Under the legislation, the Interior Department’s overall budget would fall $720 million from fiscal 2011. A popular land and water conservation fund would see a more than 80 percent cut to $62 million, while funding for the North American Wetlands Conservation Act would get a 47 percent reduction to $20 million. State Wildlife Grants would also be cut 64 percent to $22 million.

Wildlife-themed riders are also sprinkled throughout the bill, including language that allows chemical companies and large agriculture operators to skirt pesticide permit requirements and enforcement of certain mountaintop mining rules. Conservation groups are complaining the language will dirty rivers and streams they use for recreation.

Other riders include a prohibition on judicial review of Interior’s decision to delist wolves in Wyoming and the Great Lakes region from the Endangered Species Act, as well as a zeroing out of funding for the Fish and Wildlife Service to list new species and designate critical habitat under the law.

“In the past, conservation has been a bipartisan issue. Democrats and Republicans have always agreed about hunting and fishing,” said Whit Fosburgh, president and CEO of the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, one of four conservation groups that took issue with a GOP-sponsored rider that blocks the Environmental Protection Agency from updating Clean Water Act policies dealing with fish and wildlife habitat.

“I think you’re seeing a divide that’s starting to open up that hasn’t always existed in the past and we hope won’t exist for very long,” Fosburgh added.

House Republicans said they’ve done the best they can for the hook and bullet crowd given tight fiscal times.

“There’s an awful lot of Republicans who are concerned about conservation and that I’d call Roosevelt Republicans, myself included, to some degree,” said Idaho Rep. Mike Simpson, chairman of the Interior, Environment and Related Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee.
“But when you don’t have the money, you don’t have the money,” Simpson added. “I’d like to drive a Porsche. Guess what? My wife says I can’t afford it.”

Conservation group leaders said they understand what GOP leaders are going through, and they’ve told lawmakers like Simpson as much in private meetings.

“Mike Simpson got dealt a lousy hand,” said Fosburgh. “He was in an incredibly unenviable position. There was no way he was going to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.”

Many also said they support the overall goal of reducing the deficit.