Sustaining and, better yet, growing public support for wildlife management is a high priority on state and national wildlife conservation agendas. Without such support, nothing of much significance is likely to happen; with it, much is possible. Yet how do we grow public support for state wildlife agencies? The answer starts with fundamentals of the approach taken to public wildlife resource governance.

The 46^th general sign-up for the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) is underway.  The enrollment period opened on December 1^st and will continue until February 26^th of 2016, according to the Wildlife Management Institute.

The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) released its Review of the Landscape Conservation Cooperatives on December 3. The report concludes that a landscape approach is needed to meet the nation's conservation challenges and that the Landscape Conservation Cooperatives (LCCs) provide a framework for addressing that need. The report was conducted at the request of Congress.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) recently announced a new conservation effort to help agricultural producers provide food and habitat for monarch butterflies in the Midwest and southern Great Plains. A targeted 10-state effort by USDA's Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) will invest $4 million in 2016 to help combat their long-term and steady decline.

The U.S. Geological Survey Mississippi Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit surveyed habitat impairment in U.S. reservoirs and developed a tool for rating reservoirs relative to fish habitat status. The habitat ratings provide a measure of the overall habitat impairment status of a reservoir and can be used for rapid assessment and for comparing reservoirs. The ratings provide a method to quickly identify high-quality reservoirs for protection and degraded reservoirs for rehabilitation. Comparison of ratings among reservoirs facilitates prioritization of restoration activities.