Spending time in America’s great outdoors is good for both the spirit and health of our nation’s people. Recreation and relaxation in nature can reduce stress and anxiety, promote learning and personal growth, nourish the imagination, and provide mental and physical restoration. People who are disconnected from nature are less likely to be committed to and involved with stewardship of our shared natural legacy. Americans must learn anew that national wildlife refuges, while providing beneficial habitat for wildlife, are essential and relevant places for a new generation. In response to national demographic trends, national wildlife refuges must provide new opportunities and actively encourage people, whether school age or in their autumnal years, to connect with nature by visiting their national wildlife refuges, personally or virtually.
The National Wildlife Refuge System provides some of the finest outdoor recreational opportunities in the world. Indeed, more than 44 million people visited national wildlife refuges in 2009, up from 34.5 million people a decade earlier. The vision and work of state agencies for game, fish and wildlife conservation – and their authorities for hunting and fishing programs in the United States – has enhanced these opportunities and the access Americans have to wildlife-dependent recreation.
The Refuge System has a steadfast commitment to the long-standing conservation partnership with America’s hunters and anglers to expand and improve hunting and fishing opportunities for children and people with disabilities.
Recommendation: Conduct an analytical review of and report on wildlife refuge hunting and fishing opportunities and rules and regulations, with special attention to opportunities offered for youth and people with disabilities. Guidance on expanding opportunities will accompany the report.
Recommendation: Work cooperatively with state fish and wildlife agencies to prepare a strategy for increasing quality hunting and fishing opportunities on national wildlife refuges with the goal of doubling youth participation in hunting and fishing on national wildlife refuges by 2020.
Recommendation: Support outdoor recreation access and opportunities on national wildlife refuges by improving coordination, effectiveness and efficiency among federal agencies through close work with the Wildlife and Hunting Heritage Conservation Council, the Sport Fishing and Boating Partnership Council, and other recreational entities.
There are myriad opportunities to provide additional opportunities for people on national wildlife refuges. The Refuge System Birding Initiative has been a successful partnership between the Service and the birding community, and has provided important strategic advice on how to increase birding opportunities and involve avid and casual birders in wildlife refuge conservation and education programs. It is a model that can be expanded upon. The Refuge System must expand opportunities to watch and learn about wildlife, assist people in learning a land ethic to become better stewards of the nation’s natural resources, and build relationships with people who have not had traditional links to wild lands and wildlife.
Comment below and/or move on to next section of Chapter 4 - Welcome to Your National Wildlife Refuge
25 Comments in this post »
RSS feed for comments on this post.
Another suitable partner here would be Richard Louv’s Connecting People with Nature Network. A possible additional recommendation along those lines would be to provide the NWRS with the capability of starting family or community nature clubs and “green gyms” as in the U.K. These activities are not hunting/fishing/boating-specific, but hunting/fishing/boating can be incorporated. (or perhaps there is another part of this chapter where they’d fit in better — haven’t read it all yet)
While expanding opportunities and the number of visitors to NWRs is important, it should be coupled with quality services/staff training and while devotion to our wildlife first mission.
It’s good to see the Birding Initiative cited in this section (Connecting People wiht Nature) and in the next section( Welcome to your National Wildlife Refuge) of the Vision Document. This effort by the Birding Initiative has identified 20 essential ways that refuges can work with birders to enhance their visits, contribute to citizen science projects, and promote bird conservation. These 20 characteristics can make a refuge “Birder Friendly” and in turn can make birders “Refuge Friendly.” The entire list – with explanations – can now be viewed here:
http://www.fws.gov/refuges/pdfs/a%20birder%20friendly%20refuge7.08.pdf
Refuges, Wilderness, and the Hunting Tradition
National Wildlife Refuges open to hunting should be formally recognized and managed as places providing opportunities toward the traditional end of the hunting ethic spectrum. Former administrative guidelines for refuge hunts, such as promoting “positive hunting values and hunter ethics such as fair chase and sportsmanship” and “limited interference from or dependence on mechanized aspects of the sport” should be restored to the Hunting chapter of the Refuge Manual. Further, refuge wilderness areas should be recognized and managed as anchor points of the shifting hunting ethic. They should serve as benchmarks of traditional hunting experience, places where hunters of today and the future can find the qualities espoused by Teddy Roosevelt, Aldo Leopold, and Olaus Murie.
