While our nation’s founders fought for freedom from tyranny and oppressive taxation, personal liberty was at the core of America’s origin story.

Nearly 250 years later, personal liberty remains the great gift of our national sovereignty movement, and while signers of the Declaration of Independence couldn’t have imagined it in 1776, the emergence of public land is one of the great expressions of our national identity. As colonists, we were surrounded by the wild woods and rivers of America, originally the territory of Native Americans, then considered the domain of the King of England and off-limits to our European ancestors who lived among the boundless bounty of the New World.

But in the new United States, those public lands changed ownership, becoming the property not of the King but, eventually, of all citizens. Given that history, there’s no better expression of your right as an American than to recreate this holiday on public land.

Maybe you visit one of America’s 424 national parks that span more than 84 million acres of mountains, red-rock canyon, rivers, and even tropical islands. Or maybe you stay at a designated campground while you hike a few of the 188 million acres managed by the U.S. Forest Service. Feeling a little more adventurous? Shoulder a backpack and trek across 111 million acres of designated wilderness. Or find a remote two-track trail and camp beside your vehicle on the 247 million acres of ground administered by the Bureau of Land Management. Maybe you want to view wildlife? The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service administers over 560 National Wildlife Refuges and 70 national fish hatcheries, where healthy wildlife habitat is the agency’s top priority.

Those are just the federal lands that are open to you, your family, and your neighbors. Every state has thousands (some have hundreds of thousands) of acres managed as state parks or state forests. Nearly every mile of our rivers is open to public recreation, and tens of thousands of lakes and reservoirs offer wonderful fishing, camping, and water-based recreation.

Finding Your Way on Public Lands

Public lands can sometimes resist visitation. They’re not always clearly marked or defined. They often require a vehicle to access. Some charge visitation fees to help cover administration and infrastructure improvement costs. And others are so remote and wild—we’re looking at you, Alaska—that they require specific logistics to reach and special gear to access.

But there are plenty of resources to help you find public lands near you. If you’re looking for a campground or designated recreation area, visit www.recreation.gov. Or maybe you want to find a place to hunt, hike, or fish. The Public Lands Foundation has interactive maps of federally managed public lands across the country. And every state wildlife and parks agency has maps and resources for visitors to state-managed lands.

If you’re into take-it-with-you technology, the mobile mapping app onX shows land ownership of nearly every acre of the country, and can be a great resource to find out-of-the-way public parcels.

Public-Land Funding

As you recreate this Independence Day, keep in mind that while public land is open to everyone regardless of age, gender, race, or religion, it’s not exactly free. It was taken from Native Americans and costly to our founders, but this gift to all Americans and visitors required funds to acquire in some cases, and nearly all public property requires ongoing maintenance, which is funded through a variety of channels.

Acquisition of public lands is made possible through outright purchase. In some cases, state wildlife agencies use revenue from hunting and fishing licenses to purchase fee title or conservation easements that allow full or limited public use of the property. In other cases, funds from the federal Land and Water Conservation Fund are used to purchase parkland, wildlife habitat, or even municipal playground equipment. In the case of wildlife refuges, states tap into federal and state funds to acquire critical habitat that is then managed primarily for wildlife. Many of America’s most pristine wetlands and waterfowl production areas were purchased with funds from the Duck Stamp, a special license required of every duck and goose hunter in America.

Critical maintenance of our public-land infrastructure—including parking areas, fencing, weed management, campgrounds, and restrooms—is often funded by America’s hunters and anglers. Many state agencies receive a portion of taxes that shooters and anglers pay when they buy guns, ammunition, and fishing gear. That tax revenue can only be used on projects that benefit wildlife management, habitat, outdoor recreation, and facilities like shooting ranges, boat docks, and wildlife refuge parking lots.

While hunters and anglers fund many of these infrastructure improvements, the vast majority of visitation is by Americans who never bought a hunting or fishing license.

But you shouldn’t be overly concerned about potholes, port-a-potties, or parking signs this holiday as you enjoy America’s expansive public lands. Use our public properties, share them, celebrate them, and cherish them. Just know that our public land, like our freedom, isn’t free.

