April 17, 2002 - Washington, DC: The Congressional
Sportsmen's Foundation along with the Wildlife
Management Institute has released a report,
Hunter Access to Federal Public Lands - the
culmination of the first phase of an effort
to assess the trends impacting access to federal
lands and to determine potential solutions to
these issues.
Federal
public lands are an important destination for
American hunters - approximately 47% of all
hunters conduct a portion of their hunting activity
on these lands (U.S. Department of the Interior
1996). Despite numerous reports suggesting public
access to federal lands is inadequate, there
is little quantitative information to refute
or verify this perception.
Hunter Access to Federal Public Lands is the
result of a meeting in November 2001 of stakeholders
with expertise and experience in federal public
land access. The objective of the meeting was
to identify the issues affecting hunter access
to public lands, determine where there are gaps
in information and to assess what needs to be
done to fully understand barriers to access.
The report outlines the eight primary issues
and associated questions that were determined
to be the most critical to the issue of access
including agency land-use planning processes,
awareness of land ownership patterns, trends
in access to public lands through private lands
and knowledge of access opportunities.
"Nearly half of all hunters hunt on public
lands. Ensuring that hunters continue to have
access to federal public lands is a key to ensuring
the future of hunting for both current and future
generations of Americans," said Matt Hogan,
Director of Conservation Policy for the CSF.
The
CSF, working with its partners in the hunting
and conservation community, intends to conduct
detailed studies of the critical issues identified
in this report with the objective of identifying
recommendations and developing potential solutions
that will aid Congress, federal agencies and
the hunting/conservation community in making
informed decisions to achieve the goal of improving
hunter access to federal public lands.
Click
here to view the PDF version of Hunter Access
to Federal Public Lands
 |
The
newsletter requires Adobe Acrobat reader
to view. Download reader here. |