These recommendations were stimulated by concern that the ethic associated with America’s venerable hunting tradition is eroding. As an indication of present trends, watch a few hunting segments on the Outdoor Channel. Consider what values are being programed into the next generation of hunters and anglers. Convenience, replacement of skill with a catalogue of gadgets, substitution of effort with an ever-increasing variety of ATVs and ORVs, certainty of bag, commercialization of the experience and commodification of wildlife, game feeding and watering structures, bear baiting, artificial stimulation of antler growth, manipulation of habitats and predators to artificially propagate game species: we are getting further and further from the ethic championed by Roosevelt, Leopold, and Murie.
This trend influences the image of hunting held by the increasing proportion of non-hunting Americans. As well, it affects the upcoming generation of hunters. A while ago I talked to a teenage boy whose father had taken him bear hunting. Over a smelly pile of stale jelly donuts, old cooking grease, and other garbage, he shot a bear. Remembering how important telling the story of the hunt had been to me, I asked what he told the guys back at school. With an embarrassing look, he said he hadn’t told anyone. “They’d look down on me,” he admitted. I didn’t ask how he felt about his successful “hunt?” But with no exercise of skill and no more effort than climbing into a tree stand, he couldn’t have experienced much of the challenge, pride, and character-enhancing aspects refuge system founder Teddy Roosevelt espoused.
And even in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge Wilderness, private hunters and hunting guides base airplanes at their camps, which they routinely use to locate trophy animals. Guides commonly speak of getting their client “his sheep,” as if the animal were a commodity the “hunter” had bought and the “hunting” outcome was as certain as going to Wal-Mart to purchase it. Hunters and non-hunters who have witnessed super-cubs circling the mountains ask: “What kind of ‘hunting’ is this?” Its legal, but a far cry from the hope fair-chase advocate Olaus Murie had that the Arctic Refuge would be a place for hunting “in the tradition of the highest form of the sport.”
In A Sand County Almanac Aldo Leopold espoused a hunting ethic requiring “a self-imposed limitation” and based on “a distinctly American tradition of self-reliance, hardihood, woodcraft, and marksmanship.” “These are intangibles,” he continued, “but they are not abstractions.” Leopold’s message about the hunter as a participant in the cycle of nature continues to appeal to traditional hunters. Many find pleasure in reenacting the experience of the pioneers of our cultural heritage, and in reliving the drama that was central to the 95% of human history in which we were Pleistocene hunters. To Leopold, hunting served as a touchstone to our predatory past, a means of forging connections—physical and emotional connections—to the forces of nature that once formed and shaped us.
But one can hardly be a participant in the natural order when the animal pursued is not a natural product of the land, i. e., its numbers are a result of game farming or predator control. As Leopold said in his 1933 text, Game Management, “. . . the recreational value of game is inverse to the artificiality of its origin . . .” Nor can one experience Leopold’s “cultural values” of hunting when surrounded by those who bought the experience or have substituted knowledge, skill and effort with gadgets and vehicles.
A sorry indicator of the trend in hunting is the change in administrative guidelines for refuge hunts in the FWS Refuge Manual. Prior to its revision in 2006, the Hunting chapter specified that refuge hunting programs should . . .
. . . promote positive hunting values and hunter ethics such as fair chase and sportsmanship. In general, hunting on refuges should be superior to that available on other public or private lands and should provide participants with reasonable harvest opportunities, uncrowded conditions, fewer conflicts between hunters, relatively undisturbed wildlife, and limited interference from or dependence on mechanized aspects of the sport.
