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Biodiversity needs a chance to flourish on BLM Lands
Sometimes it seems utterly hard to fathom the losses of biodiversity we are facing today. A jarring report published last year noted the abundances of freshwater species across the globe have declined over 80 percent since 1970. Born just shortly before this, by the ripe old age of 8 or 9, I was concerned enough…
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To kill bass (or not)
The thrill of the catch
The thrill of the catch. Gurgle, gurgle, gurgle…splash! As I reared back and the fishing rod bent in a tight arc, I thought, “This is a good start!” And it got better. Seven casts. Seven fish. And 30 minutes of the best smallmouth bass fishing I’d ever experienced. Five of the seven bass were fat…
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Every Bit Counts
On a controversial river in a drying landscape, ranchers look to science, technology and the law to send just a little more water downstream. Jesse Kruthaupt’s dad found the family’s future ranch stretching along a place called Tomichi Creek nestled in a valley on the Western Slope of Colorado’s Rocky Mountains. It was the late…
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The True Cast – Why the United States is the Envy of the Fishing World
There’s always much to celebrate on Independence Day.
There’s always much to celebrate on Independence Day. Sure, we’re living in divisive times and there are things that concern most of us for different reasons and in different ways in America these days. But the bottom line is that this collective “experiment in democracy” is still kicking (and then some) 247 years after a…
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Montana train derailment and bridge collapse. Sound familiar? Because it is.
In mid-June, just as high waters were still flushing the Yellowstone River, sixteen railcars derailed after a bridge collapsed. The train, carrying hazardous materials such as hot asphalt, molten sulfur, and scrap metals, is just one of several train derailments making the news this year. This time, in an iconic river with its fair share…
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Watch conservation from the skies in “Romeo November”
TU partners with Lighthawk and American Rivers to highlight three conservation projects helping to recover the Colorado River Basin Providing water to 40 million people, countless wildlife and the region’s economy, the Colorado River is truly the lifeblood of the American Southwest – and it is drying up, quickly. Decades of drought, climate change, and…
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Do we anglers, ourselves, amount to a ‘conservation challenge’?
Angling Trade magazine (of which I am also editor) recently conducted a poll of folks with a stake in the business of fly fishing, asking what they considered to be the greatest conservation issue of the day. Answer number one… climate change. No surprise there, but that probably wouldn’t have been the case even several…
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