[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 128 (Thursday, September 20, 2012)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6498-S6499]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
THE FARM BILL
Mr. BENNET. Madam President, I wanted to come to the floor today to
speak on a different subject, which is to demonstrate my support for
the Sportsmen's package compiled by Senator Tester from Montana. I know
the bill was discussed on the floor last night and the request to pass
this package of bipartisan bills was objected to, which is horribly
unfortunate. I hope we are going to have the opportunity to vote on the
measure before we leave town.
Sportsmen and women are an essential part of the fabric of our
country, the fabric of my home State of Colorado. This community
supports millions of jobs and contributes billions of dollars annually
to our economy, and they are often the drivers of our most important
conservation initiatives across our rich landscape.
While serving on the Senate Agriculture Committee, I have enjoyed
working with sportsmen to craft a revamped conservation title in the
farm bill. Some people forget that the farm bill conservation title is
the largest single legislative vehicle for the programs and resources
that help us conserve private land all across this country, all across
the western United States. It enhances vital wildlife habitat across
the country. Sportsmen have always played a vital role in crafting that
bipartisan title. That was exactly the way they participated this time
as well.
While it is not the reason I am here today--I want to talk about
Senator Tester's bill--I do want to take the chance to say once again
that in my view the House of Representatives ought to pass the 5-year
farm bill. We passed a bipartisan bill out of this Senate with well
over 70 votes, Democrats and Republicans. On the committee we worked
together for over 2 years to create the only bipartisan deficit
reduction that has happened in this Congress in either the House or the
Senate. We got rid of direct payments for producers, which was an
important reform. We strengthened the conservation title, as I was
saying earlier. There is absolutely no reason the House should not pass
this bill.
Over the break, I traveled 2,500 miles around the State of Colorado,
rural communities all over my State, and no one wanted to know what was
going on in the Presidential election. No one wanted to talk about
anything except why can't the farm bill get passed? There has never
been a time in modern history that a committee in the House, in this
case the House Agriculture Committee, passed out a bill in a bipartisan
way and it cannot even get to the floor for a vote. That has never
happened before. Something is wrong over there.
I can tell you that my farmers and ranchers in Colorado who are going
through the worst drought in a generation want people to knock the
politics off and pass this bill. Bipartisan, it is real deficit
reduction, and it is a good bill. We are doing an incredible
disservice, as I said to our farmers and ranchers, and also our
sportsmen by failing to act on this bipartisan legislation.
There was a time in my life when I had the chance to live in Montana
for a brief time, Senator Tester's home State, and I thought of myself
as a sportsman then. I used to fish a lot, chopped a lot of wood out
there. These days I spend a lot more time on airplanes and chasing my
three daughters to soccer games, but some day I will get back there.
That brings me to the importance of the package, this package for our
Nation's sportswomen and men. The provisions in Senator Tester's bill
represent some of the best bipartisan ideas out there to promote
hunting, fishing, and recreational access, bills from both sides of the
aisle that have been hanging around here for a long time and now need
to get passed. The measure would require that 1.5 percent of annual
Land and Water Conservation Funds go to provide public access to lands
for hunting and for fishing. I am a huge supporter of the Land and
Water Conservation Fund. This provision builds on the fine legacy of
that program.
The bill also contains a provision that is homegrown from our
sportsmen in Colorado. Section 103 provides certainty and parity for
America's bow hunters, that they can cross National Park Service land
with their bows to legally hunt nearby lands outside the park
boundaries. This access is provided to hunters with firearms but not to
hunters with bows.
I started working on this issue over 2 years ago when a Colorado bow
hunter encountered a problem. After 14 years of trying, this particular
hunter had finally drawn a license to hunt elk in the premium game unit
in northwest Colorado. He scouted the unit, found the area he wanted to
hunt and he was all set to go until Federal officials told him he could
not cross a narrow strip, a very narrow strip, of Park Service land to
hunt the BLM land next to it. This is despite the fact that hunters
with loaded firearms can cross Park Service land legally and without
applying for a permit.
The problem with this particular hunter is what brought this issue to
my office. But the broader point of the provision is to provide access
for our sportsmen and women. We know that we lose thousands of acres of
land every day to development, some of it important wildlife habitat.
We need to provide all Americans reasonable access to the land that we
have set aside for preservation and wildlife habitat, bow hunters
included.
That is why I was pleased to increase funding for the Voluntary
Public Access Program when we marked up the farm bill. That is why I am
proud to have worked with Senator Tester to include this provision in
his package that I hope we will be voting on soon.