The revised (current) hunting chapter deleted reference these positive values and ethics, replacing them with an unspecific reference to “quality.”
In his classic study, Attitudes and Characteristics of Hunters and Antihunters, Yale professor Stephen Kellert identified categories he described as “Nature Hunters” and “Doministic/Sport Hunters.” Nature hunters sought the connection –to-nature experience Leopold described and that reflect well on hunting. Doministic/Sport Hunters are more representative of mechanized, trophy oriented, or get-the-limit hunters. To the extent they act within the law, neither group is necessarily better. They are simply different in their notion of what constitutes quality.
Perhaps the full diversity of legal “quality” hunting experiences should be available in the nation, but it cannot be provided in each area. There should be a spectrum of hunting and fishing areas. There are many private, state, and federal lands available for those whose experience is less dependent on natural conditions of the setting, minimal intrusion from mechanization, and the principles of fair chase. Given present trends, it seems that some public hunting grounds should be reserved for those who seek to participate in a more traditional form of hunting — and for those who perhaps no longer hunt, but find satisfaction and hope in just knowing there are places where the tradition remains alive. Our national wildlife refuges, and especially wilderness refuges, provide the best opportunity for doing so.
I strongly support birding-friendly initiatives for the National Wildlife Refuge system. Our family has spent many hours of many days in various parts of the system, including the Sacramento and other refuges in California.
I have always wondered how a wildlife refuge could be open to hunting, but I appreciated Roger Kaye’s eloquent defense of traditional hunting as espoused by Theodore Roosevelt, Olaus Murie and Aldo Leopold. Though I have never been a serious hunter I can support that kind of hunting, carefully managed. I do insist that we not support mechanized hunting in any element of the NWR system.
While Hunting and fishing are currently the obvious major recreational focus in your document, the passive recreational opportunities are also very much sought after and important to many, many people. Photographers, observers of the vast wildlife populations, organized conservationists such as Audubon, Nature Conservancy, etc. members –on & on –are particularly interested in equal access for people other than those who hunt and/or fish !!!!!!!! In my experience , I have been excluded from entrance to several refuges in N.C. during times when these ” refuges ” were reserved for a special interest function; hunting. Obviously it makes no sense to wander about looking at wildlife while it is being shot at because one might get hit accidentally so it makes some sense. I just hope for equal access and will try hard to influence all authorities/bureaucracies to take as much initiative with the passive visitor interests. Where hunters are allowed to go at Pocosin Lakes NWR, and Matamuskeet NWR, I am not allowed at any time ( Pocosin Lakes posts no access–except fpr their organized hunts — to a major portion of the Pungo unit fron Nov-Feb.–a major observational site for over-wintering warefowl ) They are given vast territorial scope when they attend scheduled hunts. We request the same scope for scheduled ” observer events “. We represent far less adverse intrusive effects upon the wildlife than hunters. If yiou are basing your bias in favor of hunters and fisher-people because they are paying for licenses, then maybe you could establish some ” access license ” equally beneficial to your economic needs so that we could all be as privileged as those other special interest groups ” PLEASE !!!!
Increase the discussion and linkages that relate Connecting People to Nature Benefits for health. Using refuges as a key location for “Nature Champions” will highlight the CPWN-health llinkage and may serve to increase refuge usage by the public.
Recommendations need to be added to this section that are in addition to hunting and fishing. Most recreational outdoor enthusiasts are not hunters and anglers. This population segments needs much more attention in this section. It should include increasing opportunities for birders, photographers, etc. Birders and nature photographers already use refuges, but highlighting these use will strengthen the document and the emphasis on this group.
Another group that this section of the document needs to focus on is youth. They may be hunters, anglers, or photographers, but highlighting this population segment focuses on the future and families. Refuges are already sites for Scouting activities and support communty service projects like Eagle Scout Leadership Projects. This document should highlight this kind of activity and capture it as a separate Recommendation.
