SCI has launched a new webpage, No-Net-Loss, to provide the educational resources and tools to support a No-Net-Loss policy. No-net-loss means maintaining or increasing the current level of hunting and fishing access on public lands across the country. Following significant access expansions from the Trump Administration, Safari Club International is fighting for a No-Net-Loss commitment from the Biden Administration.
Committing to support a no-net-loss policy is committing to sound stewardship of our natural resources as hunters and anglers are essential to the effective management of public land. Hunting license sales and federal taxes on a wide variety of hunting supplies contribute funds directly to state wildlife management. All of this stands to decline—with consequential losses for wildlife and habitat—if access to public lands for hunters and anglers is reduced.
The Biden Administration has repeatedly failed to commit to a No-Net-Loss policy. After a hunting and fishing access expansion on 2.1 million acres on National Wildlife Refuges, the Biden Administration restricted 3.2 million acres at Bears Ears National Monument and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. Now, the threat to No-Net-Loss is even bigger – a proposed shutdown of 60 MILLION ACRES in Alaska.
These 60 million acres are federal public lands of Units 23 and 26A in Alaska. The Federal Subsistence Board is holding a public hearing on November 17th as they consider closing the moose and caribou hunting season to non-federally qualified subsistence users – an access loss to all hunters who do not live in the immediate area.
