Why It Matters: The breadth of policy issues that impact sportsmen and women and the species they pursue can be overwhelming, but each year the Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation (CSF) undertakes a thorough process to update and expand its Collection of Issue Briefs – ensuring that legislators, state fish and wildlife agency officials, and partners are apprised of sporting-conservation policy trends across the country.
Highlights:
- The 2026 State Issue Brief Collection is the comprehensive authority for understanding policy topics that impact the woods, waters, and fields across the country.
- The Collection summarizes complex issues, highlights positive and negative legislative trends, provides examples of legislative language, and offers next steps for legislators who wish to pursue or defend against specific issues.
- The Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation leverages these Issue Briefs to inform proactive conversations with the more than 2,250 state sportsmen-legislators that comprise the National Assembly of Sportsmen’s Caucuses (NASC) network.
Each year, CSF conducts a thorough review of the policy issues that impact hunters, anglers, recreational shooters, and trappers. Just shy of one hundred individual issues, the Collection is organized into four categories: Access & Opportunity, Conservation, Promoting and Protecting Sportsmen’s Heritage, and Youth Engagement & R3. CSF’s States Program Team has spent recent months updating each brief to reflect new legislative or regulatory initiatives, updated data, or new considerations that emerged during the 2025 legislative session.
In addition to refining and updating existing briefs, CSF worked closely with the NASC Executive Council to identify emerging topics that merited inclusion in the 2026 Collection and beyond. From this process, several new briefs were added this year, including discussions on the role of prescribed fire in active forest management, the importance of protecting the privacy of sportsmen and women from merchant category codes, and the considerations surrounding the use of drones to recover game. Each new brief addresses a timely issue that is likely to shape policy debates in the coming years.
Heading into 2026 with CSF’s State Issue Brief Collection in hand, legislators are equipped with an accurate assessment of the sporting-conservation landscape. The Collection provides essential context on trends, statistics, policy language, and perspectives needed to craft informed, effective legislation that safeguards the interests of sportsmen and women, our fish and wildlife resources, and their habitats.
The full 2026 State Issue Brief Collection can be found here.
