Contact
Nelson Freeman
Safari Club International(202) 543 – 8733, nfreeman@safariclub.org

Senator Salazar is currently a member of the Congressional Sportsmen’s Caucus and has been a consistent pro-sportsman vote since he came to Washington, D.C. in 2004. With this appointment, President-Elect Obama has made the logical choice of an Interior Secretary who understands the sportsmen’s legacy of hunting and conservation on America’s public lands.

“We are pleased that President-Elect Obama has resisted the pressure from anti-hunting groups to name an anti-hunting extremist to this important post,” said SCI President Merle Shepard. “Senator Salazar’s pro-hunting votes over the past four years in Washington, and his support for access to federal lands for hunting throughout his entire career in Colorado will prove to be invaluable for sportsmen and women during this Administration.”
 
Shepard continued, “SCI looks forward to working with Senator Salazar in the Obama Administration to make sure the hunter’s voice is heard on every issue that affects hunting, hunters or science-based wildlife management.”
 
Contact:
Nelson Freeman
Governmental Affairs and Public Relations
Safari Club International
(202) 543 – 8733
Nfreeman@safariclub.org

http://sports.espn.go.com/outdoors/general/columns/story?columnist=swan_james&id=3654033

Conservation and the enhancement of our continent’s natural environment originated with hunters.  It was hunters who first initiated conservation measures such as seasons and bag limits, setting aside habitat so that wildlife had some refuge from the onslaught of civilization, and it was hunters and anglers who not only agreed to be taxed to pay for it all, but insisted on paying through the passing of laws requiring licenses, tags and excise taxes on the equipment used to get out there.

Although SCI Alaska Chapter has played a leadership role in maintaining our freedom to hunt here in Alaska, it is our commitment to wildlife that we are most proud of.  In that role, we are pleased to be a significant part of the effort to re-establish wood bison herds here in Alaska. This summer a herd of wood bison arrived in Alaska and are being housed at the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center.

There are still issues to work through with State and Federal Agencies; however, we should soon see these magnificent creatures roaming freely on ranges they once inhabited not so long ago.  If all goes well, limited hunting opportunities may be forthcoming.

SCI President Merle Shepard is a member of the Sporting Conservation Council (SCC), a federal advisory committee chartered to advise the U.S. Departments of the Interior and Agriculture on wildlife and hunting issues.  He said the White House Conference on North American Wildlife Policy was the first time in one hundred years that a sitting President convened a meeting to address the challenges facing conservation and our hunting heritage and only the third time that a nationwide wildlife policy was considered. 

SCI’s Ron Arendt, Jeanne Beutecale, John Boretsky, Mike Christensen, Jeremy Drew, John Eichinger, Nelson Freeman, Larry Johns, Mark LaBarbera, Sven Lindquist and Bill Moritz were among the near 600 participants representing wildlife and hunting conservation organizations, the outdoor industry, landowners and local, state, tribal and federal resource manager who discussed what is necessary to ensure sustainable wildlife populations and promote our nation’s hunting heritage.

“Through the leadership of this Administration we were charged with identifying our community’s greatest challenges and outlining common-sense solutions that can be embraced by a broad spectrum of stakeholders,” stated Bob Model, Chairman of the SCC. He said, “Their legacy is starting the process and now it is our opportunity to be the bridge to carry these recommendations forward and ensure that they are implemented. The Conference that concluded here today was by no means the culmination of a process it is in fact the beginning of our work for the next decade and beyond.”

One of the greatest barriers identified by the hunting community is access to quality hunting opportunities and one of the recommended solutions to that issue was carried forward by the Conference’s keynote speaker. During the closing session of the Conference, Vice President Dick Cheney announced a new incentive payment through the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) to landowners who allow public hunting access on their property. Landowners who are enrolled in CRP will now be eligible for a $3 per acre incentive if they sign on to their state’s hunting access program; the incentive is expected to open an additional 7 million acres of quality wildlife habitat for hunting.

“Without access to places to hunt, there will be an erosion of people who go hunting – this is one of the most fundamental issues we face today,” commented David Nomsen Chairman of the American Wildlife Conservation Partners, of which SCI is a member. He said, “Enhancing a program like CRP that has been so successful at protecting critical wildlife habitat by encouraging landowners to open that land for hunting creates a win-win-win situation for private landowners, habitat conservation and hunter access.”

Over the course of the last year, the Sporting Conservation Council and members of the American Wildlife Conservation Partners have worked closely with other experts in the wildlife conservation community, the shooting and hunting industry, state and federal management agencies, and congressional leaders to outline major issues facing wildlife and hunting and to make recommendations to address these challenges. The issue analysis and recommendations are documented in a series of white papers that formed the foundation for a preliminary ten-year Recreational Hunting and Wildlife Conservation Plan that was discussed at the Conference. LaBarbera, Moritz and Shepard also served on the task forces that developed the white papers. The goal of the Conference was to ground-truth the action plan and to allow participants to take ownership of the implementation.

“We believe this has been an inclusive process and that the action plan is something that will carry forward through the next decade and beyond, no matter who is in the White House or controlling Congress or state houses,” remarked Jeff Crane, Vice Chairman of the Sporting Conservation Council and President of the Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation. “We are grateful for the leadership of this Administration in starting the discussions and ‘teeing up’ the action plan, but the success of this plan is dependent on all those who care about wildlife and the great outdoors, in particular the wildlife and hunting community and sportsmen in general, embracing the recommendations and carrying it forward.”

The Sporting Conservation Council (SCC) and the wildlife conservation community have been important partners with the Administration on developing the Recreational Hunting and Wildlife Conservation Plan. In order to ensure their continued involvement in the implementation of the action plan, Vice President Cheney called on Congress to reauthorize the SCC for a ten-year term.

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The statement in our logo above isn’t just an empty platitude, it’s significance was amply borne out by the effort of the Alaska and Kenai Chapters of SCI, as well as our sister chapters throughout the world.  The lion’s share of resources and effort that went into the winning strategy on Ballot Measure 2 this past August came from SCI, making it the undisputed leader in protecting the freedom to hunt of all Americans.

Those from Alaska reading this know we had already lost two similar campaigns in the past.  This campaign was SCI Alaska Chapter’s first major foray into the issue.  Following up on their success on the bear baiting initiative, SCI Alaska Chapter took the lead in organizing the effort to defeat the anti-hunters again this year.  Many of Alaska’s conservation groups joined with us in this effort, but in the end it was SCI’s financial resources and talent that made the difference.

Money is the mother’s milk of campaigns.  Without it you usually don’t have much of a chance of winning.  SCI funding allowed us to hire a professional consulting firm and do the requisite polling to establish who our likely allies were among voters and what our message should be.  Such a professional effort paid off in spades the night of the election as we waited with baited breath for the results.  When the first numbers flashed up on the screen at election central in Anchorage, none of us could believe our eyes.  We were not only winning, we were kicking their (anti-hunters) butts.

I cannot find the words to describe our gratitude to the SCI Family for this victory.  When the dust settled and the final accounting of our victory was assessed, SCI, its chapters and its members donated over 85% of the funding for this campaign.  Over 85 chapters and individuals contributed including several chapters from outside the country.  There are many groups out there who deserve our thanks, as well as our support, for they too are in the battle to support hunting, but no other one group can ever contest us for the statement in our logo, ‘First for Hunters’.

Dunn (Eddyville, Iowa), who is coming off a bronze medal win at the “Good [...]