Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke on Friday finalized a rule allowing new or expanded hunting and fishing on 30 national wildlife refuges.
The Interior Department’s Fish and Wildlife Service said the move would increase the number of refuges where hunting is allowed to 377, and that 312 will now allow fishing.
Altogether, the Trump administration is opening or expanding an additional 251,000 acres to hunting and sport fishing, which it says will yield thousands of dollars in recreation-related spending.
“American sportsmen and women contribute over a billion dollars a year to fund conservation. Without hunters and anglers, we wouldn’t be able to conserve wildlife and habitat; and, without access to our public lands like national wildlife refuges, many hunters would have nowhere to go,” Zinke said in a statement. “Today’s announcement protects critical conservation funding, and ensures sportsmen have access to public lands for generations to come.”
Under federal law, national wildlife refuges in all states are protected from recreational use to protect and conserve threatened fish and wildlife.
But the Interior secretary can open refuges to hunting or sports fishing if he determines the use is compatible with protecting wildlife there.
The wildlife refuges span the country, including ones in Utah, Maryland, Ohio, Montana, Pennsylvania, Oregon, Illinois, North Dakota, and more.
The Trump administration has promoted expanding economic activities in wildlife refuges, most prominently signing into law a provision of the GOP tax reform law allowing oil and natural gas drilling in the long-untouched Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Democrats have panned those efforts, saying they threaten wildlife with little economic benefit.
The Trump administration also has encouraged big game hunting, overturning an Obama administration ban earlier this year by permitting hunters to import elephant trophies on a case-by-case basis.
