For me, the highlight of the interview was the statement Congressman Ryan made in support of the virtues of the Clean Water Act—which for four decades has not only led to more drinkable, swimmable and fishable waters for millions of Americans, but has also played an important role in protecting vital wildlife habitat.

“The Clean Water Act has been helpful too, in making sure that wetlands are protected so that there’s more than a one-for-one replacement in some instances. That’s a good thing. We believe that wetland conservation is a critical part of conservation. Don’t forget that hunters are the best conservationists there are in America.”

Duck hunting in the Chesapeake Bay watershed.

Unfortunately, Congressman Ryan has recently cast several votes that would only serve to weaken the Clean Water Act.

This year, he voted against an amendment to the House Energy & Water Appropriations bill that would ensure headwater streams and wetlands enjoy full Clean Water Act protections.  The Moran amendment would have struck a policy rider included in the bill to keep the US Army Corps of Engineers from clarifying the definition of waters under the jurisdiction of the Clean Water Act.

And last year, he voted for legislation that would undermine the core of the Clean Water Act’s ability to protect waters and wetlands.  Specifically, H.R. 2018 would prevent the federal government from promulgating water quality standards and would remove critical EPA permitting and oversight authority of dredging and filling of wetlands and waters.  

Healthy wetlands mean better duck seasons.

As duck season is opening across the country—and sportsmen and women are taking to the field with friends and families—many are reflecting on the quality of their outdoor experiences.  Given the countless hours spent hip-deep in our nation’s wetlands, waterfowl hunters understand better than most what curtailing laws like the Clean Water Act would really mean. To the extent that both presidential campaigns want to compete for the support from hunters, anglers and other outdoor enthusiasts they should lay out a clear agenda on how they would better wildlife and wildlife habitat including through enforcing the Clean Water Act.

The Delacroix Island where my grandfather was raised will never exist again. I’m okay with that. I’ve come to terms with it. I love Delacroix for what it is now, and that’s exactly why I went there on Sunday to survey the damage after Hurricane Isaac’s storm surge flooded the area last week.

Delacroix is situated about an hour’s drive outside New Orleans on Bayou Terre-aux-Boeufs in St. Bernard Parish (map). My Spanish and French ancestors settled there in the early 1800s, and I feel a deep connection to the place. I go down there often to experience the bounty of nature while hunting and fishing.

A pelican wounded during the storm sits helplessly on a ridge of destroyed marsh.

My last trip to Delacroix was on the Monday before Isaac struck. As its tropical storm force winds began to swing their way into the coast, I snuck in a pretty decent fishing trip that yielded an ice chest full of redfish. Everything was very alive on that day. The golden-green marsh grass swayed in the wind, mottled ducks called back and forth to each other, and bait fish and blue crabs scurried in and out of the submerged aquatic vegetation. I took it all in, but in the back of my mind I feared the worst and hoped for the best.

I waited out the storm at a friend’s house in New Orleans. After hearing the news that the town of Braithwaite in Plaquemines Parish was flooded by a surge of up to 12 feet, I knew that Delacroix would have taken a major hit. I decided that as soon as the water went down I would make a trip to survey the damage.

Fishing lodge owner Joe Guinta cleans up after Isaac’s surge, a thick layer of mud below his feet.

A large tree washed up onto the docks of this boat shed.

When I turned from the main bayou out into the marsh, the smell of dead fish and stale marsh mud hit me like a freight train. Chunks of land had been picked up and moved to open water. Small trees and brush were toppled over one another and the once green marsh grass all blended together in a wasteland of grey. This is to be expected when a major surge of saltwater passes over a brackish marsh, but it still stings when you see it.

All of the submerged aquatic vegetation that once covered the shallow ponds was washed up and killed by the surge. These plants are important to the ecosystem. They provide shelter for small fish and crabs, and their seeds are food for waterfowl.

After seeing all the destruction to the marsh it was a sweet relief to land the fish.

