Corporate-sponsored teams from across the USA that include some of the nation’s birding elite will once again take part in what organizers call the world’s longest, wildest birding competition along the entire Texas coast April 26-May 3. The Great Texas Birding Classic raises funds to protect bird habitat and promotes the fun and excitement of one of nature’s great spectacles, but it also highlights a growing concern: the decline of migratory songbirds.

Proceeds from sales of the Federal Duck Stamp are used to purchase and protect waterfowl habitat across the country. Since its inception in 1934, sales from the stamp have topped $700 million and have conserved more than 5.2 million acres of habitat.

The Recreational Boating & Fishing Foundation (RBFF) is kicking off year two of the State Direct Mail Marketing Program, a nationwide effort designed to identify and target lapsed anglers and increase fishing license sales. Thirty-two states will launch their programs over the coming weeks with two separate mailings, aiming to bring lapsed anglers back to the sport.

Spring is here, and the spawn is on – but with the sudden cold fronts, coupled with a variety of weather patterns the bass patterns are just as sporadic. When Lowell Bennett and Charles Reagan finished their day with 17.58 lbs, they were just hoping to stay in top 10. They never dreamed they would win 1st place and over $20,000!

Texas Parks and Wildlife Department officials and partners from the Texas Parks and Wildlife Foundation, the Police Activities League and the Texas Game Warden Association will break ground April 9 on the first phase of a planned $20 million training complex in Hamilton County.

Texas’ half-million or so wingshooters could see substantially liberalized dove-hunting rules — a longer season, larger bag limit, earlier opening day in the South Zone — if federal wildlife officials give anticipated approval to modifications in regulatory frameworks governing migratory game-bird hunting.

Today, Congressmen Mike Thompson (D-CA) and Eric Cantor (R-VA) introduced the Conservation Easement Incentive Act, H.R. 1831. This bill will aid in the protection of millions of acres of the nation's agricultural lands and open spaces. H.R. 1831 makes permanent an expiring incentive that allows modest-income landowners to receive significant tax deductions for donating conservation easements that permanently protect important natural or historic resources on their lands.

Waterfowl hunters spent $900 million on a variety of goods and services from food, transportation, guns and decoys to hunting dogs, clothing and other incidental expenses in 2006, according to a new report issued by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Determining what a Travel Management Plan (TMP) does depends on who you ask. 
Ask a Forest Service official, and he'll say it's a way to balance the conflicting expectations of millions of visitors to national forests while protecting the land and wildlife under their administration.