Congress sportsman bill tackles wolves, lead bullets, access | The Spokesman-Review

The bill also would let hunters import 41 polar bear carcasses shot in Canada before they were declared threatened in 2008 and allow limited imports of ivory from African elephants.

H.R. 2406, the Sportsmen’s Heritage and Recreational Enhancement (SHARE) Act of 2015, was approved, 242-161, and now goes to the Senate. Twelve Democrats joined 230 Republicans in favor of the measure. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-WA, voted for the bill.

The bill has little chance of being signed into law, but it tells us a lot about what’s brewing.

According to the Associated Press:

Supporters said the bill would protect and expand the rights of sportsmen to hunt, fish and enjoy other recreation on public lands.

“Washington bureaucrats don’t understand that federal lands can be used in multiple ways,” said House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif. “By overregulating, these bureaucrats do a lot of damage to our fishermen, shooters and outdoor enthusiasts, stopping perfectly legal and safe outdoor activities. Washington regulations should enable access (to public lands), not stop it.”

Opponents said the bill would roll back important protections for wolves and other wildlife and undermine international efforts to combat ivory trafficking.

“This legislation would open up our most pristine protected lands to road-building, motorized vehicles and other activities that undermine the explicit intent of the Wilderness Act,” said Gene Karpinski, president of the League of Conservation Voters.

The bill waives crucial environmental reviews for decisions affecting hundreds of millions of acres of federal lands, diverts funding meant for conservation and threatens to increase the amount of lead poisoning of birds and other wildlife, Karpinski said.

The bill also contains a provision to remove gray wolves in the Great Lakes region and Wyoming off the federal endangered list. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has long said that wolf populations in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan and Wyoming have all recovered enough to return responsibility for managing the animals to the state.

The agency has made several attempts to take wolves in the four states off the endangered list but has been blocked by federal courts. The House bill bars further court challenges.

Wolves are well-established in the western Great Lakes and Northern Rockies after being shot, poisoned and trapped into near-extermination in the lower 48 states in the last century. Altogether, their estimated population now exceeds 5,000.

Drew Caputo, vice president of the environmental group Earthjustice, called the House vote unfortunate. If enacted, the legislation “could prove devastating for the recovery of wolves in the continental United States,” Caputo said.

In a short media release, Rep. McMorris Rodgers said she voted for the bill “to ensure future generations have ample access to federal lands to hunt and fish.”

She made no reference to the many sportsmen who prefer federal road closures and protected areas to provide big-game security areas and quality hunting areas for the many sportsmen still willing to use muscle power.

“In the Northwest, hunting and fishing is a way of life for many, and for generations this has occurred on federal lands,” the release says. “But, too often, Federal Agencies and their regulations impede, or prevent outright, hunting, fishing, and recreation. Bureaucrats in D.C. shouldn’t be allowed to reshape American culture—preventing something so deeply engrained in our heritage.”

However, on one point at least, it sounds like Congress is the group “reshaping American culture” but wanting to build roads and unleash vehicles into areas where they’re not traditional or natural.

The NRA supports the bill, along with 50 other sportsmen’s groups* (listed below) that have signed on. But a lot of other sportsmen-related groups do not.  And I’m not sympathizing with animal rights groups.

H.R. 2406 includes provisions that: require federal public land management officials to facilitate hunting, fishing, and recreational shooting on certain federal public land; prevent the National Park Service from prohibiting individuals from transporting bows and crossbows if certain requirements are met, and; reauthorize the Federal Land Transaction Facilitation Act to extend the authority provided to the Bureau of Land Management to sell federal land for ranching, community development, and other projects.

But there’s a case to be made that this bill itself is overreach.

Meanwhile, on another front:

Idaho congressman urges giving management of public lands to states
On Thursday, Idaho U.S. Rep. Raul Labrador urged his colleagues on the House Natural Resources Subcommitee on Federal Lands to support a measure that would give states authority over 2 percent of the federal forest lands within their borders to allow them to do pilot projects to “improve management” of those lands.