The bow hunting provision was carefully tailored to ensure that
hunting of wildlife within Park Service boundaries remains illegal. Yet
the measure still provides reasonable access, which is so important to
the sportsmen in Colorado and across the country.
I have received a letter of support for the Bennet-Tester bow hunting
from Colorado stakeholder groups across the spectrum, including the
Colorado Wildlife Federation, the Rocky Mountain Bighorn Sheep Society,
Pheasants Forever, and the Bull Moose Sportsmen's Alliance, and the
list goes on. I ask unanimous consent to have this letter printed in
the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
December 7, 2011.
Hon. Michael Bennet,
Senator of Colorado, Russell Senate Office Building,
Washington, DC.
Dear Senator Bennet: The Credit Card Accountability
Responsibility and Disclosure Act of 2009, PL 111-24,
permitted concealed carry in the National Parks System
[[Page S6499]]
and National Wildlife Refuge System (NWRS). NPS regulations
to implement the concealed carry provisions of PL 111-24
became effective on February 10, 2010 and included all
firearms legal in the jurisdiction in which the park was
located. Park Service regulations continue to exclude bow and
arrows in the National Parks. In some locations this
effectively limits bowhunter access to hunt other adjacent
BLM, USFS or private lands that are otherwise open to hunting
and can now be legally accessed through NPS or NWRS lands by
firearms hunters.
36 CFR 2.4 d 4 allows the possibly of permitting for such
access through NPS lands where it is otherwise impossible or
impractical to make other access except through NPS lands. In
2009 one such request for permitting for Dinosaur National
Monument was denied by the Park Superintendent, effectively
denying practical bowhunter access to some BLM and state
school lands. Firearms hunters may now access these lands
across NPS lands without any requirement for permitting.
Similar access issues occur in several of Colorado's game
management units bounding on Dinosaur National Monument.
These situations likely occur at many National Parks and
National Monuments both in Colorado and other states.
Attempts to rectify this situation through an administrative
rule making process in the Department of the Interior have
been denied.
The undersigned sportsmen, representing several major
sportsmen's groups and retailers in Colorado request that,
barring any change in the DOI stance, legislative action be
taken to give bowhunters with archery equipment equal rights
in crossing NPS and NWRS as that enjoyed by those carrying
firearms.
Sincerely,
Tim Mauck & Gaspar Perricone, Co-founders, Bull Moose
Sportsmen's Alliance; Ivan James, Vice-Chairman for
Legislation, Colorado Bowhunters Association; Robert
Ong, President, Rocky Mountain Bighorn Sheep Society;
John Smeltzer, President, Colorado Wildlife Federation;
Dean Derby, President, Colorado Traditional Archery
Society; Bob Hewson, Executive Director, Colorado Youth
Outdoors; Robert Hix, Colorado Regional Director,
Pheasants Forever, Inc.; Joel Webster, Director--Center
for Western Lands, Theodore Roosevelt Conservation
Partnership; John & Kathy Tidwell, Owners, Bear Creek
Archery Inc; Michael Lewellen, President, Colorado
National Wild Turkey Federation; John Gale & David
Lien, Co-Chairs, Colorado Back Country Hunters and
Anglers.
Mr. BENNET. The overall sporstmen's package from Senator Tester is
also widely supported, ranging from the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation
Partnership to the Boone and Crocket Club to the National Rifle
Association. The Tester bill represent a bipartisan package of
commonsense bills that will benefit our Nation's sports men and women.
I want to thank Senator Tester for his leadership on behalf of the West
and urge a ``yes'' vote.
I will simply close by saying it is my fervent hope that once this
election is over, some 45 days from now, we will come back to this
Chamber, Republicans and Democrats together, and work to avoid surfing
over this fiscal cliff that will be so damaging to this economy.
People at home know something that people here have not yet figured
out, which is even if you believe you are always right on your side or
had a monopoly of wisdom on your side--which I do not, but some people
seem to--even if you believed it, we cannot accomplish this meaningful
deficit reduction without doing it in a bipartisan way. It is
impossible to do it without doing it in a bipartisan way.
People at home actually want to see it bipartisan, frankly, because
they do not believe in either party's go-it-alone strategy when it
comes to the debt and deficit. So my hope is this election will clear
the air, we will get back to work, and that before January we will have
something convincing to say to the American public on this subject.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Colorado.
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