About the Outdoor Industry Communication Council

Formed around a commitment to educate all Americans about the origins of conservation funding in America, the Outdoor Industry Communication Council is powered through a multi-state conservation grant and represented by companies, wildlife agencies, professional communicators, and conservation organizations.

The post This Independence Day, Celebrate the Gift of Public Land appeared first on Outdoor Life.

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IT’S NOT THE endless daylight that prevents sleep, but the stillness. There is no breeze, no rustling leaves, no buzzing insects or hooting owls. Instead, the emptiness amplifies everything. A small avalanche of rock and snowmelt cascades from nearby cliffs into the sea—not a danger, but loud enough to make you jump. Glaciers groan as they settle. Humpbacks spout in the channel all night long.

My sisters and I are curled in bivvy sacks on a frozen beach on the Antarctic Peninsula, surrounded by some 30 other tourists and a couple fat Weddell seals. 

Besides us and the guides, few of our companions have ever camped before. It’s an odd introduction, in part because leave-no-trace practices don’t cut it in Antarctica. In the morning all footprints must be scuffed out with our boots. Neither food nor drink except water is allowed ashore, along with any gear that hasn’t undergone biosecurity checks. The latrine lecture is similarly strict and involves a good deal of giggling from the uninitiated.

Everyone follows the rules, except the massive cruise ship that lumbers into view and kills its engines across from our campsite. Eventually it groans to life again and disappears behind an island. An elegant three-mast barque in a nearby cove weighs anchor and follows suit. They haven’t left; they’re just hiding at our group’s request.

“There are 20 ships along the Peninsula right now,” a guide confided when I’d asked about fellow tourists. “You feel alone because they make you feel alone.”

All this babysitting and sleight of hand is the catch-22 of Antarctica, a continent that is at once a fragile ecosystem and a ruthless force of nature. Without scrutinizing tourists and their negative impacts (both of which are on the rise), humans will inevitably ruin what makes this place extraordinary.

Yet micromanaging wilderness defeats its purpose. There are still opportunities for true exploration in Antarctica today, but they’re highly supervised and subject to restrictions. This is a far cry from the freedom enjoyed by the Antarctic explorers of even a century ago, whose feats of endurance in these frozen badlands gave rise to some of the world’s greatest survival stories. Today, with the inherent risk of polar exploration stripped away, we’re also robbed of its full rewards.

The Seventh Continent

The prospect of being trapped in a floating hotel with a literal boatload of people is not my family’s idea of vacation. (Philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre wasn’t talking about cruises when he wrote that “hell is other people,” but he might as well have been.) You can fly to Antarctica, but the traditional way to experience it is by boat. So we booked the smallest ship we could manage and sailed south from Argentina with some 90 other passengers. It’s a 330-foot 1A ice-class ship that’s nearly 50 years old and, like most Antarctic cruises, marketed as an “expedition” vessel. During a mandatory safety briefing on our first day at sea, a middle-aged woman raised her hand.

“If someone falls overboard and they’re panicking, do you knock them out first before you pull them back on board?” Our expedition leader just stared, momentarily speechless. “Because,” she added, “I don’t want to be knocked out.”

Later, our guides share other gems. A German told us about one tourist who, upon clambering out of a Zodiac onto the beach, wanted to know their altitude.

“So how high are we right now?” he had wondered, the ocean lapping at his feet.

The winner, everyone agreed, was the man who waved skyward and asked, “Is this the same moon we have in Texas?”

ANTARCTICA IS BIGGER than Europe and shaped like a hurricane, with the lone arm of the Antarctic Peninsula and its islands stretching north toward the tip of South America. It takes an average of two days to sail between the continents. Ships must navigate the notorious Drake Passage, a turbulent convergence of oceans where the waves, whipped into frenzy by furious winds, can reach 40 feet.

In the winter, the Southern Ocean freezes in a halo around the continent. The ice retreats come summer, allowing ships to maneuver close to shore—usually along the Antarctic Peninsula—and disgorge tourists. More than a few have arrived eager to see polar bears, only to discover they don’t live in the Southern Hemisphere.

Instead, the rocky shores are teeming with seabirds like petrels and albatrosses, the latter of which can spend years at sea without returning to land. Good-natured Weddell seals and humpbacks are most common along the coast, though a dozen other seal and whale species can be spotted, too. But the main attraction are the six subspecies of penguins native to the continent. You can identify penguin colonies long before you hear or smell them by the muddy game trails through the snow. 

