News Desk

Open Fields

Drive through most rural communities in the fall and you see “Welcome Hunters” signs in front of local restaurants and motels. Hunting and fishing enthusiasts bring many millions of dollars to small communities across the United States. But urban sprawl is slowly encroaching on traditional hunting properties. Where sportsmen once flushed pheasants from cornfields, they now find housing developments and strip malls.

The Open Fields bill currently in Congress would offer new opportunities for sportsmen. The legislation is sponsored by Senator Kent Conrad, D-North Dakota and Senator Pat Roberts, R-Kansas and would provide $20 million annually to state programs that pay landowners to open their potential hunting properties to hunters.

These access “walk-in” programs provide improved public access to private lands but also require that the lands be managed for wildlife by improving habitat or expanding huntable land. They give private landowners a financial incentive for providing hunting and fishing access to their hunting property while protecting them from liability and property damage. The programs are extremely popular with landowners and with sportsmen, but a lack of funding limits enrollment.  The Open Fields bill, which backers had hoped to attached to the 2007 Farm Bill, proposes funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture through the Commodity Credit Corporation. Each state would design and implement a program that fits the needs of its landowners and sportsmen. If implemented, the Open Fields measure could open four million additional acres to hunting and fishing.