Boone and Crockett Club Hosts American Wildlife Conservation Partners at Headquarters and at Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Ranch

In early August, the Boone and Crockett Club hosted activities for the nation’s top hunting conservation organizations that work together through the American Wildlife Conservation Partners (AWCP) during the partnership’s annual summer meeting. All of the attending partners had dinner on the lawn of the Club headquarters building which is housed in the historic Old Milwaukee Depot building in Missoula, Montana. After the meetings wrapped up, more than a dozen partners traveled to Dupuyer, Montana, for an overnight visit and tour of the Club’s Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Ranch.

The Boone and Crockett Club helped found AWCP in 2000 and has actively worked with these top hunting-conservation organizations on important policy issues in the quarter century since. This year, the partners finalized the recommendations that will be included in the next Wildlife for the 21st Century report that will be released in early September. This document has been a primary education tool produced for every incoming Administration and new Congress since AWCP was formed. The priorities discussed include conservation funding, migration corridors, climate and infrastructure policy, forest health, private land conservation, endangered species, and much more.

Taylor Schmitz, Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation Director and Tony Schoonen, Boone and Crockett Club CEO at Boone and Crockett Club's Headquarters.

“We were honored to host the American Wildlife Conservation Partners for dinner at our headquarters. We believe the work we do together with our partners in the hunting conservation community is absolutely essential to the future of hunting and sustainable use of our land and wildlife resources,” said Tony A. Schoonen, chief executive officer of the Boone and Crockett Club.

Because of its relative proximity to Missoula, partners were also given the opportunity to travel three hours east to the spectacular Rocky Mountain Front of Montana to tour the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial (TRM) Ranch. Purchased in the mid-1980’s to celebrate the centennial of the founding of the Club, the 6,000+ acre TRM Ranch is a working cattle ranch and houses the Club’s conservation education activities. The mission of the ranch is research, education, and demonstration of integrated livestock/wildlife conservation that is integral to the economic viability of private and adjacent public lands. The AWCP partners on the Ranch tour were able to learn about innovative irrigation techniques, how ranch managers work in a landscape that abounds with wildlife including apex predators like grizzly bears and wolves, and try their hands at fishing and shooting on the newly remodeled Palmer Shooting Range.

“We particularly hope that the tour of the TRM Ranch was an opportunity to see an exceptionally wild, natural place that is also a successful working ranch,” Schoonen concluded. “Many of the policies that we support include supporting the conservation of private lands and working agriculture operations. These operations are essential to the protection of millions of acres nationwide and provide critically important habitat and ecosystem benefits, while at the same time promoting and preserving the culture of family ranching and farming in our nation. To see that in practice out on the Ranch, and to understand the challenges and opportunities that many rural private landowners face is critically important as we develop the policies that will affect what they do on their land.”

Jake Swanson, Natural Resource Results, Camille Green, Wildlife Mississippi, Charlie Booher, Watershed Results, Ted Koch, North American Grouse Partnership, Tony Schoonen, Boone and Crockett Club, Kip Allardt, Campfire Club, Taylor Schmitz, Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation, Kurt Thiede, Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies, Dave Smith, Intermountain West Joint Venture, Luke Coccolli, Boone and Crockett Club, Hannah Stubblefield, Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation, Sophie Stemler, Cooper Stubblefield.