The center for conservation excellence conservation law program (program) educates students, legal practitioners, and additional audiences on the history and foundation of conservation law and policy,…

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service awarded a $188,030 Project Grant from the Multistate Conservation Grant Program (CFDA 15.628) to the National Wild Turkey Federation (NWTF) on June 27, 2024. The grant supports the NWTF's Conservation Law Program, which provides undergraduate, graduate, and continuing legal education on conservation law and policy. The program aims to educate students, legal practitioners, and the public on threats to conservation efforts, particularly from the animal rights movement. Key objectives include offering wildlife law and policy courses, providing educational seminars and online resources, and creating conservation-focused internships and career opportunities. Through this grant, the NWTF will work to strengthen the legal conservation community, promote sound science in wildlife management, and influence American decision-makers on the importance of conservation law and policy.

The center for conservation excellence conservation law program (program) educates students, legal practitioners, and additional audiences on the history and foundation of conservation law and policy, as well as threats to conservation efforts. These threats are largely against americans rights to hunt and fish and are predominantly narrated by the animal rights movement. The animal rights movement has unfortunately seen substantial growth- in the late 1990S, there were only one or two animal law courses being taught at U.S. Law schools by 2007, there were approximately seventy, with most of the nation s elite law schools represented. Today, there are an estimate 167 law schools in the U.S. And canada that offer at least one animal law course- a majority of which indicate teaching the concepts of animal rights and animal personhood.to combat special interest groups and an ILL-informed society who threaten modern conservation, the program offers students, lawyers, and judges the opportunity to study conservation law, not ideologies. The program teaches key concepts to strengthen the legal conservation community, preparing them to contribute to conservation professionally on the north american model of wildlife conservation, public trust stewardship in state wildlife management, and beyond. This is incredibly important because decisions based on the court of public opinion in lieu of sound science and appropriate wildlife management tools are influencing how the public views wildlife. The program strives to foster the change necessary to influence american decision makers by teaching the fundamentals and importance of conservation law and policy to help america s wildlife and americans rights. The core objectives to create and maintain informed conservation professionals are: 1) to provide undergraduate graduate level education with wildlife law and policy courses 2) to provide post-graduate and supplemental education with continuing legal education seminars on conservation law and providing educational videos to the general public through social media and website resources and 3) to create professional opportunities in the form of conservation-based internships, careers, and educators.