A recent action by the Obama administration has left anglers and the fishing industry scratching their heads. Last week, the National Park Service (NPS) suddenly announced it would ban lead fishing tackle in national parks by 2010.

An omnibus public land bill (S. 22) that cleared the U.S. Senate on January 14 failed to pass the House of Representatives on March 11, calling the measure’s future into question, reports the Wildlife Management Institute.

For months, anyone who's proffered the position that the Obama Administration was anti-gun has been dismissed as being a variety of things, from sore loser to rampant paranoid. Nonetheless, since assuming office, members of the Obama administration have steadily- and stealthily- moved against firearms and ammunition.

Ask your congressman and two U.S. senators to urge the Obama Administration to stop the National Park Service from its plan to stop the use lead ammunition and fishing tackle on its lands.

SCI has filed an amicus curiae (friend of the court) brief in support of new rules that allow people to carry concealed and loaded firearms on hundreds of millions of acres of National Park Service and Wildlife Refuge lands in accordance with the relevant state law.  The rule change went into effect on January 9, 2009. Previously, firearms carried in these Federal lands had to be unloaded, inoperable, and inaccessible (with some exceptions, e.g., while legally hunting). 

On February 17, President Barack Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.  The $787 billion economic stimulus package, which had ballooned over $900 billion at one point during debate in Congress, is intended to create jobs and encourage economic activity in the country.  Included in the package are more than $3 billion for agencies and programs that will directly impact natural resource conservation.  The bill moved through Congress on largely party-line votes, with the final conference bill being voted on late on Friday, February 13.

Are you a property owner, hunter, natural resource professional, or simply someone interested in the stewardship of land? QDMA is offering courses to prepare you to better manage your property and resources. Learn from the nation's leading professionals in the field-expert wildlife biologists, habitat managers, consultants, scientists, and foresters-and head home with an enhanced understanding of how to develop a property management plan.

The Youth Shooting Sports Alliance (YSSA) announces that Daisy Outdoor Products, the world's oldest and largest producer of airguns, has continued their generous donation to YSSA for use in support of youth shooting sports programs.

The "golden age" of sport hunting in the American West attracted many devotees of the chase beyond the military officers, aristocrats, and foreign gentlemen-sportsmen discussed earlier. The same factors that drew the "top-shelfers" to the hunt-the still-abundant game, convenient rail transportation, and improved firearms-also stimulated a growing tide of upper- and middle-class Americans to go west in search of adventure and trophy.

In early December, the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI), through the National Park Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, announced the final amended version of a change to rules on carrying firearms in national parks and wildlife refuges. The change will restore the right of law-abiding gun owners to transport and carry concealed firearms for lawful purposes on most DOI lands, according to the laws of the states in which these public lands are located.