On August 18, U.S. Secretary of the Interior David L. Bernhardt announced the historic opening and expansion of over 850 hunting and fishing opportunities across more than 2.3 million acres at 147 national wildlife refuges and national fish hatcheries. This rule is the single largest expansion of hunting and fishing opportunities by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Service) in history.
“On the heels of President Trump signing the most significant conservation and recreation funding in US history, providing nearly $20 billion over the next 10 years to fix and conserve the American people’s public lands, the Trump Administration has now made an additional 2.3 million acres accessible to new hunting and fishing opportunities,” Secretary Bernhardt said at the Shiawassee National Wildlife Refuge in Michigan.
“We continue to take significant actions to further conservation initiatives and support sportsmen and women who are America’s true conservationists,” Bernhardt added.
The final rule opens or expands 859 hunting and fishing opportunities (an opportunity is defined as one species on one field station in one state). On top of last year’s expansion of 1.4 million acres for new or expanded hunting and fishing opportunities, this proposal would bring the Trump Administration’s total expansion to over 4 million acres nationwide.
This rule increases the number of units in the Service’s National Wildlife Refuge System open to public hunting to 430 and those open to fishing to 360. The rule also formally brings the total number of National Fish Hatchery System units open to hunting or sport fishing to 21.
New refuge opportunities include the opening of migratory bird hunting, upland game hunting, big game hunting and sport fishing at Everglades Headwaters National Wildlife Refuge in Florida for the first time. In New Jersey the ruling expanded existing sportfishing areas at Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge to new acres. It also opened recreational fishing opportunities for the first time at the Lamar National Fish Hatchery in Pennsylvania, and opened new hunting opportunities to the Bombay Hook National Wildlife Refuge in Delaware.
The rule also continues the effort from last year’s rule toward revising refuge hunting and fishing regulations, so they more closely match state regulations where the refuge is located. Whenever refuge regulations depart from state regulations for safety or conservation compatibility reasons, these extra regulations are as consistent as possible across all refuges in a given state. Interior worked closely with the states during the rule making process.
For more information, view interactive maps of fishing opportunities throughout the country at www.fws.gov/refuges/fishingguide.
