceling out some $30-billion per year in foreign aid, far more than any other nation.
But this does not rule out measured assistance to needy nations that will put our help to good use, very likely to our benefit as well as theirs. And it certainly does not mean we shouldn’t do our best at home to turn this increasingly-leaky climatological ship.
So what, if anything, can be done?
Surprisingly a lot has already been achieved.
Steps in the Right Direction
All is not gloom and doom, by a long shot. There have been enormous strides in switching to cleaner, renewable energy in recent years. U.S. carbon emissions shrank by 14% between 2005 and 2017 — more than in any other country. Read more
ATHENS, GA (August 22, 2018) – QDMA’s Director of Conservation Kip Adams recently joined a group organized by the National Deer Alliance (NDA) to visit the National Prion Disease Pathology Surveillance Center at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio. The meeting was intended to encourage collaboration between the wildlife management community and experts in human prion disease research to advance efforts to address the chronic wasting disease (CWD) threat to white-tailed deer.
“It was extremely refreshing to talk to prion experts removed from the wildlife field who have a different perspective on the CWD issue,” said Adams. “They don’t have to manage hunters or wildlife and can look at CWD strictly from a disease standpoint. That perspective will be very useful to the wildlife management community in trying to address the CWD threat.”
The National Prion Disease Pathology Surveillance Center was established in 1997 at Case Western Reserve University to monitor the occurrence of prion diseases in humans. Several European countries established surveillance centers in response to the epidemic of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE), also know as “mad cow disease,” but the Ohio surveillance center is the only one in the United States.
The Center acquires tissue samples (through biopsy or autopsy) from human prion disease in the United States, identifies the types of disease, and transfers the data to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and state Health Departments to monitor prevalence and investigate possible cases in which the disease has been acquired from other humans or from animals.
The visiting group included QDMA’s Adams, Nick Pinizzotto of the National Deer Alliance, Scott Talbott of the Wyoming Game & Fish Department, Colin Gillin of the Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife, and Ed Arnett of the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership. After touring the facility and learning how the center’s staff studies and tracks prion diseases in humans and animals, the two groups engaged in a discussion of opportunities for cooperation that could advance the goals of both.
“Prion diseases like CWD are very complex, and it just makes sense that we are working closely with the top prion scientists in the country,” said Nick Pinizzotto of the NDA. “This was an important meeting in the continued development of our partnership with the Prion Center team.” Read more
ROANOKE, VA— September is tree Stand Safety Awareness Month and is the month that most hunters head back to the woods to hang stands in preparation for the upcoming hunting season. Tree Stand Safety Awareness Foundation’s (TSSA) mission is to significantly reduce tree stand accidents through promotion, education and best practices and our goal is to reduce the estimated number of tree stand incidents 50% by 2023. TSSA strives to ensure that every hunter comes home safe to their family and friends.
TSSA is excited to share that we are seeing positive changes in the estimated numbers of falls that are occurring on a national level. Based on the latest data available (2017), there has been a 28% decrease in the number of estimated falls requiring an emergency department visit, while over the same period of time, there has been 7.1% increase in the number of licensed hunters nationwide. This significant drop in the estimated number of falls reflects the industry wide efforts of TMA, NBEF, WTU, IHEA, state DNR’s, TSSA, our other supporting partners (Realtree, Hunter Safety System, Summit Tree Stands, Hunter-ed.com, American Hunting Lease Association, Sole Scraper) and others focusing on tree stand safety.
However, we still have room for continued improvement to ensure that everyone that uses a tree stand does it in a safe manner and comes home safe to their family and friends. To accomplish this, let’s get the season started by putting safety first.
