Since 2003, the Sportsmen’s Conservation Project has worked on the local and regional levels to protect public land with acute value to sportsmen and women. To date, we’ve provided permanent protection for millions of acres of prime fish and wildlife habitat on behalf of hunters and anglers:
- In 2005, the SCP helped protect New Mexico’s Valle Vidal, the “Yellowstone of the Southern Rockies.” The Valle Vidal, situated in north-central New Mexico is home to trophy mule deer and elk herds (and New Mexico’s once-in-a-lifetime elk draw). It also holds irreplaceable populations of native Rio Grande cutthroat trout.
- In 2006, the SCP worked with local and regional stakeholders to protect Montana’s vast Rocky Mountain Front from future oil and gas drilling. In doing so, TU, through the SCP, became the first non-profit organization to take ownership of active natural gas leases – which were turned over the BLM for permanent retirement.
- Also in 2006, the SCP helped turn away a Congressional effort to sell off huge swaths of Western public land to mining interests. This marked one of the first times in generations that sportsmen mobilized en masse to beat back a frontal assault on the integrity of the country’s public land management traditions.
- In 2008, the SCP was instrumental in helping the state of Idaho draft its own roadless protection rule. Thanks to this rule, over 8 million acres of prime fish and game habitat will remain just as it is today.
- In 2009, the SCP helped protect almost 14,000 acres in the headwaters of the Elk River in southwestern Oregon. One of the last intact coastal salmon and steelhead streams on the West Coast, the headwaters of the Elk are now part of the Copper-Salmon Wilderness.
- The SCP, also in 2009, achieved protection for over a million acres of fish and game habitat within the Wyoming Range. This hunting and fishing paradise is now safeguarded for generations to come.
- In addition, in 2009 the SCP worked to permanently protect the National Landscape Conservation System, a network of high-value public lands managed under the Bureau of Land Management. The Conservation System earned permanent protection from Congress, and is now one of the largest networks of intact fish and wildlife habitat left in the United States.
The SCP continues to take strong action to make sure the best sporting opportunities on public lands in the West remain that way for future generations. Today, our priorities include:
- Colorado’s Roan Plateau, which is threatened by oil and gas drilling in sensitive fish and game habitat.
- The Middle Yellowstone River drainage, targeted for oil and drilling, and the Upper Green River Basin, which is under attack from irresponsible oil and gas extraction plans, off-road vehicle abuse and other extractive uses.
- The Blue Lakes area of northern Nevada, where development could impair one of the last, best places to hunt and fish in the Silver State, and southern Oregon’s John Day River basin, where encroaching development could take a bite out of that region’s unmatched hunting and fishing resources.
- Colorado’s Alpine Triangle, in the southwest portion of the state, where a large tract of BLM land offers excellent sporting opportunity and deserves permanent protection under the Conservation System, and the upper Dolores River drainage, also in southwest Colorado, where an intact roadless ecosystem provides some of the best hunting and fishing left in the West.
