In two recent posts (Feb. 22 and Feb. 24), this blogger reported on the 2009 National Wildlife Refuge System Friends Unite Conference, which was held at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel in Washington, DC from February 21-23. This post is the last in this series of conference updates.
During this highly productive three-day conference, over 500 [...]

The House of Representatives passed the Fiscal Year 2009 Omnibus Appropriations Act, which contains the nine unfinished annual appropriation bills from the previous Congress. In the House bill, the National Wildlife Refuge System will receive $462.8 million for Fiscal Year 2009, which is an increase of almost $29 million over last year’s enacted levels.
In addition, [...]

On February 23 — day three of the 2009 National Wildlife Refuge System Friends Unite Conference, which was held in Washington, DC — one of the sessions featured the organization CARE or the Cooperative Alliance for Refuge Enhancement.
CARE is an unusual collection of 22 organizations that often possess different personal agendas but have one crucial [...]

R.I. teams with Interior, two nonprofits to preserve 120 acres in South County

Corp of Engineers seeks public comment about Back Bay NWR boat traffic

Air Guardsmen help marine researchers stay ‘green’ at Farallon NWR

More trumpeter swans finding new homes in Arkansas

Today this blogger attended the 2009 National Wildlife Refuge System Friends Unite Conference, which was held at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel in Washington, DC. The conference was designed to advance and strengthen Friends organizations through networking, skills-building and resource-sharing sessions. Over 500 volunteers (representing 161 Friends groups) and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service employees [...]

The Friends of Pool 9 — who just learned that they’ve been named the 2009 Friends Group of the Year — were recognized in a recent article of The Gazette in Iowa.

“I have never seen a friends group mature so quickly and do so much in so little time,” said Tim Loose, a wildlife [...]

Friends of Neches River co-chair explains push to establish refuge

Wildlife refuge officials report illegal dumping

Controlled hunts planned at Caddo Refuge

Guide charged with illegal hunting

Artists can submit work for refuge logo art contest

From February 21-23, 2009, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Wildlife Refuge Association will be hosting the 2009 National Wildlife Refuge System Friends Conference in Washington DC. The conference is designed to advance and strengthen Friends organizations through networking, skills-building and resource-sharing sessions.
This blogger will be at the conference and will post conference [...]

The San Luis Valley Water Protection Coalition is reporting that the San Luis Valley Ecosystem Council, Lexam Exploration, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service have reached an agreement to “cease all construction activities” related to drilling on Colorado’s Baca National Wildlife Refuge until August 2009.
On December 7, 2008, this blog reported that the [...]

Today President Barack Obama signed into law the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Public lands picked up a sizable chunk of the stimulus spending with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service getting $290 million for national wildlife refuges and fish hatcheries. The USFWS total includes:

$165 million for resource management — deferred maintenance, construction, [...]

The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence has announced that the group’s lawsuit recently produced documents that show the Bush administration ignored warnings from senior officials at the Interior Department regarding the legality of the administration’s effort to hurry through a rule change that allows visitors in national parks and national wildlife refuges to carry [...]

In all the hyperbole being fanned by the media during the “debate” over the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, one particularly dubious story was spread by right-wing blogs, newspapers and cable hosts claiming that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi had personally inserted into the stimulus bill a $30 million project that was for the [...]