Pennsylvania Angler & Boater - November/December 2021 - 4

Recovering America's
Wildlife Act
by Timothy D. Schaeffer
Executive Director
Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission
Jordan Allison
Fisheries Biologist
Diana Day
Conservation Coordinator
Scott Ray
Fish Culture Station Foreman
Union City State Fish Hatchery
and Christopher Urban
Nongame, Threatened, and Endangered
Species Coordinator
A lot has happened since Recovering America's Wildlife Act
(RAWA) was the focus of this column in the May/June 2019
Pennsylvania Angler & Boater edition, which highlighted the
potential significance of this landmark legislation toward helping
the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission (PFBC) implement
our mission to protect, conserve, and enhance the Species
of Greatest Conservation Need or at-risk species within our
statutory stewardship responsibility.
The American system of conservation funding based largely
on license sales has long been the primary funding source for
most state fish and wildlife management agencies, yet these
tremendous financial resources are simply not enough to keep
up with the needs of the non-game species that share the same
habitats as many game species.
RAWA would complement the contributions of sportsmen
and -women by providing state fish and wildlife agencies much
needed financial flexibility to proactively manage at-risk species.
With dedicated funding to implement State Wildlife Action Plans
(SWAPs), Congress would ensure that states have the necessary
resources to conduct ecologically relevant conservation projects
to benefit a broad range of at-risk species and associated species.
The result will be more proactive measures to keep common
native species common, prevent species from becoming
threatened or endangered, and more aggressively help species
on the road to recovery and removal from state and federal
imperiled lists. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of
4
Waterways Conservation Officer Kyle A. Wirick and Executive
Director Schaeffer with Timber Rattlesnakes.
cure, and RAWA would provide unprecedented ounces of
prevention to the Commonwealth.
Current funding levels are simply inadequate to address the 664
Species of Greatest Conservation Need identified by our agency
and the Pennsylvania Game Commission (PGC) in Pennsylvania's
Wildlife Action Plan. If enacted, Pennsylvania's RAWA
apportionment is projected to be about $20 million, up from about
$1.5 million currently received through state and Tribal Wildlife
Grants. Funds are shared equally between the PFBC and PGC.
This bipartisan legislation will finish the job started by
the Great American Outdoors Act in the 116th Congress,
complementing new public land investments and benefiting all
Americans by creating hundreds of thousands of jobs. Every
$1 million invested in species and habitat conservation creates
on average 17 to 33 quality jobs, meaning passage of RAWA
will create about 33,600 jobs every year.
Three events led by PFBC staff in 2021 demonstrate work
we are currently doing in the spirit of RAWA and that could be
greatly expanded with its passage.
In May, six Waterways Conservation Officer cadets joined other
members of our team to watch the cadets (now full-time officers)
apply their venomous snake training, including learning about
the biology of the Timber Rattlesnake, associated regulations,
life history and phenology, behavior, and basic safe handling of
venomous snakes, by participating in a population monitoring
event at one of the PFBC's long-term monitoring study sites.
The cadets learned to identify partially concealed Timber
Rattlesnakes among rocks and low-lying vegetation as snakes
hid in and around basking and gestating areas along a southfacing
slope that followed a 1-mile long ridgeline. That day, the
cadets honed their newly acquired skills in identifying basking
and gestation habitat, safely capturing, measuring, sexing, and
conducting basic health checks on approximately 40 different
Timber Rattlesnakes, with about a 60% capture rate (meaning
we observed and did not capture another 27 snakes). Given the
conditions, 60% was a decent capture rate.
They also assisted in administering Passive Integrated
Transponders (PIT) tags into the captured snakes. Very few
captured snakes had been previously PIT tagged. This is
significant for a study area with several hundred snakes tagged
Pennsylvania Angler & Boater * November/December 2021
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Pennsylvania Angler & Boater - November/December 2021

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