I find it somewhat sad that the reccommendations are so focused on hunting and fishing opportunities with little attention to other recreational activities such as wildlife photography, videography, observation and hiking. As noted the US population is changing and becoming more urban. I doubt most of these urban dwellers would make use of hunting opportunities and, though a larger group, even those interested in fishing would be limited in comoparison to other recreational activities. You really should place at least equal emphasis on non-sporting recreational use of the NWR system.
I agree that there should be at least equal emphasis on non-sporting recreational use of the NWR system. Hiking, birding and wildlife watching are growing types of recreation among youth and Boomers, and making our refuges available and accessible to support this non-sporting recreational use is critical in the years ahead.
The passive activity of birding or bird watching is the fastest growing outdoor activity in the nation. Birders provide volunteer and financial support to the refuge system and support local economies near refuges, witness the success of state birding trails throughout the United States. I acknowledge the support of hunters and fishers to the refuge system and conservation efforts. However, I do object to access rules that close refuges to birders during peak winter waterfowl watching times. In North Carolina, the closing of Pocosin’s Pungo Unit is particularly frustrating. Birders are strong advocates for the refuge system, often sharing their nature experiences and appreciation for wildlife with children and community organizations. Their participation can only help to protect and preserve our wildlife areas.
I agree with other commenters that this section promises to address “re-creation” in the broadest sense, but limits most of the specifics to hunting and fishing (with a coda on birding). I would suggest: 1) Keeping the first paragraph as it is (although I am personally a bit uncomfortable with “autumnal years”); 2) Dropping the second sentence in the second paragraph (since it is not clear to me that the increased use of the NWR System is connected only with hunting) and instead describing a vision of recreation [two quotes: “Recreation's purpose is not to kill time, but to make life, not to keep a person occupied, but to keep them refreshed; not to offer an escape from life, but to provide a discovery of life”. Author Unknown & “The word recreation is really a very beautiful word. It is defined in the dictionary as ‘the process of giving new life to something, of refreshing something, of restoring something.’ This something, of course, is the whole person.” Bruno Hans Geba]; and 3) Addressing hunting, fishing, birding, photographing, etc. in separate paragraphs or bullets to suggest the range of recreational activities. An alternative would be to address hunting and fishing separately.
In addition, I would add a recommendation along the lines of: Convene focus groups of the general public [or refuge visitors] in order to learn what recreational activities they have most appreciated in the NWR System and what activities would they like to see in future. (In this way, it would be possible to have the broadest knowledge base for current and potential recreational activities.)
The Recommendations formulated for this section are the same as those efforts of two to three decades in the past. This section needs more wildlife related activity recommendations, but including hunting and fishing. However, I strongly urged against getting so caught up in attracting supporting public users that the unique quality of a “wildlife-related experience” is lost and precious resources are expended accommodating all interests – the NPS conundrum.
Great comments Phil. Thanks for such specific recommendations. We are listening.
Tom Worthington
As someone who works in the urban public school system I completely agree that our youth are unfortunately losing touch with the outdoors. I think that some type of program needs to be devised to go INTO the schools and promote awareness, a sense of fun for outdoors, and the actual need for refuges for the sake of their own future. With the new budget cuts schools are and will not be taking ‘field’ trips any longer. Implementing a program that brings the outdoors to them is going to be critical in upcoming years. Sparatic contests geared towards children are great, but more is needed to make the impact on those that will eventually be the generation to take over.
We all aggree that we need to connect children with nature, but we need to not forget connect FAMILIES (no matter how dynamic) with nature. Our key will be to continue to provide FREE educational programs and experiences for visitors to have in nature- creating posisitive memories. There are many economic hardships for families, and our wildlife refuges should not be one of them. By having a minimal entrance fee and many FREE, year-round, engaging programs for them to attend, this will create future conservationists and friends of the refuge.
