In the conservation community, Stewardship is incredibly popular and its successes (recall that interactive map) are widespread and well documented. Why so tough to renew the program?

To answer that, we can clarify a possible point of confusion in the last blog. I noted that Madison Audubon had used the Stewardship Fund (SF) to buy many acres in our sanctuaries, which mostly prohibit hunting. Now we don't use those grants because of the requirement to allow hunting. In the early days of Stewardship some organizations, including Madison Audubon, had used those grants to buy large tracts of land that they did not open to the public for some traditional and popular forms of outdoor recreation—hunting would head that list. Some legislators used that as a point of attack against the entire program. Policymakers reached a compromise to continue SF but require most of the land so purchased to be open to hunting.

Photo by Roger Packard / Madison Audubon