We toured the marsh until the scene had left a lasting impression. The verdict was that the marsh took a big hit with Hurricane Isaac—similar to the effects felt after Hurricane Katrina, but not nearly as bad. Vital marsh land will be lost, and I’m sure satellite imagery from before and after Isaac will reveal approximately how much. What hurts more is that we have once again lost more of our natural protection from storm surge. Most of us were spared as the federal levee system did its job to protect communities, but other areas were not as fortunate as the floodwater inundated areas outside the federal levees. Many citizens must once again consider their plans to rebuild.

Now that Isaac has passed, it is time to get to work putting the pieces back together here in the Mississippi River Delta. As we tackle the challenge before us, I hope the rest of the country takes note of our plight, but there is no need to feel sorry for us. We choose to be here. We know that sustaining our unique culture and way of life is directly tied to how we manage this dynamic landscape.

We now have a comprehensive, scientifically-sound plan to restore our coast, the 2012 Louisiana Coastal Master Plan. With funding we can begin major projects that will build land and protect our communities.

The U. S. Army Corps of Engineers is taking input until Thursday on an important project that will restore wetlands and help protect  communities from hurricanes. Make your voice heard!

Author after a great day on Lake Erie

This bill leaves Lake Erie, its rivers and world-class steelhead and walleye fisheries vulnerable.

Governor Kasich and the Ohio state legislature are not living up to their obligations under the Compact. As Ohio’s neighbors take steps to implement water protections, Ohio has gone in the other direction.

What is really troubling with this new law:  if the Ohio Department of Natural Resources issues a permit that would cause significant harm to a river or stream, hunters and anglers and the public have no say and cant challenge this decision.  Only if you own property along the Lake and/or river, or have a direct economic interest, can you appeal a decision. 

This is a step back to the midieval European method of conservation, where people had no voice and all fish and wildlife belonged to the King – and no one hunted or fished without the King’s permission.

The battle for Lake Erie is not over.  We are currently assessing our next steps to ensure that Lake Erie is protected for future generations and provides a sustainable source of fresh water not only for people and wildlife, but the businesses and industries that rely upon it.

This week’s SI cover is out and it features … Seals in the Pacific. Oh wait, that was Feb. 1958. My bad. twitter.com/si_vault/statu…

— Andy Gray (@si_vault) April 24, 2012

Gray’s tone betrayed a pretty common assumption: ‘Nature isn’t sports. That’s ridiculous!’

But SI, long the standard-bearer of American fandom, didn’t always feel that way. This was something I knew vaguely, having perused old-timey back issues as a kid, but I never tried to quantify it until today.

At its 1954 inception, Sports Illustrated recognized that getting out and interacting with nature could be sport—in fact, it represented some of our most hallowed sports traditions. That first year, three of the magazine’s 20 issues featured outdoor activities on the cover, including two wildlife-only covers (for our purposes, I counted anything involving hunting, fishing, hiking, birdwatching and general wilderness exploration as an ‘outdoors’ cover. Skiing, sailboat racing, bike racing and the like were left out since they do sometimes rate significant media coverage nowadays and are more structured…and because it’s my admittedly arbitrary system).

Throughout the 1950s, nature shared cover time with baseball, football and boxing. Between 1954 and 1959, SI averaged five nature covers per year, including nine in 1958. Standouts included this 1955 bird-watching cover, which could easily pass for a ‘wonders of biodiversity’ mural, a Chukar Partridge (“Six Pages of Game Birds in Color”) and the seals pictured above.

A TV-Driven Shift?

In the 1960s, things started to change. There were still three nature covers in 1963, but from that point on, the decade featured just two—one being 1965′s power boating feature, which I included with some hesitation only because it includes the line “the most luxurious fishing machine.” It seems that as television was becoming more ingrained in the American consciousness, and its signature sport—football—was exploding in popularity, our conception of sport took a distinctly couch-bound turn. More and more, the sports that SI was illustrating were highly structured activities performed by other people.

