A New Day Has Dawned

The sun was high overhead as our Skeeter center console shot through the narrow canals of the marsh. Pushing out into open water a spoonbill crane launched skyward, its pink wings stretching out into graceful flight.

The Vanishing Paradise team was holding court for 3 days out of Ryan Lambert’s Cajun Adventures lodge in Buras, Louisiana with the editorial teams from Field and Stream and Outdoor Life. The event was generously sponsored by Vanishing Paradise/National Wildlife Federation, Top Brass Tackle, Bomber/Heddon Lures, HuntDucks.com, Frabil, Wiley X, Berkley Pro Fishing, Fowl Play Game Calls, and Marsh Works

We spent three days of fishing and three days of educating America’s premier sportsmen’s publications on the threats to wildlife and habitat facing Louisiana’s coastline. But it didn’t take much to educate this knowledgeable group – in fact many here were already acutely aware of the challenges the area is experiencing. America’s sportsmen’s paradise is in severe decline – and it amounts to a crisis for hunters and anglers across the country.

“If we let these wetlands fall, what’s next,” proclaimed Vanishing Paradise’s Land Tawney. “This ecosystem is directly connected to the Prairie Potholes along the U.S./Canada border as well as the entire Mississippi flyway – the cost to American waterfowlers alone is too great to comprehend.”

Anglers, too, have much to be concerned with. “This is one of the best places to fish on the planet,” said Eric Cosby of Top Brass Tackle. “There are many great places to fish, but the Louisiana wetlands represent the best there is – from 200-pound-class offshore tuna to the magnificent bull reds inshore and within the marsh itself – pound-for-pound the action is unbeatable.”

The good news is that shortly after our trip with Field and Stream and Outdoor Life the U.S. Congress passed a troubled Transportation bill. Contained within was the Restore Act – a piece of legislation that sends 80 percent of BP oil spill fines under the Clean Water At directly into coastal restoration. This will be an estimated $3-$18 billion just for restoring this sportsmen’s paradise.

“This has the potential to be the greatest influx of conservation dollars in history,” Tawney said. “It took 75 years for Pittman-Robertson, Dingell-Johnson and Wallop-Breaux to put $14 billion into the system. We may bypass that amount in one fell swoop.”

So what’s next? Each gulf state must put together a plan for this funding, and Louisiana has already approved a robust state master plan to use these dollars efficiently.

As for Field and Stream and Outdoor Life – the fight to educate Americans on the value, wealth of habitat and wildlife continues. Sportsmen across this nation continue to work hard to ensure our legacy survives and that those who come after us have the same opportunities we did to hunt and fish.

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Vanishing Paradise Hails Senate Passage of RESTORE Act on Transportation Bill

Vote Follows Recent House Approval of Efforts to Dedicate BP Fines to Gulf Restoration

The coalition of more than 700 national state and local hunting and fishing organizations and businesses that is Vanishing Paradise commended the Senate earlier this week for passing the Surface Transportation Bill with the RESTORE the Gulf Coast States Act included as an amendment. The RESTORE Act is historic legislation that passed the full Senate last week with support from 76 senators, including all Democrats and half of the Senate’s Republicans. The Senate’s approval of the RESTORE Act follows the House’s recent approval of an amendment by the same name.

“Especially in this day and age, we thank the bipartisan Senate leadership and the overwhelming number of Senators from both sides of the aisle who have brought the RESTORE Act so far,” said Land Tawney, National Wildlife Federation’s senior manager for sportsmen leadership. “A thunderous chorus of duck and goose wing beats and the tails of redfish can be heard spurring us on! Coupling the RESTORE Act with two years of significant funding for the Land and Water Conservation Fund—a measure that ensures public access for hunting, fishing and other outdoor activities across America—is a great day for anyone who hunts or fishes.”

“This is the culmination of more than three years of a national effort by hunters and anglers to restore the Gulf. An awe-inspiring number of individuals, organizations and businesses have stepped up over the past year to voice strong support for restoring the Mississippi River Delta,” Tawney continued. “This issue isn’t new to American sportsmen and women—this is our conservation issue for our time.”

The RESTORE Act has been an important initiative in conservation legislation for hunters and anglers from across the country due to the 10 million migratory waterfowl that winter or stopover on the Mississippi River Delta and the hugely significant commercial and recreational fishery the Gulf produces. The amendment comes at a crucial time for an ecosystem that faced extreme degradation before the oil spill, which only added insult to injury. Although much of the visible oil is gone, the region remains in jeopardy as food supplies and habitats are still recovering from the impacts of oil—and may face impacts from the spill for decades.

“This move helps Louisiana’s coast, its wildlife and fisheries and its people and communities take a big step forward in efforts to repair not only damages from the oil spill but also to begin addressing the dire coastal land loss that has plagued our state for the last 80 years,” said Louisiana Wildlife Federation’s Coastal Outreach Coordinator Chris Macaluso. “Louisianans have watched our coast vanish before our eyes for nearly a century, including losing some of the world’s best wildlife and fisheries habitat. Now that the Senate has shown a commitment to addressing this much-needed restoration, Louisiana has hope that it can start putting the resources needed toward the projects that will help save what we have left and hopefully turn land lost into habitat gained in the coming decades.”

Sportsmen and advocates from outside the Gulf are also praising the devotion of resources to reviving the Gulf ecosystem.

“With our state’s location in the Mississippi Flyway, Illinois waterfowl depend heavily on the Gulf Coast as a wintering ground,” said Mike Galloway of Hard Core Brands. “Restoring the Gulf means providing our waterfowl with healthy habitat—and that’s something Illinois sportsmen and women can support. Now we look forward to Congress passing, and the President signing into law, the final transportation bill with the RESTORE Act.”

“The Senate’s approval of this measure to use money from the oil spill to restore the Gulf resonates with hunters and anglers across the nation,” said Jim Martin, director of the Berkley Conservation Institute. “The Gulf Coast supports a world-class fresh- and saltwater fishery vital to our business and outdoor heritage, so it’s a region that matters.”
“Using money from the oil spill to restore the Gulf makes sense to anglers and hunters even in places like Nebraska and Iowa,” said Teeg Stouffer, Executive Director at Recycled Fish. “Many of our nation’s waterfowl, including the sandhill cranes that are famous in Nebraska, spend part of their lives on the Gulf Coast. Anglers around the world have watched the BASSMASTER Classic—the Superbowl of fishing—play out on the stage that the delta presents, so it’s a region that matters to fishermen and women everywhere.”

The legislation will ensure that penalties paid by BP and others responsible for the 2010 Gulf oil disaster are used to rebuild the economies of Gulf Coast communities that were impacted by the spill and to restore the natural resources, ecosystems, fisheries, marine and wildlife habitats, beaches, barrier islands, dunes, coastal wetlands, that are the foundation of the Gulf Coast economy.

A nationwide poll of 1,006 likely general election voters conducted by the Democratic firm, Lake Research Partners, and the GOP firm, Bellwether Research and Consulting, showed that the vast majority of U.S. voters (84 percent) believe the Gulf Coast—including the Mississippi River Delta—impacts the nation’s economy. Nearly two-thirds of those voters (63 percent) believe this region impacts the economy in their part of the country.

For more information, please visit http://www.vanishingparadise.org.

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