There are no land-based predators in Antarctica, and there is no wildlife or vegetation in interior Antarctica—only snow, ice, crevasses, and rugged mountain ranges. The continent itself is covered in the largest piece of ice on Earth and contains more than half of the planet’s freshwater. The ice is so heavy that it’s actually causing the land beneath it to sink into the sea.

No single country governs Antarctica. Instead, the Antarctic Treaty of 1959 laid the foundation for global cooperation around scientific research and, later, preservation. Hunting and fishing are strictly forbidden in a place that’s designated as “a natural reserve, devoted to peace and science.”

During the 2022 to 2023 tourism season, an estimated 106,000 passengers navigated the Drake to cruise along the continent. Nearly 64,000 of those went ashore (ships carrying more than 500 passengers are not allowed to make landings). Although this number represents just 2 percent of Yellowstone’s 2021 visitations, it’s a staggering 1,225 percent increase from the early 1990s, when 8,000 tourists visited Antarctica each year. With them come invasive species, vandalism to historical artifacts, and disruption to wildlife. 

Anja Blacha Skis to the South Pole, 2020

Before the daily Zodiac cruises, our guides scout. Every morning and afternoon they scatter in all directions before collecting tourists and trolling past the critters they glassed up earlier, as if stumbling upon them for the first time.

The discretion is deliberate. They don’t tell us we’re headed to see a rare penguin in case it vanishes before we get a good look. They use code when radioing each other for the same reason. It’s a simple system—L.S. for leopard seal, E.P. for emperor penguin—but many people don’t pay enough attention to crack it.

“I’ve got an H.B. at 10 o’clock,” our guide radios after a humpback surfaces off our bow. She’s a friendly Brit with one Antarctic season under her belt, and she’s a touch nervous. I ask how she likes the work.

“Some guides carry a plastic cup so they can scoop krill out of the water and show them to guests,” she says at one point, hesitating before adding, “I’m not sure how I feel about that.”

It’s clear that the idea of displacing a handful of krill, even for a moment, troubles her. Then she twists the throttle and the motor rumbles to life.

“Anyone have an iPhone?” she asks, brightening. “Want to take a time-lapse of an iceberg?”

BEFORE SHE SKIED to the South Pole, Anja Blacha was just another tourist.

In 2013 the German entrepreneur and her sister traveled to Peru, where they joined a “standard tourist trek” to Machu Picchu. That multiday hike was her first time in a sleeping bag or tent, and she had never spent so much time outdoors. 

Ten years later Blacha can’t begrudge tourists their chaperoned fun. Without it, she wouldn’t have gone on to become the youngest German woman to summit the tallest peak on every continent. That includes Mt. Everest, of course, but also Vinson Massif, the 16,050-foot peak at the base of the Antarctic Peninsula. In 2020 Blacha completed an 858 mile ski trek to the South Pole to achieve what was, at the time, the longest solo, unsupported polar expedition by any woman in history. (Her record has since been broken by Preet Chandi.) 

Although Blacha, now 32, has journeyed to the Arctic (“there’s a risk of polar bears there so I had to learn to shoot”), she says Antarctica is unique. “The sheer expanse of the continent is mind-blowing. I remember being in high camp at Vinson and just looking out around me and it looked like I was above the clouds. But everything was land mass and snow and ice. It’s so, so beautiful.”

Because of that vastness, Blacha sometimes lost a feel for judging distance on her ski trek. Snowcapped mountain ranges look like they could be 10 miles away or 100. Without referencing her GPS, it was disorienting. After just four days of skiing, conditions deteriorated into a brutal storm with gusts building to over 60 mph.

“It was just miserable and painful. My tent was taken up at night and I could barely walk up against the wind. I was crawling on my knees when I was trying to get to my sled,” Blacha says. “The fact that the storm hit me at the beginning was good because it really made me conscious of how important it is to use the moments when conditions are good.”

Moments of discovery—a wind-carved valley of blue ice, the thunder of untrodden snow settling beneath her skis—punctuated the exhausting tedium of long-distance sledging. If Blacha’s most dramatic challenge was the storm, the most insidious was simply staying her course.