True, this cover DOES feature ducks...but not wildlife. SI covers featuring the outdoors have almost disappeared since the 1950s. (flickr | Sports Illustrated)

Children ages 3-12 spend 1% of their time outdoors, and 27 % of their time just watching TV. A recent report from Common Sense Media (PDF ) found that more than half of all American children between the ages of 0-8 now have access to one of the newer mobile devices at home, and nearly one-third have a TV in their bedroom. Overall, it indicates that ‘screen time’ is higher than ever for kids (as has been mentioned frequently here, that shift carries myriad consequences, from increased likelihood of poor eyesight to heart disease). Given all this, is it any wonder that televised stars like Brett Favre have replaced brook trout in the popular imagination?

Remembering Our Outdoor Heritage

What’s important to note is that outdoor recreation isn’t dead in America—not by a long shot. In fact, according to the 2012 Outdoor Recreation participation Topline Report, 2011 saw outdoor recreation (which includes fishing, hunting, birdwatching, et al.) among Americans at the highest participation level in the last five years.

And yet, to quote my colleague Miles Grant, “can you imagine Sports Illustrated ever putting wildlife on the cover today? Today, unless it takes place in designated arenas laden with ads that we drive to, it’s not a real sport.”

Sports Illustrated has seemingly confirmed that: since the year 1986, outdoors or nature have not been featured on the cover even once. It may be time to shift our idea of  recreation so that it includes both the Chicago Blackhawks and the Common Black-Hawk once again. If we return to thinking of the outdoors as ‘sports,’ it may help even more Americans see our natural places the way they once did—as the greatest stadiums we’ve ever had.

UPDATE:

After I bothered Andy Gray with a link to this post, he responded:

@MaxTGreenberg @SInow thought you did a great job with this story. I’ll show the boss. Maybe he’ll be up for a wildlife cover.

— Andy Gray (@si_vault) April 26, 2012

My sincerest thanks go to @si_vault for paying attention and running the ‘wildlife’ cover idea up the chain. Stay tuned—maybe someday soon we’ll see wild bison sharing cover space with the Buffalo Bills (though the latter might be more far-fetched).

Pennsylvania Sportsman, Ed Zygmunt

The animal was so long and lanky that its large hind feet touched the ground while its front feet almost reached up to my beltline. When I saw my first snowshoe I thought I had seen a ghost. Its pure white fur was like no other mammal I had ever seen.

I have not missed a season of hare hunting since that memorable day. To me they are the ultimate symbol of wild and wilderness remaining in one of the country’s most populated states. You could say the snowshoe hare is Pennsylvania’s polar bear. I would bet that only a minuscule fraction of Pennsylvanians have ever seen a snowshoe-or even know they exist in our state.

In the past few years, however, I have taken to hunting hares with a camera. I now have this terrible fear of shooting the last snowshoe to survive in its southern-most range. In the years that I hunted them with a gun, I estimate that I have taken well over 100 hares in northeastern Pennsylvania, many of them in their prime habitat located in the Pococo plateau. Here the average elevation is about 2,000 feet above sea level. In my younger days we hunted the mountainous corners of Luzerne and Lackawanna counties at an elevation of about 1,200 feet. But by the early 80′s, hares became almost impossible to find in this area. So when I began hunting hares in the higher elevations of the Poconos, I found them in relative abundance. I remember in 1986 two of my friends, one beagle, and I harvested 14 hares. We probably saw over 20 altogether in the course of that one week season.

A Personal Search

(NPS Photo/Jacob W. Frank)

I took my GPS with me even though I know the swamps in this region in and out. My GPS told me that I was nearly two miles from my car, so I am certain the Bender receives little to no hunting pressure (nobody is crazy enough like me to crawl through this tangle of spruces, blueberry bushes, hard-hack, interspersed with pockets of water that can fill your knee-high boots when least expected). Well, after better part of the day trying to locate a snowshoe, I am saddened to report that I did not find even one. I could cry. I only found a few pieces of scat to tell me at least a couple may still be surviving.

Throughout my 44 years of pursuing the snowshoe hare in the Keystone state, I have witnessed their populations in a slow and steady decline. I am no professional wildlife biologist, but my experience as a woodsman sadly causes me to make a dire prediction: the snowshoe hare will become extirpated from Penns Woods within the next couple of decades.

