From an email I received


Advocate for Final Passage of Great American Outdoors Act: Contact Your Representative Today!

Advocate for Final Passage of Great American Outdoors Act

with NO Amendments!

The most robust conservation legislation in history needs your voice

Dear PF/QF Supporter,



After a Senate victory last month, the House of Representatives is set to take up the Great American Outdoors Act on Wednesday, July 22, 2020. This final vote will send the bill to the President's desk. We need your voice in support of the current bill with no amendments! If passed, this historic achievement would allocate billions of dollars for conservation, public lands and the future of sportsmen and women.



PF/QF Supporter Action Requested:



Call/email your Representative TODAY and request their support for passage of the Great American Outdoors Act in its present form with no amendments.

Click here to find contact information for your Representative

PF/QF Collective Messaging:



Dear Representative,



Please support the passing of the Great American Outdoors Act in its present form with no amendments. If funded, GAOA would:

Fully fund the Land and Water Conservation Fund that has direct impact on growing the outdoor recreation economy in all 50 states.
Fund the U.S. National Park Service and deliver much-needed financial aid to address the backlog of maintenance projects on federal lands that support hunting, angling, conservation and overall recreation experiences.

This broadly supported, bipartisan legislation would be a momentous achievement for conservation. Thanks in advance for your support of the Great American Outdoors Act!



PF/QF Member Questions?



For questions related to the Great American Outdoors Act, please contact Bethany Erb, Pheasants Forever & Quail Forever’s Washington D.C. Governmental Affairs Representative, at (571) 289-4472 or [email protected].

oneounceload,

Before I support it, I would need to know what is in the legislation, is it business friendly, does it help both the western and eastern rancher & farmer. Can you explain what the major part of the legislation does to benefit the American Sportsman & land owner. So much legislation today is just liberal garbage that undermines the land owners rights, I need to know that this legislation does not due it.

Pine Creek/Dave
L.C. Smith Man

I'm just passing this along, but here is the bill:
https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-con ... -bill/3422
It has to do with funding for various Fed agencies connected to the outdoors and hunting and fishing

If it’s “business” friendly that usually means guides and nonresident pay hunting. It won’t get my support if it has anything to do with that as that is the biggest obstacle to getting youth into hunting as cost have went sky high. When I can buy a half of beef for the cost of a three day pheasant hunt something is totally wrong.

How does a 3 day phez hunt cost you, in SD, as much as half a cow?

Too late. Congress passed it. Waiting on Trump now.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/22/politics/great-american-outdoors-act-house/index.html

From what I understand, this law has to do with funding for public parks projects. There's a bunch of money ($10B, IIRC) in the law to pay for maintenance in federal parks, forests, etc. But the biggest part of has to do with something called the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF). This fund has been around since the 1960s. Local communities tap into it to pay for local projects like municipal swimming pools, park improvements, ball fields, etc. The money for the fund comes from off-shore oil and gas drilling fees. I gather that Congress often uses this money as a slush fund and doesn't always devote these drilling fees to the LWCF program. This law makes that appropriation permanent so the money has to go were it's intended.

This sounds like one of those things where Congress passes a law to force itself to do what it's already supposed to do. There's no reason why they couldn't fully fund the LWCF, but they don't. So somebody writes a law to make them do it and they all get on board and say what a great thing it is that they're going to do what they already could have done. Congress . . . got to love them . . .

There's probably more to it than that, but this is my take-away from the little bit of reading I did.


ETA: If you want to see how much LWCF money went to your area, you can look here: https://www.lwcfcoalition.com/map-of-lwcf

I think the point of the Quail Forever email and its plea for no amendments was to make sure - as Bladewitcher said - that ALL of the money goes to where it is supposed to unlike what we saw happen with the Covid funds and the amendments for Planned Parenthood, Kennedy center, etc.

I'm not touching Planned Parenthood, but I'll stand up a bit for the Kennedy Center. They're a business like any other (a non-profit, but still a business). They have employees who couldn't work because of COVID-19. Not only their staff, but actors, performers and all the technical people involved in putting on performances . . . all out of work due to COVID-19 . . . If the tire shop on the corner is entitled to help to keep their employees paid, then why shouldn't the Kennedy Center get help too? Is it the name Kennedy? Is it just that it's the arts, rather than some other type of job?

This thread is about a federal program that pays for local ball fields and golf courses. Why are we defending that program, but not federal money to help one of America's premier performing arts centers? Makes no sense to me.

(BTW, have you ever been to the Kennedy Center? It's one of our national cultural treasures and something everyone should experience. I've seen four or five performances there and am always thrilled by the experience.)

Anyway, here's a piece defending the money the Kennedy Center got:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/04/25/fact-check-did-kennedy-center-donate-coronavirus-stimulus-aid-democratic-party/5166460002/

ETA: On the other side of the coin, here's an article that says the Kennedy Center actually ended up laying off people anyway . . .

https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/theater_dance/congress-gave-25-million-to-help-the-kennedy-center-weather-the-coronavirus-now-some-politicians-want-it-back/2020/04/03/5e5746f0-7525-11ea-85cb-8670579b863d_story.html

Wild birds are scarce in a lot of the state now due to conversion of grass into crop ground. Every farmer wants a minimum $100 a day per gun on a wild bird hunt. $300 on released pheasants.

I stick to public and working hard for a few birds as I won’t spend that much.

It’s a long ways from the old days of knocking on doors and getting permission for free.

sdbf,

Out here in the east in Pa we have very few wild Pheasants left, some hold overs in Potter County are great fun, but mostly we hunt Grouse and Woodcock. Fortunately we have the entire northern tier of Pa to hunt on so we seldom if ever pay to hunt. You are absolutely correct the old days of knocking on doors to get permission to hunt on somebodies land, are just about gone. Even here they are letting the clubs manage lots of the privately own land. Hate to see it myself.

We are very lucky here in Pa to have as much state forest (SFL) and Game Commission land (SGL) as we do.

Pine Creek/Dave
L.C. Smith Man

We can still step our front doors and hunt wild birds here in our Pa mountains.

yikes that's a shame!