Protecting Oregon sporting paradise from strip mining

Southwest Oregon is a place defined by steep country and untamed rivers where we can go to find solitude, dramatic landscapes, and some of the best habitat for big game and wild anadromous fish in the lower 48 states. Rivers like the Smith, Illinois, and Chetco are legendary amongst sportsmen and women for their strong runs of steelhead, sea-run…

Local input opens opportunity for BLM Lands in South Park

The Bureau of Land Management’s Royal Gorge Field Office covers some 666,000 acres of public lands sloping eastward from the Great Divide, through Colorado’s Front Range and into the rolling grasslands of the High Plains. Tucked into the rugged folds of its western shoulder lies one of the state’s richest landscapes, home to trophy trout, bountiful…

At home on the Tongass

A Dolly Varden from Alaska's Tongass National Forest.

My father once told me that “home is where you hang your hat.” I believed it, for a time, at least. I mean, as a young boy, who was I to argue with the wisdom of a grownup?  I’ve come to realize, though, that “home” is where everything seems to fall into place just right.…

Meet the Bureau of Land Management

The Bureau of Land Management, or BLM, manages more public land – 245 million acres – than any other land management agency, the vast majority of which is located in 12 western states and Alaska. And that’s just the surface lands; the agency manages an additional 700 million acres of subsurface minerals like oil and gas that underlie not only public lands…

National Park Service strives to create home for native cutthroat

What a thrilling prospect to catch native fish in a spectacular wilderness setting like in the picture above. That is what anglers’ dreams are made of. Years of hard work, planning and enduring partnerships strove towards this goal, but it’s still not quite a realized dream.   In 2005, Fred Bunch, chief of resource management at Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve, hatched a plan…