Why? Well, I have my suspicion. Back in the 90′s the PA Game Commission conducted a study of the snowshoe hare. One of their conclusions pointed to climate change as one of the factors that could adversely affect the survival of the hare in PA. I agree with this assessment and would add that the hares vulnerability to predators in a warming climate could mean their ultimate demise. It is hard to believe that in the course of one human lifetime, a magnificent animal like the snowshoe hare could so drastically decline. My young grandson will probably never experience the thrill of seeing his first snowshoe hare as I did over four decades ago. It makes me wonder what wildife species will be next.

Protect snowshoe hare and polar bear habitat from carbon pollution.

Bob is a former member of the Michigan Natural Resources Commission and former executive producer and host of the flagship television show, Michigan Out-of-Doors. He has long been an advocate for Michigan’s great outdoors. Bob is also a life-long member of the Michigan United Conservation Clubs, Michigan’s oldest and largest conservation organization and NWF affiliate.

“Safeguarding Michigan’s natural resources is important sportsman who hunt, fish and spend time in the wilderness, but it is also a wise investment in our economic future. Reducing mercury and air toxics will help protect our long standing investment in our outdoor heritage.”

Last week week, Michigan’s sportsmen and women joined Bob Garner and scientist Dr. Dave Evers on a tele-townhall dedicated to the discussion of safeguarding Michigan’s natural resources from impacts of mercury pollution on fish and wildlife.

Find out what Michigan fish are safe to eat.

For many years, I have been concerned with the increase in sedentary and nature deficient lifestyles among Americans, especially among our youth.  Kids today spend less time outdoors than any other generation in history.  As a result, more kids are overweight and obese and suffer from stress, anxiety, and depression than ever before.

But it’s not too late to reverse these trends.  I recently joined with my colleague and friend, Senator Mark Udall, in introducing the Healthy Kids Outdoors Act. Increasing our time outdoors has countless physical and mental benefits.  This bill will provide federal assistance and support to state and local entities to enact strategies to connect people—especially young people—with nature, ensuring access and opportunities to garner the benefits of an active lifestyle outdoors.

Health Benefits

Today, kids spend an average of 7.5 hours a day in front of electronic devices and as few as four minutes each day outside.  Not only are these kids missing out on our country’s scenic wonders, but they are becoming increasingly overweight and obese.  Approximately 13 million U.S. children and adolescents are obese, a rate that has tripled since 1980.  Estimated at $14 billion annual, childhood obesity health expenses are taking a toll on our health care system.

As we consider these costs and the health of our children, we should also take a look at recent research that shows that kids who spend time outside are not only more physically active, but better behaved and more intellectually engaged.

Economic Benefits

Outdoor recreation is estimated to contribute over $9.7 billion annually to Wisconsin’s economy and support 129,000 jobs. According to the most recent USFWS-sponsored survey, 2.9 million people fished, hunted or participated in other wildlife recreation in Wisconsin in 2006, spending some $3.9 billion. On a national level, outdoor recreation contributes $730 billion annually to the economy (including $289 billion in retail sales and services), supports 6.5 million jobs, and provides sustainable growth in many rural communities—one more reason to encourage it and make it accessible.

Conservation Benefits

With increased sedentary lifestyles comes a lack of a connection to nature, threatening the future of conservation in this country.  A 2006 study from Cornell researchers found that participating in outdoor activities like hiking, hunting or camping as a kid positively impacts a person’s attitudes toward nature and environmentally conscious behavior as an adult. It also found that the most direct route to caring about environmental stewardship as an adult is participating in “wild nature activities” before the age of 11. That means that future generations of potential conservationists are here now, waiting for us to provide opportunities and access to get active outdoors.

Empowering state, local and federal agencies to develop plans to get people outside provides numerous benefits.  It helps get our kids more active, stimulates the economy, and ensures the future of our natural resources.  If we work together, I know we can make this a reality.

The mountains of West Virginia are a respite for so many of us. But sadly this respite—a place that so many call home—is being ravaged by corporate greed.