“It’s the small moments,” Blacha says. “The transition times are the hardest. Like when you have to force yourself to get up and pack down your tent.… Those days where there’s no big hurdle, there’s no fighting against a big storm, just stretches that are not significant enough to give you that hero story, that boost of self-confidence. But they are enough to wear you out and slow you down significantly. You have this grinding obstacle, constantly.”

To cope, Blacha stuck to a schedule dictated by strict mileage and, to a degree, her provisions. A harness around her waist allowed her to drag camp, food, and fuel in a sled that initially weighed some 220 pounds.

“I had to remind myself that I wanted to do this because it would be hard. If it was easy, I wouldn’t have wanted to do it, so I shouldn’t complain and give up because it actually was hard.”

During her two-month expedition, Blacha was required to make a daily phone call to report her GPS location. It’s not enough to simply drop GPS waypoints. Regulators wanted to hear her voice so they could monitor her condition. This protocol was tightened after British explorer Henry Worsley died in 2016. (Thirty miles short of becoming the first person to cross Antarctica on foot, unassisted and unsupported, he called for help, writing: “My journey is at an end. I have run out of time, physical endurance and a simple sheer inability [sic] to slide one ski in front of the other to travel the distance required to reach my goal.”) 

Now there’s an elaborate personnel rotation to ensure a single operator doesn’t become acclimated to “a small deterioration in your voice day after day,” says Blacha. “This takes away from the feeling of being out there on your own and doing something self-sufficient. You feel very much remote monitored, in a way. I think that’s the one thing I don’t like. I feel like it’s micromanagement. It should be my responsibility as an expeditioner to determine what safety margins I’m willing to take.”

Despite the daily intrusion, she says the benefits of strict governance “of Antarctica—in terms of keeping it pristine and prioritizing scientific research and nature protection—outweigh the downsides.”

Blacha had chosen her route specifically because it had barely been traveled. After departing the coast, she didn’t see signs of life until reaching the final miles of her nearly 58-day trip. A century ago she would have reached what was arguably the loneliest part of the planet. In 2020, her journey ended in something like civilization.

“The area around the South Pole is [one of] the busiest, so that’s where you immediately start seeing human signs,” Blacha says, noting the U.S. research station there. About 30 countries operate some 80 bases in Antarctica. “I had to navigate around the Clean Air Sector to not pollute the air with my breath and my sweat and my body. And then the last 30 to 35 kilometers I would see ski tracks—and actually somebody’s trail mix—on the way. Which was not quite what it should be.”

Shackleton’s Endurance Expedition, 1914–1916

The shock of the saltwater is blinding, and I involuntarily gulp a mouthful as I push to the surface. I try to swim back to the Zodiac, but the guide just drags me there with a rope tethered to the harness around my waist.

It’s New Year’s Day and nearly every passenger is lined up for a polar plunge in the Southern Ocean. Shivering, I accept a warming vodka shot from a Swede in a party hat and watch more people fling themselves into the sea. Most likely the tethers are to prevent weak swimmers from drowning, or to retrieve the occasional tourist who goes into cardiac arrest once submerged in 30-degree water.

Maybe, I tell myself hopefully, it’s for when the leopard seals attack.

SIR ERNEST SHACKLETON was one of history’s greatest leaders. He was also something of a failure.

The British explorer’s fourth expedition to Antarctica collapsed at its outset. Ahead of his voyage to circumnavigate the continent, he suffered a fatal heart attack aboard his ship. Shackleton’s death in 1922 ended what historians call the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration and ushered in the Mechanical Age.

A few years before, on his third expedition to the continent, Shackleton intended to cross Antarctica. Instead his ship, Endurance, was imprisoned in pack ice after just one month. Shackleton, his crew of 27 men, one stowaway, and some 70 sled dogs drifted across the frozen Weddell Sea and through the Antarctic winter for 11 months. In the fall of 1912, the ice crushed and eventually sank the ship. For five months the men sledged across the ice floes, dragging lifeboats with them and subsisting on rations. During warmer months, they shot seals and bludgeoned penguins for meat.

