Field & Stream/Trout Unlimited Best Wild Places Tour 2010

In 2003, Trout Unlimited created its Sportsmen's Conservation Project in order to better organize a sporting community that was growing restless with "politics as usual" when it came to managing – and protecting – irreplaceable fish and wildlife habitat on public lands in the West. Over the years, the voices of conservation-minded sportsmen had been co-opted by interests whose goals ran counter to those of the hunters and anglers across America who, even then, understood that good hunting and fishing starts with healthy, intact habitat – habitat that provides places to go to hunt and fish on land that belongs to every American.

Unfortunately, politics never really disappear from the conservation conversation. A decade ago, many in the Republican camp assumed that, because sportsmen often champion the traditionally conservative mission to back the Second Amendment, hunters and anglers were fully invested in other right-leaning policies regarding resource extraction, industrial development and privatization. Democrats, on the other hand, assumed sportsmen and women resided in the political back pocket of the conservative agenda, and therefore listened more closely to those in the environmental movement, thereby marginalizing the hunters and anglers who were interested in a more moderate approach to landscape-level protection.

It wasn't until 2005 that TU's Sportsmen's Conservation Project really began to help anglers and hunters flex their political muscles. Efforts were afoot to sell off public lands to mining interests, and energy development policies were put in place to make drilling for oil and gas an expedient process that bypassed bedrock environmental laws put in place to protect the public's land and water … and fish and game.

It was then that we, as hunters and anglers, convinced politicians that protecting habitat also protected our opportunity to hunt and fish – now and for generations to come. Politicians began to understand that sportsmen and women were approaching conservation not from a political perspective, but from a deeply-held cultural point of view. With guidance from the SCP, sportsmen stopped the proposed liquidation of federal public lands, and played prominent roles in the campaigns to protect Montana's Rocky Mountain Front and New Mexico's Valle Vidal from unnecessary and intrusive oil and gas drilling.

Soon after, working with Republican leadership in Idaho, we helped draft a rule that protected the largest swath of roadless fish and game habitat in the Lower 48. Subsequent victories on behalf of hunters and anglers with bipartisan support followed. We protected 1.2 million acres of prime fish and game habitat in the Wyoming Range. We assured an economy built on sportfishing in southern Oregon that salmon and steelhead would always be able to return to the Elk River and the new, sportsmen-created Copper-Salmon Wilderness. We helped permanently protect the National Landscape Conservation System, which includes such hunting and fishing destinations as Colorado's Gunnison Gorge and the Steens Mountain region of Oregon. And in doing so, we opened the eyes of politicians on both sides of the aisle.

Today, with our momentum, we've joined forces with the preeminent voice of the sportsman – Field and Stream Magazine – to identify six irreplaceable and iconic public landscapes in the West that, without the help of America's hunters and anglers, could one day disappear. The idea is to get you – our country's avid sportsmen and women – to visit these priceless destinations and partake in their hunting and fishing bounty. With your firsthand experience, you can then convey the importance of our sporting heritage to the politicians who will decide the fate of these treasured landscapes.

We need you to venture into the canyon country of Colorado's Roan Plateau and pluck native Colorado River cutthroat trout from the cold, clear waters of Trapper Creek. We need you to shoulder your shotgun and send your dog up a slope in Nevada's Pine Forest Range in search of chukar. We need you get lost in the vast wild country of northwest Montana's Yaak Mountains, with your fly rod as your only companion, and stalk the plentiful herds of pronghorn that roam the wide, wild spaces near Little Mountain, Wyoming. And don't stop there. Explore the varied habitats of the Gila country of New Mexico in search of rare native trout and the high-altitude, scenic sportsmen's paradise that is Colorado's Alpine Triangle.

In short, we need you, the American sportsman, to step into the fray and work to protect your pastimes for what they offer you today, and your kids and grandkids tomorrow. Take that first step. Go. Visit our Best Wild Places and do what you do best: Fish. Hunt. Then join us in the effort to protect our public land treasures for the future.