AmmoLand.com

By Bill Horn, Director of NSSF Federal Affairs

National Park Service Pushing Land Grab

U.S. Sportsmen's Alliance

Columbus, OH --(Ammoland.com)- The National Park Service (NPS) is eying important hunting lands for inclusion in a large new West Virginia park unit.

Apparently the agency is looking at establishing this new unit – the High Allegheny National Park — in the Allegheny Mountains of eastern West Virginia.

Most of the land under review is presently part of the Monongahela National Forest and Canaan Valley National Wildlife Refuge – both of which have long hunting traditions.

I have hunted ruffed grouse, woodcock, and turkeys in these areas for years, and just last year I wrote an article in The Pointing Dog Journal about the rich hunting history of this area.

Hunters and anglers need to watch this park study, and NPS, like a hawk. The agency is historically hostile to hunters, becoming increasingly hostile to anglers, and is flat out opposed to wildlife and habitat management (both activities are important on Forest and Refuge lands). Plus, almost all NPS units are “parks” where hunting is prohibited.

Having NPS take over management of wonderful hunting areas within the Forest, like Spruce Knob and Dolly Sods, sends shivers down this hunter’s spine.

Some park proponents are already trying to assure hunters that hunting will be protected in the new park. I’m not buying it. We have seen the value of similar promises in the Big Cypress National Preserve (a NPS unit) in Florida where hunters have been harassed and systematically restricted for years. Even when the agency isn’t doing the restricting, anti-hunting activists are in federal court every other year pushing new limitations in the name of endangered species, wilderness “solitude”, protection of vegetation, and adverse impact on the tender aesthetic sensibilities of non-hunting visitors (of whom there are few).

Even stronger legal protections for hunting on Refuge lands have barely been adequate to protect hunting. Antis tried to shut down hunting in the Canaan Valley Refuge via a federal lawsuit filed in Washington, DC. U.S. Sportsmen’s Alliance helped fight off that suit, but it revealed that saving hunting on federal land units remains a challenge. Similar problems impacting hunting and wildlife management on Forest lands has prompted USSA and others in the hunting community to push for the enactment of new a bill – HR 2834 – that keeps hunting (and fishing and shooting) open on the National Forest system.

Recently, the U.S. House Natural Resources Committee favorably reported the bill which should be on the House of Representatives floor in January. If we can barely protect hunting on the Canaan unit, where a 1997 law makes hunting (and fishing) “priority public uses”, and need new statutory protections for hunting on Forest lands (like the Monongahela), how are we going to ensure continued hunting and access on a new High Allegheny National Park?

None of this makes on-the-ground sense. The thousands of acres of public land within the Monongahela National Forest, and the Canaan Refuge, are committed to conservation (and open to hunting). The lands are subject to professional habitat management by the U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the West Virginia Department of Natural Resources.

You can kiss bona fide conservation management, and habitat projects, goodbye if NPS takes over.

It treats lands like “biospheres under glass” where management to help fish and wildlife is considered a sin against nature and hunters are surely not welcome. As far as hunters and anglers are concerned, bringing in NPS adds absolutely nothing and guarantees nothing but protracted fighting to retain the hunting heritage in West Virginia’s Allegheny Mountains.

USSA will be monitoring this closely because of its broad consequences for hunters and anglers (and because I don’t want some of the East’s favorite grouse hunting woods under NPS control).

About:
The U.S. Sportsmen’s Alliance is a national association of sportsmen and sportsmen’s organizations that protects the rights of hunters, anglers and trappers in the courts, legislatures, at the ballot, in Congress and through public education programs. Visit www.ussportsmen.org.

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National Park Will Use Volunteer Hunters for Elk Culling

Theodore Roosevelt National Park Elk Herd Doing Too Well? Photo: Gary Zahm/U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

NRAHuntersRights.org

North Dakota --(AmmoLand.com)- Wildlife biologists believe that Theodore Roosevelt National Park (TRNP) in western North Dakota can support between 200 and 400 elk without serious damage to park vegetation.

But the current elk population is 950.

So, after seven years of study (at an expense to the taxpayer we can only guess at) the National Park Service (NPS) has decided that “skilled public volunteers” can be used to cull the elk herd “through the use of firearms.”

The volunteers will have to demonstrate their marksmanship skills, prove their physical fitness, and use non-lead ammunition only. They will hunt in teams, under close supervision of NPS staff, and the team leaders may even decide which animals should be taken. There are several possibilities as to disposition of the meat. Assuming tests for chronic wasting disease are negative, it may be donated to state agencies, tribes, or approved charities. Or it could go to the North Dakota Game and Fish Department, which could turn it over to charities and food banks, or even to the individual hunters who were involved.

While it may seem like a lot of hoops for a volunteer to jump through--and the non-lead ammo rule has no scientific basis--the plan is obviously far better than using public funds to hire “sharpshooters.”

“And it supports NRA’s longstanding position that NPS has and should use its authority to bring in volunteers to assist with culling,” commented Susan Recce, NRA’s Director of Conservation, Wildlife and Natural Resources.

“NRA is opposed to the ban on the use of lead ammunition,” Recce continued. “NPS has no evidence to suggest that the use of lead ammunition in hunting is a threat to the health of humans or wildlife in national parks. To my knowledge there have not been any studies on effects of hunters using lead ammunition in national parks where hunting is allowed.”

NRA fully expects the volunteers to come from the hunting community, and called for this during the public comment period, writing: The elk management plan “does not explain what kind of a system the Park will develop to identify skilled volunteers. We highly recommend that the Park work closely with the North Dakota Game and Fish Department (NDGF) in identifying volunteers within the hunting community.”

The NPS agreed, saying, “Under the preferred alternative, the Park intends to work with NDGF in order to recruit qualified volunteers and develop a reduction program that ultimately benefits both agencies.”

The many requirements imposed on volunteer hunters must be at least in part, a defense
against animal rights’ groups such as the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) which predictably opposed the decision.

In 2008, when Rocky Mountain National Park became the first to end the use of paid sharpshooters and instead work with volunteer hunters for badly-needed elk culling, HSUS campaigned that “trophy hunters” would be turning national parks into their “personal playgrounds.” Regarding the TRNP plan, HSUS has characterized it as “an attempt to allow private sport hunters to target elk.”

Since HSUS condemns and wants to end all forms of hunting, they use terms like “sport hunters” and “trophy hunters” as if there is something evil about us, and they get mileage out of the press with those terms. By exerting a level of control, NPS may reduce the potential for such terms to be used against them.

Read More about HSUS Anti Hunting agenda:  www.action.humanesociety.org/site/PageNavigator/Change_Agenda_for_Animals

Of course, what is happening in TRNP is neither “sport hunting” nor “trophy hunting,” anyway. It is a cull–lethal reduction absolutely necessary to keep elk from destroying the Park’s resources. An elk can eat 20 pounds of food a day, easily. Elk caused extensive damage in Rocky Mountain National Park after many non-lethal reduction attempts failed.

TRNP officials have the responsibility of managing more than 70,000 acres of habitat—for dozens of wildlife species, plant communities and a half-million human visitors a year. Elk have a very important and viable place in TRNP—a place that a managed culling operation will help ensure.

For more on the final Theodore Roosevelt Elk Management Plan/Environmental Impact Statement, click here www.parkplanning.nps.gov/projectHome.cfm?parkId=167&projectId=10833

For the most up-to-date information about your hunting rights there’s just one source: www.NRAhuntersrights.org.

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