Boone and Crockett Club Convenes Forest & Rangeland Investment & Innovation Panel

Club CEO Tony Schoonen (far left) moderated the first panel featuring partners who are doing forest and rangeland restoration and fuels reduction projects during the Investment & Innovation in Forest and Rangeland Health briefing on March 5. Panelists Left to Right: Mark Hatfield, Director, Conservation Services, National Wild Turkey Federation, Sally Palmer, External Affairs Advisor, The Nature Conservancy, Austin Williams, Alaska Director of Law & Policy, Trout Unlimited, Marcus Selig, Chief Conservation Officer, National Forest Foundation, and Steve Belinda, Chief Conservation Officer, Mule Deer Foundation.

The Boone and Crockett Club recently convened a panel discussion on Forest and Rangeland Investment and Innovation for our nation’s leaders. The briefing was held in the Senate Dirksen Office Building and was attended by more than 120 congressional staffers, federal agency professionals, and our partners in conservation.

After the passage of the Investment in Infrastructure and Jobs Act and Inflation Reduction Act, our partners in the federal agencies found themselves overwhelmed with resources – a problem that many leaders had never faced. For decades, the biggest constraint in managing our federal public lands was adequate funding, but all that changed overnight. Processes and human capacity became the limiting factor.

The leaders of our federal land management agencies immediately turned to trusted partners, including those gathered on Capitol Hill in March, to deliver for the American people.

“Spending money takes time, and it takes time to spend money well. And without people, none of this matters,” said Tony Schoonen, CEO of the Boone and Crockett Club in his opening remarks. “You will hear that these organizations are working closely with one another, with the agencies, and with the communities where this work is occurring. There is work yet to be done. We look forward to discussing the great work of these private sector partners is ensuring these dollars are spent effectively and efficiently to achieve the missions of our federal land management agencies.”

The Club brought together an extraordinary group of speakers for this event, totaling nearly 150 years of collective experience of conservationists working with and for the USDA Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management (BLM), and other federal land management agencies across nearly the entire country – from Florida to Alaska.

Though the professionals represented on the panel have been working on these challenges for decades, the briefing served as a forum to recognize that the federal land management agencies are entering a new way of doing business. Collectively we also work with the Forest Service and BLM off our federal public lands and there are extensive opportunities on state, Tribal, and private lands that we’re just starting to explore.

The Club was proud to have the leadership of both the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management here to celebrate and learn with us at this event, including Tracy Stone-Manning, the Director of the BLM, and Angela Coleman, Associate Chief of the Forest Service.

The Boone and Crockett Club, North America’s oldest conservation organization, has been intimately involved in the conservation and management of our federal public lands since the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management were created. We have also actively been engaged on the policies that promote active habitat restoration and management of our public lands to ensure rangeland and forest health.