On September 14, the Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation (CSF) and roughly 30 partners from the sporting-conservation community sent a letter to the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) thanking the Bureau for their efforts to improve opportunities for recreational shooters.
The letter specifically complimented the work of BLM in Arizona to provide improvements and management of informal, more intensively used areas for recreational shooting on public lands. The letter also called on the BLM to urge other offices outside of Arizona to identify shooting sites and develop partnerships with state agencies and others to better meet the demands that exist for safe and accessible public target shooting sites.
The letter states, “Proper sites for the kind of management foreseen in Arizona require proximity to communities, developed legal access, relative freedom from conflicts and natural backdrops. Although there are some 245 million acres of public lands, sites meeting the above criteria are thought to be relatively rare. These sites need to be identified and planned for appropriate development before their value is compromised by other permitted land uses that could be accommodated in a manner that avoids sites that would be particularly suited for more intensive recreational shooting.”
CSF continues to work with the Administration to identify and increase recreational shooting opportunities for sportsmen and women.
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?