“Returning from a hunting trip, [one man] traveling on skis across the rotting surface of the ice had just about reached camp when an evil, knoblike head burst out of the water just in front of him,” wrote Alfred Lansing in Endurance, arguably the best survival book ever written. “He turned and fled, pushing as hard as he could with his ski poles and shouting for Wild to bring his rifle. The animal—a sea leopard—sprang out of the water and came after him, bounding across the ice with the peculiar rocking horse gait of a seal on land. The beast looked like a small dinosaur, with a long serpentine neck … [and] an enormous array of sawlike teeth.”

The leopard seal dove and tracked the man’s shadow from beneath the thin ice, then burst through again to cut him off, corralling the man. Shackleton’s second in command, Frank Wild, arrived just in time. “Wild dropped to one knee and fired again and again at the onrushing beast. It was less than 30 feet away when it finally dropped. Two dog teams were required to bring the carcass into camp. It measured 12 feet long, and they estimated its weight at about 1,000 pounds.”

In his diary, skipper Frank Worsley described the leopard seal’s effectiveness as a predator. (His descendant is Henry Worsley, the Antarctic explorer who died in 2016.)

“A man on foot in soft, deep snow and unarmed would not have a chance against such an animal as they almost bound along with a rearing, undulating motion at least five miles an hour. They attack without provocation, looking on man as a penguin or seal.”

The crew leveraged this observation, and tried to decoy the next leopard seal.

“…When a sea leopard’s head appeared at the edge of the floe [Thomas] McLeod, who was a small but stocky man, went over and stood flapping his arms to imitate a penguin,” wrote Lansing. “…He sprang out of the water at McLeod, who turned and dashed for safety. The sea leopard humped forward once or twice, then stopped, apparently to take stock of the other strange creatures on the floe. The delay was fatal. Wild had reached into his tent for his rifle. He took deliberate aim and fired, and another thousand pounds of meat was added to the larder.”

Once Shackleton’s crew made it to open water, the men managed to sail three lifeboats to an uninhabited island, where they survived on penguins, seals, and their sled dogs. From there, Shackleton took five men and the sturdiest lifeboat and sailed 800 miles across the stormy Drake Passage to South Georgia Island. To reach the whaling station, Shackleton navigated crevasses and glaciers on a journey that wasn’t replicated until 40 years later by a team of expert climbers with appropriate gear. By the time Shackleton reached help and was able to rescue his marooned crew, two years had passed since the Endurance set sail. Not a single man died.

The second time Shackleton journeyed to Antarctica, he and his men sledged to within 97 miles to the South Pole before being forced to turn back. At the time it was the farthest south anyone had ever traveled. 

Shackleton’s first expedition to Antarctica was under the command of Robert Falcon Scott. Scott would later lose the race for the South Pole against Norwegian Roald Amundsen, reaching it weeks after Amundsen and dying of starvation and exposure on his return journey.

“For a joint scientific and geographical piece of organization, give me Scott,” one of Scott’s men, Apsley Cherry-Garrard, wrote in The Worst Journey in the World. “…For a dash to the Pole and nothing else, Amundsen; and if I am in the devil of a hole and want to get out of it, give me Shackleton every time.”

Roald Amundsen’s Belgica Expedition, 1897–1899

If I don’t give the Southern Ocean my full attention, I might actually flip. My kayak lurches in the rollers as I juggle my paddle and gear for a few tricky minutes, stowing cameras in a dry bag then reattaching the spray skirt. We’re navigating an iceberg field and the surf is plunging and slapping against the bergs, revealing their eroded undersides.

I fall behind as I drift, and two middle-aged women in a tandem kayak wobble by. Despite days of paddling together, their strokes are still comically out of sync. They’re dawdling, clearly hoping we’ll return to calm water.

“Where the hell is she going?” one woman demands. She’s staring after our guide, who is vanishing and reappearing between each wave.

“Out to open ocean, apparently,” the other grumbles.

This is the first time we’ve approached anything close to real risk all week. I dig my paddle into the chop and glide past the irritable tourists, letting the swell pull me out to sea.

THE NORWEGIAN EXPLORER Roald Amundsen was often referred to as “the last of the Vikings.” Although he later became the first person to reach the South Pole, he initially ventured to Antarctica in 1897 to chart much of the Antarctic Peninsula. (Pack ice also trapped the ship on that expedition, forcing the crew of the Belgica to overwinter in 24-hour darkness and temperatures that plunged as low as -45 degrees F. There were cold-weather clothes for just four men aboard. “Mentally,” an American crewmate wrote later, “the outlook was that of a madhouse.”)

