Recently, the Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation (CSF) and the nation’s leading sporting conservation organizations sent a letter to the Acting Secretary of the Department of the Interior (DOI), Scott de la Vega, in support of enhancing the conservation of big game migration corridors across the West.
To survive various seasonal conditions, big game species of utmost importance to America’s sportsmen and women, such as elk, deer, sheep, and moose, migrate to new areas in search of food, habitat, and more suitable temperatures. Thanks to technological advances in global positioning systems, researchers have been able to better document and understand the importance of migration for big game species in recent years. By conserving and enhancing migration corridors, we can ensure that species populations cherished by sportsmen and women are healthy and robust into the future, despite increasing habitat fragmentation as a result of degraded or unmanaged habitat, obstructions and barriers, and increased human activity.
In the letter, CSF and partners highlighted the success of DOI Secretarial Order 3362 (S.O. 3362), which has brought attention and focus to the challenges associated with conserving and enhancing big game migration corridors. CSF and partners also urged DOI to take six different actions to support the conservation of migration corridors and to better support the goals outlined in S.O. 3362, all of which will benefit the habitat that is most critical to big game species.
CSF continues to work at both the federal and state levels to promote the strategic conservation of migration corridors through partnerships between state fish and wildlife agencies, private landowners, federal land managers, transportation authorities, sportsmen and women, and non-governmental organizations.
Studies conducted at both the state and federal level have found that the number of hunters and trappers have been on a generally declining trend over the past several decades. To increase recruitment, retention, and reactivation (R3) of hunters and trappers, which initiative do you think would have the greatest impact?