The coal industry blows off the tops of mountains. (Photo credit: Vivian Stockman)

When I told my 10-year-old son that I had to take another business trip, he became despondent. Why, he asks? First, tar sands mining in Alberta, Canada, and now mountaintop coal mining in Appalachia?

I shared with him, I need to see the other West Virginia, the one I had only seen in pictures, in order to truly grasp what is happening to a region so close to home.

Two weeks ago I joined a few of my National Wildlife Federation colleagues on a trip to Charleston, WV, that countless others with similar interests have taken. We wanted to better understand what is going on in a region of our country where the coal industry is allowed to blow off the tops of mountains and rip apart communities, families, and the rich landscape.

What we found reminded NWF CEO, Larry Schweiger, of the lawless mining days of the 1960s: politicians and law enforcement officials looking the other way when confronted with egregious violations of federal law. Big coal owns Central Appalachia and operates with complete and utter disregard for the people and the land—a land rich in stories, history, cultural heritage and natural beauty.

One local resident-turned-activist, Maria Gunnoe, summed it up this way: “We have an outlaw industry, where the politics are almost as dirty as coal.”

Click here to view the embedded video.

Lise Van Susteren, NWF board member

Instead of Majestic Mountains…Moonscape

A landscape visibly ravaged by an industrial cancer (Photo credit: Vivian Stockman)

After two days of touring the region from the land and air with local leaders like Vivian Stockman of Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, I returned home to my two children who were eager to hear what I learned and saw. I paused— how could I communicate in words the depths of the tragedy that I had seen?

Central Appalachia is home to some of the oldest mountains on earth. The area where mountaintop mining occurs—including southwest Virginia, southern West Virginia, eastern Kentucky, and northeastern Tennessee—is also one of the most biologically diverse regions in the U.S., providing habitat to over a thousand different plant and animal species.

Now it is a landscape that is visibly ravaged by an industrial cancer. Mountaintop coal mining has destroyed over 500 mountains, a million acres of forests and over 2,000 miles of streams. It also has destroyed a way of life among the people there, people who delighted in the refuge the region’s mountains offered.

Welcome to Central Appalachia: where tap water runs brown and the air is filled with soot and smog. It’s where towns have been displaced or flooded or otherwise destroyed. In those that remain, family members suffer from a range of illnesses, many of them chronic or fatal. It’s where locals talk about black bears being buried alive in their dens as bulldozers literally move mountains to get to the coal seams. It’s where the fish are now too toxic to eat and the residents can’t go hunting the way they used to—it’s where their children are no longer safe to roam.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Central Appalachia: where the local people feel like they are being erased—their towns, their families, their traditions.

Central Appalachia is a place filled with sadness, yet it is simultaneously filled with individuals who have tremendous courage and spirit. It is their deep connection to the land that has inspired them to join hands and fight. For their home. For their way of life. For their children.

Get involved. Get connected.

SFRED members on Capitol Hill

Everyday hunters and anglers are reaching out to lawmakers on Capitol Hill. Sportsmen for Responsible Energy Development (SFRED) are speaking to their representatives in Congress to encourage the creation of laws and policies that respect the balance between energy development and protecting water, wildlife and the sportsman’s way of life in the Rocky Mountain West. SFRED is a coalition of more than five hundred organizations, including the National Wildlife Federation.

A Bear and a Fisherman Both Enjoy Bristol Bay Fishing - photo credit Jim Wagner

Yesterday, 363 sport groups and businesses sent a letter to Lisa Jackson, the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, asking her to protect Alaska’s Bristol Bay region and its world class fishing and hunting from the proposed Pebble Mine. National Wildlife Federation and some of its state affiliates were a part of that letter.

We thanked Administrator Jackson for beginning a scientific assessment of the area’s watershed to determine if large-scale mining is compatible with the fish and wildlife of the region.  But the evidence is already clear–putting a mine that will generate billions of tons of toxic waste rock in the headwaters of the Bristol Bay region will put the entire region’s ecosystem at risk.  So the letter urges Adminstrator Jackson to veto the project NOW!