More emphasis needs to be placed on non-hunting and non-fishing activities. We have become a more urban population who purchases food in supermarkets. When my grandfather was born in Arizona in 1895, hunting and fishing helped to supply food for the dinner table. My son who was born in Arizona in 1985 will never kill an animal for any reason. As a family we enjoy visiting refuges for the opportunity to view wildlife, take photos, and hike. I think these activities are more the norm for Americans today than hunting and fishing. We all pay taxes which help to support the refuge system; please do not provide one segment of the population with more access and privileges to enjoy these natural areas than the rest of us. Please do not manage wildlife populations including the killing of predators simply to provide more opportunities to hunters.
Most of the emphasis in this section seems to be on hunting and fishing. These activities are legitimate and important to help connect people with nature BUT there are many more. Birding is the only nonhunting activity mentioned. Birding is gaining in popularity and should be strongly encouraged. Activities such as hiking and nonbird wildlife viewing are very important and need much more emphasis.
Of course none of this matters if the public is not aware that these opportunities exist on our refuges. We must get the word out. Outreach at local fairs and festivals, speaker bureaus, taking advantage of public service announcements offered by local media can do this.
Refuge staff and volunteers who have public contact duties need to be trained in interpretation, the objectives of their specific refuge, and refuge specific flora and fauna.
While hunting and fishing are two of the priorty uses on refuges and I agree we should try to increase youth participation in them I think we must consider several issues that may not contribute to this goal. First, there are a lot of hunting and fishing programs on refuges that exist but might not realistically be considered quality. Giving those kinds of programs some attention and updating including focusing on attracting youth to participate in them might serve us better than increasing more opportunities for hunting and fishing on refuges just to have a program. What is the vehicle by which we will decide a refuge has a population base that would support a new hunting or fishing program or will we just build it and “they will come?” Second, as many have commented already bird-watching, photography, and other non-consumptive types of wildlife recreation are growing in popularity among people of all ages. Is our goal to have equal participation across all priorty uses or to get our conservation message to as many people as we possibly can and get them out to enjoy our refuges and other public lands? American society is becoming more urban and hunting and fishing have obviously become less important to people. There are certainly places in the country where hunting and fishing are still a way of life and/or an enjoyable pastime. I hope the emphasis in establishing new programs remains on quality. Finally, when we plan for increasing or establishing new wildlife opportunities we need to keep in mind the changes in society from rural to urban where people who are visiting our refuges are not coming to hunt or fish but to do other things. If somehow we can weave a quality hunting or fishing program into a refuge then we should consider that. But we also need to consider whether we need that hunting or fishing program to serve the community we are living within.
Please number or label the formal “Recommendations” within the sections. It will be a lot easier those making comments to direct editors to the specific comment.
On the recommendation to set a “goal of doubling youth participation in hunting and fishing on national wildlife refuges by 2020.” That seems to specific/prescriptive and harkens back to the previous promises and fail initiatives. I’m a avid hunter and angler and the reality of the situation tells me that for us to hold our own or see slight increases (5 -20%) over the next 10 years is the very best we can hope for. Doubling youth participation on Refuges is a great goal but let’s use all six compatible uses (EE, Interpretation, Wildlife Viewing, Photography, Hunting, and Fishing) to accomplish that.
Like others, I don’t understand the OVERWHELMING emphasis on hunting and fishing as it relates to connecting people with nature. What about all the other recreations and just visiting for the sake of solitude, self reflection, recharging the spirit, stress relief, etc. I perceive the emphasis on hunting and fishing as financial. If it’s about land acquisition funding, then we just need to develop a new vision of how to generate land acquisition dollars, just like the “Duck Committee” did in the 1930′s with the “duck stamp”. Ideas are everywhere! This isn’t the only idea out there, you just need to own a new one and create something monumental to replace a dying tradition (hunting), rather than continue to force something on society that they aren’t interested in anymore.
