Watch Congress for Real Action on Conservation
By Bob Marshall/Field & Stream
Photo by Roman Boed/flickr
More than a few sportsmen have asked what the dramatic power shift in Washington will mean for conservation and environmental protection.
My answer keeps coming back to this old ditty:
As you could through life let this be your goal.
Keep your eye upon the donut and not upon the hole.
In Washington today the GOP Congress-especially the House-is the donut. The guy in the White House is the hole.
This isn't to say President Trump doesn't have vast authority over the agencies charged with protecting our public lands, air, and water-the things that make for healthy fish, wildlife, and humans. He appoints (with Senate approval) the heads of those bureaucracies and can set their policy agendas.
But the legal authority (and obligation) those agencies have to fulfill those charges comes from laws passed by Congress.
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Climate Change May Hurt Crops More Than Help
By Chelsea Harvey/The Washington Post
Photo by USDA/flickr
Out of the many consequences of climate change, from melting glaciers to changing weather patterns, its effect on agriculture has emerged as one of the most complex issues for scientists to investigate. It's also among the most globally significant.
As the world's population approaches 8 billion people - and is expected to exceed 9 billion before midcentury - protecting global food security has become a top priority for scientists and policymakers alike. And figuring out how climate change might affect the world's future crop yields is a major concern.
Now a
new study
reaffirms the idea that high temperatures could seriously harm the production of some of the world's most important food crops, including corn, soybeans and wheat.
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High Time to Get the Lead Out of Dove Hunting
By Shannon Tompkins/Houston Chronicle
Photo by BLM/flickr
The handful of doves, feathered fruit of a wonderful if windy afternoon afield a couple of weeks ago, would yield a fine, rich, honestly gained meal. But before they did, one bird supplied something else: a small, round, hard piece of sobering evidence confirming that a personal decision to switch to using only non-toxic shot for all wingshooting is the ethical, responsible and wholly correct thing to do.
Little more than a week later, I'd see others - Louisiana's wildlife managers - had come to pretty much the same conclusion and acted on that conviction, proposing to mandate dove hunters on that state's wildlife management areas and state-leased dove hunting areas use only shotshells loaded with non-toxic shot.
Those moves - personal decisions by individual hunters and legal mandates by states and federal wildlife managers to use only non-toxic shot when hunting doves and other game birds - are gaining momentum, pushed by the weight of evidence that moving away from using traditional but toxic lead shot and switching to non-toxic alternatives benefits doves and dove hunters.
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Fisheries Management Should be Based in Science
By Catherine Elton/Anthropocene
Photo by sutherlandje/flickr
Based on a global survey, a group of researchers has found that the most effective fisheries management relies on science-based catch and fishing limits.
For a recent study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers surveyed fisheries experts of varying backgrounds in the 28 countries that account for more than 80 percent of global catches. They collected information on research, management, enforcement, fishery status, fishing pressure, and socioeconomic data from 182 respondents. Then they created an index that reflects how well a country's management systems are meeting their goals and how they affect fish trends in stock size, status, and fishing mortality.
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Puffin Hunting Traditions Face Uncertain Future
By Cheryl Katz/Hakai
Photo by Farruguitown/flickr
For centuries, seabirds have been crucial to the coastal peoples of the North Atlantic. Viking Age explorers followed ocean foragers such as guillemots and gannets to new shores. Vast colonies of kittiwakes and puffins sustained the settlements they established on the harsh seaboards of Iceland, eastern Greenland, and the Faroe Islands. For the settlers, seabird hunting and egg gathering meant the difference between life and starvation. For their descendants, the tradition lives on as the heart of community identity.
The seabird harvest is a test of nerve: men dangle on ropes dozens of meters above the sea, plucking eggs from cliff-side nests. It's a test of skills: gauging flight paths and timing the swing of a net just right to snag a bird mid-air. For some, it's a small source of income. For most, it's the essence of a cherished cuisine. And above all, it's a tie between generations, a link to their maritime past, a bit of a taste of the sea.
But North Atlantic seabirds and the way of life surrounding them are now disappearing.
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