Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke has selected five Boone and Crockett Club members for the Interior's Hunting and Shooting Sports Conservation Council along with three more members serving as alternates. The council's role is to advise the Secretary of the Interior and the Secretary of Agriculture on existing and proposed policies that affect wildlife and habitat conservation.

"This is how conservation was established and has been maintained and advanced in this country," said Ben B. Hollingsworth Jr., president of the Boone and Crockett Club. "Roosevelt built a network of experts passionate about wild places and wild things to ensure that generations of people would have the opportunity to enjoy them, and a lot of these conservationists were members of the Club."

Theodore Roosevelt and George Bird Grinnell founded the Boone and Crockett Club in 1887 to address the decline of wildlife, especially game species on a national scale.
  
Newly appointed to the Hunting and Shooting Sports Conservation Council include:

• Bob Model, past president of B&C
• Jeff Crane, president of the Congressional Sportsmen's Foundation
• Dale Hale, CEO of Ducks Unlimited
• Miles Moretti, president and CEO of the Mule Deer Foundation
• John Green, CEO of Crossroads Strategies and former policy advisor for the Senate Majority Leader

Alternates include:

• Becky Humphries, CEO of the National Wild Turkey Federation
• Rob Keck, director of Conservation for Bass Pro Shops
• Paul Phillips, president, founder, co-owner of Pac/West Communications and Co-chair of Conservation Policy Committee for B&C

"Conservation is a complex business that has no finish line," stated Hollingsworth Jr. "It takes strong leadership, knowledge, passion, and commitment especially today when so many seem to have lost sight of what conservation is and what it can deliver. Secretary Zinke is to be commended. His new council is loaded top-to-bottom with some of the brightest minds in the business."