Every so often, I get a staggering reminder of just how much the American people care about conservation.

Today is the first anniversary of the Save Vanishing Species semipostal stamp, which was created to raise public awareness and garner support for global conservation efforts. 

Featuring a beautiful drawing of an Amur tiger cub by artist Nancy Stahl, the stamps cost just slightly more than first-class postage and the extra goes to international conservation. By the end of August, 14.9 million stamps had been sold, raising more than $1.5 million.

Just astonishing!

The picture of the tiger cub is especially fitting because only about 400 Amur tigers are thought to still live in the wild.

Proceeds directly benefit the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Wildlife Without Borders - Multinational Species Conservation Funds, which have funded more than 1,800 grants for tigers, elephants, great apes, rhinos, gorillas, chimpanzees and sea turtles.

This stamp is available in U.S. post offices and at USPS.com. thank you for your support of this project and for your efforts to help us stamp out extinction.

 I have been talking a lot these days about the economic value of hunting and fishing.

Today I am discussing that topic at a media event sponsored by the Congressional Sportsmen Foundation, National Shooting Sports Foundation, American Sportfishing Association and National Marine Manufacturers Association, all great groups focused on improving access to wildlife-related sports.

I am a hunter and an angler, have been all my life. I learned the skills from my dad, and his enthusiasm for the outdoors fed the little spark in me until that spark grew into a passion for fish and wildlife that led me to where I am today.

I know firsthand the importance of sportsmen and –women, and I love sharing that story.

The National Survey of Fishing, Hunting, and Wildlife-Associated Recreation that we released a few weeks ago shows that the number of hunters and anglers in 2011 was up 10 percent over 2006.

This increase reverses decades of declines and is great news for the nation.

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Friday we celebrated the establishment of the 558th unit of the National Wildlife Refuge System: the Sangre de Cristo Conservation Area in Colorado, and the man who made it possible -- Louis Bacon.

Mr. Bacon is a private landowner with a deep and long commitment to conservation. He has donated a conservation easement on approximately 75,000 acres for landscape and wildlife conservation purposes in the San Luis Valley, Sangre de Cristo Mountains. And there’s more to come. He also plans to donate a conservation easement on more land later.

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