Leave it up to the states, and hunting and sportfishing organizations to promote the recreations. Let’s continue to work with the states and provide opportunities, but I don’t think these hunting and fishing specific recommendations are going to address connecting the masses to nature.
I was a Refuge Ranger at several national wildlife refuges for 14 years, and agree with many others that maintaining restrictive uses on national wildlife refuges is critical to our purpose. However, I do see where we can be more open to some uses, such as picnicking, that would in fact facilitate connecting families and even urbanites to nature. Otherwise the visits are shorter because everyone has to eat, and we love to do that outdoors on family excursions.
To expand on Lew’s initial thoughts here, the Nature Champion program, like many other FWS Connecting People With Nature activities has formed many active partnerships with other organizations and professions which have earth stewardship and the health and well-being of America and the American citizenry in mind. While Connecting People with Nature was begun as a full-agency priority 4 plus years ago, it has not reached its full potential for integration into all FWS programs and staff. The Region One CPWN team, comprised of representatives from refuges, hatcheries and fisheries, ecological services and law enforcement encourage future interaction with our national wildlife refuges as a primary CPWN tool for inviting and hosting youth and their families in the out of doors. No one program can do it alone! Our budgets need not limit our engagement with one another. In fact, they require and inspire it. The FWS has some of the most talented, resourceful employees on earth, along with the richest of landscapes. Let us all embrace connecting people with nature as a core element of our mission and deliver it wisely and well–that is to say, together–to the American public.
Other than to appease narrowly focused but powerful special interest groups and state Fish and Game agencies, I cannot see a value to the emphasis on hunting and fishing as it appears at the bottom of page 30 and the top half of page 31. The disconnect is especially jarring because page 30 lines 43-44 speak of visitation to the National Wildlife Refuge System in the context of connecting people with nature, but then lines 44 and 45 jump to the unconnected topic of state agencies as they relate to hunting and fishing. Then the top half of page 31 presents three hunting/fishing-focused recommendations, as if these are the only ways to connect people with nature. Only the last paragraph in that section returns to a broader discussion of refuges and the “connecting” topic.
I suggest retaining only the first two lines in the final paragraph on the bottom of page 30: “The National Wildlife Refuge System provides some of the finest outdoor recreational opportunities in the world. Indeed, more than 44 million people visited national wildlife refuges in 2009, up from 34.5 million people a decade earlier.” And then present some recommendations that actually speak to the idea of “connecting people with nature” including something like:
Recommendation: Whenever possible, make available refuge lands where visitors can move freely over the landscape to independently explore, experience, and appreciate the refuge’s plants, creatures and habitats firsthand and in an unstructured manner.
Recommendation: Recognizing that Americans come in all ages and circumstances, make available, whenever possible, designated areas within each refuge where the following groups have safe access to unstructured exploration of wild landscapes: infants and toddlers; preschoolers; the blind and physically handicapped; teenagers; multi-age family groups; the elderly; etc.
These are only two possible recommendations for connecting people with nature. I’m sure the document authors can think of many more.
Although I don’t think the “state agency and hunting/fishing” content belongs where it is presently situated, I do think it should be placed later in chapter 4. One potential location would be on page 34 after line 28. Or the authors can find another location. There are really two aspects of the removed text: 1) that state agencies and lands enhance opportunities for wildlife-dependent recreation beyond refuge borders, and 2) the hunting/fishing recommendations. Perhaps each of these can find a better and separate home elsewhere in the document?
Along with others, I’m concerned that the focus of the recommendations is so narrow and overlooks the broad array of ways that people may connect with nature – through binoculars, cameras, gps, snowshoes, hiking boots, and good old exploration. I think the recommendations need to be broader.
That said, if we are serious about expanding youth participation in hunting, fishing or any other activity, we need to seriously consider the recommendations put forth in: Best Practices Workbook for Hunting and Shooting Recruitment and Retention. (which I think can be applied to a number of outdoor pursuits). Basically, we need to get past the one-day “special event” model of introducing these activities. We need to consider the social structure that surrounds them and provide repeated, mentored experiences with our youth. Look at the model with Project GO (Get Outdoors) in Winona, MN as an example. They work with a Refuge Ranger to get kids outside exploring an array of activities on a regular basis.
