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NEW PROGRAM NEEDS MORE PRIORITY

“Open Fields” Hunting Access Program Needs a Push

By Bill Schneider, 11-05-09

The new Open Fields Program helps preserve hunting access. Photos by Dusan Smetana.

Open Fields was a “major victory” for hunters and wildlife conservation, according to the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership (TRCP) and many other green groups that lobbied for it. It passed back in December 2008, but almost a year later, this innovative hunter access program is still mired in the administrative rule making process.

Now, predictably, conservationists who struggled mightily for the program are asking Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack for a little more priority.

Inserted into the 2008 Farm Bill for the first time, but only after a two-year battle fought not only by TRCP, but Ducks Unlimited, Pheasants Forever, and a long list of conservation groups, wildlife agencies and labor unions, Open Fields includes $50 million in financial support for voluntary, state-run access programs that provide incentives to private landowners to allow public access to their land.

Another key, but mostly unknown, section of the Open Fields Program requires private landowners who enroll their property to use “the best management practices for fish and wildlife.”

Instead of trying to create a national, one-size-fits-all-states program, Open Fields helps finance existing, but woefully under-funded, state access programs, such as Montana’s Block Management Program, Oregon’s Access and Habitat Program, or South Dakota’s Public Walk-In Program. About 20 states already have such voluntary, incentive programs, and many others are trying to launch them.

Getting such a program through Congress was well worth celebrating, of course, but regrettably, the game isn’t over. Now, conservationists need to get it funded and implemented.

At the recent TRCP Media Summit in Craig, Montana, I chatted with Dave Nomsen, vice president for governmental affairs for Pheasants Forever and Quail Forever, about Open Fields and he bemoaned the slow rule-making process.

“It’s vital to get some success out on the ground,” Nomsen said, “before the next Farm Bill comes around.”

Congress re-authorizes the Farm Bill, an always massive and always controversial piece of legislation, every five years, so in 2012 or 2013, Congress will also have to re-authorize the Open Fields Program.

“The Farm Bill is easily the most significant piece of legislation affecting fish and wildlife,” TRCP President George Cooper said at the Summit.

He also said it’s “so critical” to get the program going because he’s sure the states will quickly enroll the entire $50 million to illustrate how desperate the hunting access crisis has become.

“Declining access for sportsmen is a major cause of decline in the numbers of American hunters and anglers,” Cooper said. “This harms rural economies that depend on seasonal influxes of sportsmen, and it harms the entire country when our citizens’ connections to their lands and waters disintegrate.”

Both Cooper and Nomsen see a popular, fully enrolled, if not over-enrolled, program as a powerful lobbying position for the next Farm Bill--not only to keep the program alive in a time of deficit reduction, but to increase funding next time around.

But, they fear, if Open Fields gets bogged down in administrative quagmires and doesn’t have a chance to shine, it might be an easy budget cut next time around.

Tom Franklin, senior vice president at TRCP, echoes this concern. “This is a signature program for TRCP,” he told NewWest.Net, “and we have been disappointed that it hasn’t moved forward more rapidly.”

Franklin said Vilsack met with TRCP’s Board of Directors in April and said Open Fields implementation was on track for “this fall” and that President Obama’s 2010 budget includes full funding for the program--all $50 million ($16.67 million over the next three years).

“Well, it’s still ‘this fall,’” Franklin admitted, but I could tell he was worried.

Whenever a new program is created, he explained, the managing agency tends to concentrate on getting money out the door for existing programs before doing new programs.

“They (USDA staffers) can get projects like this going immediately if there is a high enough priority,” Franklin claimed, “but this is a new program and not a huge program, so it isn’t high priority.”

It might not be high priority for overworked USDA staffers, but it’s an extremely high priority for conservationists who understand that dwindling public access to private lands threatens the very foundation of the sport of hunting.

“There is no reason it should be taking this long,” Franklin insisted. “The states are ready to go; the hunters are ready to go; so let’s get it done.”

The last word Franklin had from USDA is that the “interim final rule” (how’s that for some real bureaucratese?) “might be out by the end of the year,” and if that happens, it will be in time, barely, to get some land enrolled in the new system during 2010.

But if it slips into next year, even into January, Franklin said states might not have enough time to apply and receive grants and “get this off the ground.”

They say it’s never a matter of time or money, only a matter of priority--an old adage that nicely applies to the Open Fields Program. So, Secretary Vilsack, please pull the strings necessary to give this all-important program the priority it deserves and underway before the end of the year.

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