TSSA has designed an educational campaign called the “ABC’s of Tree Stand Safety” to serve as the building blocks to the awareness campaign:
*Always remove and inspect your equipment
*Buckle on your full-body harness
*Connect to the tree before your feet leave the ground
By performing these 3 simple steps, tree stand users can virtually eliminate their risk of falling to the ground as the majority of falls occur outside the stand. TSSA encourages all hunters to take tree stand safety seriously, every time you hunt from, hang, or remove a tree stand. Read more
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colorado – Look for young guns and seasoned stalwarts to lead the USA Shooting Team in the Rifle events at the 52nd International Shooting Sport Federation (ISSF) World Championship August 31 – September 15 in Changwon, South Korea. Twenty Olympic quotas will be up for grabs in the Rifle events and the U.S. should be poised to pocket a few, along with some hardware in South Korea.
Three-time Olympic medalist Matt Emmons (Browns Mills, New Jersey, pictured) will make his sixth World Championship appearance in Changwon where he will shoot Men’s Three-Position Rifle and Prone Rifle. Though his highest international finish this year was fourth at the World Cup in Changwon, he’s been posting world-class Qualification scores throughout 2018, including most recently shooting a score of 1182 on his second day of Qualification at the USA Shooting National Championships. Emmons will also shoot the Men’s Prone Rifle event in which he won gold in 2002, bronze in 2010 and bronze as a Junior in 1998.
With the elimination of Men’s Prone Rifle from the Olympic program, Emmons’ two-time Olympic teammate Michael McPhail(Darlington, Wisconsin/U.S. Army Marksmanship Unit) has beefed up his Three-Position Rifle game, most recently finishing just out of the Finals in 10th place at the World Cup on his home range in Fort Benning, Georgia. In the past two World Cups, he’s posted Qualification scores of 1170. At the 2014 World Championship, McPhail won bronze in Men’s 300m Prone Rifle, which he will once again compete in Changwon. In addition to these two events, McPhail will also shoot Men’s 50m Prone Rifle.
Sarah Beard (Danville, Indiana) will make her third trip to a World Championship when she heads to Changwon. Though she’s taken much of the year off from international competition due to joining the Army, she showed she’s ready for the international stage, finishing seventh at the World Cup in Fort Benning in Women’s Three-Position Rifle, as well as posting world-class scores (623.8 and 628.3) on both days of Qualification in Women’s Air Rifle at the National Championships. She’ll have lots of chances at medals as she’ll be shooting not only these events, but the Air Rifle Mixed Team event, Prone, 300m Three-Position and 300m Prone Rifle. Beard won silver in 2010 in Junior Women’s Prone Rifle in Munich, Germany. Read more
This is the second in a series of three features on Climate Change or Global Warming as it affects anglers, boaters and outdoors families as well as the industries that support them. Today, we look at the evidence that seems to indicate the process is underway, and that we humans may have a lot to do with it–admittedly a point of contention among many Americans today.
Learning about Global Warming is like hearing you need heart surgery, very unwelcome news. We naturally want a second opinion, a mulligan, a do-over.
I’ve been a bit of a foot dragger to the climate change party, but better to be a foot dragger than a knuckle-dragger, I suppose–I learn slowly, but I am capable of learning.
It’s true that some GW believers are as annoying as chigger bites in church, and a few of the most opinionated, sky-is-falling faithful have very little idea of what they are talking about. But the same can be said of some of the “deniers”, those of us who just don’t want to hear it.
From this end of the boat, it seems like we don’t need sides or parties in the discussion, we simply need to look at the facts and then try to make some sense of them, mutually. Maybe take a page from the “No Yelling School of Fishing Instruction”, a ladies’ fishing workshop in Florida, listen to each other and learn together.
Hunters and anglers are well aware of the success of scientific game and fish management–provide good habitat and reasonable harvest laws and fish and wildlife thrive. Climate science is an extension of this concept, to all species including ourselves. Seems like something all of us need to take time away from relining the reels and sharpening the broadheads to register, doesn’t it?
Could the Big GW Be a Hoax?
It’s certainly possible for a few scientists to let their political leanings or financial influences affect their reports, in either direction, or to be just plain wrong. Remember, even Einstein was found to be wrong about quantum physics and black holes. Read more