We applaud the recommendation of a review of refuge hunting and fishing opportunities. MDWFP looks forward to working with refuges in Mississippi to expand opportunities for youth and families to hunt and fish on public lands. Many state agencies are concerned about increasing youth participation in all outdoor activities. Refuges and other public lands provide ideal locations to reconnect children with the outdoors. Programs that educate youth about consumptive activities like hunting and fishing should also promote the importance of cooperating with other user groups to conserve the wildlife species we all hold dear and the habitats on which they depend.
[This includes new language and rearranging of existing language.]
The Refuge System must expand opportunities to experience, watch and learn about wildlife, assist people in learning a land ethic to become better stewards of the nation’s natural resources, and build relationships with people who have not had traditional links to wild lands and wildlife.The National Wildlife Refuge System provides some of the finest outdoor recreational opportunities in the world. Indeed, more than 44 million people visited national wildlife refuges in 2009, up from 34.5 million people a decade earlier. .
These federal lands serve as an extremely valuable resource to connect people with nature. This vision document will stress the use of the Refuge system to address Richard Louv’s concept of “nature deficit disorder”, by promoting Refuges and their prime natural experience potential.
There are myriad opportunities to provide opportunities for people on national wildlife refuges. The Refuge System has a steadfast commitment to the long-standing conservation partnership with America’s hunters and anglers to expand and improve hunting and fishing opportunities for children and people with disabilities.
Refuges provide quality natural experiences for visitors seeking non-outdoor sport experiences such as birding and photography. The Refuge System Birding Initiative has been a successful partnership between the Service and the birding community, and has provided important strategic advice on how to increase birding opportunities and involve avid and casual birders in wildlife refuge conservation and education programs. It is a model that can be expanded upon.
Since participation in conservation community service projects have shown to forge a link between people and nature, the Refuge system provides a prime outdoor resource to expand opportunities for people to become involved. Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, school and youth groups can all participate in refuge-based service projects.
Recreation in a nature setting often involves physical activity. Promoting the health benefits of a refuge experience promotes national goals to improve the health status of Americans.
Recommendation: Conduct an analytical review of and report on wildlife refuge hunting and fishing opportunities and rules and regulations, with special attention to opportunities offered for youth and people with disabilities. Guidance on expanding opportunities will accompany the report.
Recommendation: Work cooperatively with state fish and wildlife agencies to prepare a strategy for increasing quality hunting and fishing opportunities on national wildlife refuges with the goal of doubling youth participation in hunting and fishing on national wildlife refuges by 2020.
Recommendation: Support outdoor recreation access and opportunities on national wildlife refuges by improving coordination, effectiveness and efficiency among federal agencies through close work with the Wildlife and Hunting Heritage Conservation Council, the Sport Fishing and Boating Partnership Council, and other recreational entities.
Recommendation: Coordinate with national, state, regional, local, and non-governmental organization conservation entities, including state non-game programs to promote non-outdoor sport natural resource activities on refuges to enhance the connection between people and nature.
Recommendation: Partner with health promotion organizations and programs such as “Nature’s Champions” that promote exercise and healthful outdoor experiences.
I am very pleased to see specific mention made of the Birding Initiative in this document. Having had the privilege of working on this initiative, I continue to be impressed by the Service’s willingness to acknowledge the birding constituency and its potential to support the many fine efforts that the Refuge System is already undertaking in its efforts to engage and educate the public about birds and other wildlife. Because of my personal awareness of the elements the Birding Iintitiative, I am optimisitc that if the Service continues to pursue this agenda, greater awareness of the overall value and significance of the Refuge System to birds and wildlife may result which hopefully generate additional future support for the Refuge System as a whole.