by Mark Chesnut - Tuesday, October 8, 2024
The Biden-Harris administration’s new proposed management plan to close 1.3 million acres of Bears Ears National Monument (BENM) in southeast Utah to recreational shooting is drawing criticism from the National Rifle Association and other conservation and hunting organizations that recognize the closing off of these public lands to responsible recreational activities as a gross overreach of regulatory authority.
Of course, this is not the first time the anti-gun Biden-Harris administration has attempted to curtail hunting and shooting activities. Earlier this year, nearly 99% of the Sonoran Desert National Monument’s 485,791 acres were closed off to recreational shooting. Readers of this NRA website will also recall that last year the administration used its Department of Education to cut funding to schools with archery and hunter education programs. Congress quickly passed legislation to restore the funding, and Biden reluctantly signed the measure last October.
Now the administration is taking aim at sport shooters and hunters at BENM, a move that has caught the attention of the NRA.
“This is another example of the Biden-Harris administration circumventing the law to punish recreational shooters and cut off access to federal lands,” said Randy Kozuch, NRA-ILA Executive Director. “This radical decision underscores the importance of the upcoming November elections to ensure that those in power respect the Second Amendment and our ability to exercise those freedoms.”
The proposal also flies in the face of a 2019 law specifically written to head off such actions by the federal government. As explained by NRA-ILA at the time, the law—also known as the John D. Dingell Jr. Conservation, Management and Recreation Act—among other things, declared it national policy that the Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service consider hunting, fishing and recreational shooting (HFRS) opportunities as part of federal land, resource and travel management plans. It also declared it national policy that these agencies conserve and enhance the management of wild game species and their habitat, including through hunting and fishing, in concert with state fish and game laws.Underscoring the NRA’s history of standing with America’s hunters and shooters, all of the provisions in the 2019 law related to HFRS were initiated by and/or developed by the NRA in concert with several other non-government organizations (NGOs) nearly a decade before it was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Donald Trump.
As NRA-ILA has shared in the past, while restricting access to opportunities for responsible, recreational shooting, the plan also could lead to lost revenue for conservation efforts. This is because much of the wildlife conservation initiatives across America are funded through excise taxes on the purchases of guns, ammo and related equipment. When it comes to hunting, the plan does give some cover to the administration to claim it isn’t anti-hunting by technically allowing for it on BENM. However, it severely limits vehicle access in remote areas of the monument, putting them out of play for many older and/or less mobile hunters who depend on off road vehicles to reach their hunting areas.
Other organizations speaking out against the Biden-Harris plan include Safari Club International (SCI), the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) and the Sportsman’s Alliance. In their remarks, SCI noted how it “undermines the entire ecosystem of conservation funding” while the NSSF labelled the action to restrict access a “blatant violation of the law.”
Now we hunters and target shooters must wait to see what happens next, hoping we ultimately can continue to access and enjoy the public lands we actively fund and sustain into the future.