To learn to survive in the frozen South, Amundsen looked to the North. While successfully navigating the Northwest Passage—the first man to do so—Amundsen’s ship again became trapped in ice. His crew met Inuit tribes, including the Netsilik, and spent two years learning to build igloos and dress properly. Instead of constricting wool, the Netsilik gifted Amundsen sewn caribou hides, whose hollow hairs trap heat for insulation. Their loose fit also allowed better circulation. 

“I find it excellent,” Amundsen wrote after testing them. “Now I can move as I want to. Am always warm, without sweating.”

He also noted certain tricks that made overland travel infinitely easier, from using and handling dogs to maneuvering sledges through variable snow conditions.

“One can’t do better in these matters than copy the [Inuit], and let the runners get a fine covering of ice,” he wrote. “Then they slide like butter.”

Amundsen was successful in completing his polar expeditions—the Northwest Passage and the South Pole—because of his thoroughness. He approached all things—his gear, his ship, the selection of his crew—with the rigor of any outdoorsman who wished to be prepared for whatever he might face. He also recognized the importance of calculated risk. All the great Antarctic explorers did—including those who did not achieve their goals, or lost their lives in their pursuit of them.

“Generally the risks were taken, for, on the whole, it is better to be a little over-bold than a little overcautious,” wrote Cherry-Garrard. “Always there was something inside urging you to do it just because there was a certain risk, and you hardly liked not to do it. It is so easy to be afraid of being afraid!”

Read more OL+ stories.

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There’s no more effective way to squeeze joy out of passion than by serving on the board of directors of a favorite non-profit.

Board service is, for a volunteer, the pinnacle commitment to a cause, but because the actual work is either ceremonial or procedural, it can feel bloodless and corporate. I joined the board of the Mule Deer Foundation because I love to hunt mule deer, but six years into it, I spend way more time on budgets, strategic planning, and brand development than I do in the field in pursuit of my totemic game species.

The same is true of my experience with Wild Montana, the organization previously known as the Montana Wilderness Association. I got involved in this group because of my deep connection to wilderness, and my belief that sustaining wild places is the most hopeful gift we can leave our children’s grandchildren. As a board member, I spend way more time in Zoom meetings than I do in hiking boots.

But all the tedious procedurals that define board service were paid off in full earlier this month, when my fellow Wild Montana board members voted to sue Montana governor Greg Gianforte. Ours wasn’t a casual or impulsive decision, but rather one that confirms my belief in our system of checks and balances and what seems to be an increasingly quaint—and conservative—view that government is in place to serve the people, not the other way around. It also confirms my belief that volunteers working together is one of the most powerfully galvanizing forces on Earth.

You can read the text of the suit here, but what’s missing from the sober legal document is the passionate purpose that energized not only Wild Montana board members and staff, but also fellow travelers with the Montana Wildlife Federation, which joined the suit. And, lest you mistakenly believe these are fringe insurgent groups, the very straight-laced Montana Association of Counties filed a similar lawsuit asking the court to compel our governor to reconsider what we think is his unconstitutional veto of one of the most consequential pieces of conservation legislation of recent years.

Weed for Wildlife

While our lawsuit is clear in its basis and demand, the series of events that culminated in the action requires a little navigation. It started with Citizens Initiative 190, passed by nearly 60 percent of voters in the 2020 election. I-190 allowed for the sale of recreational marijuana, with the provision that the state would impose a 20 percent tax on sales. Tax revenue was earmarked for a number of destinations, including for addiction treatment, veterans’ services, and state parks. But fully 32 percent of weed taxes were to be directed to conservation, the terms of which would be decided by the legislature. The 2021 state legislature approved the revenue allocation, but the actual appropriation was left to the 2023 legislature to decide.

Here’s where things got both wacky and wonderful. Wacky, because the new Republican supermajority in the legislature didn’t look kindly on throwing so much money at habitat acquisition, and doubly wacky because Gianforte’s budget director favored plowing weed-tax revenue into law enforcement, treatment, and the courts—almost anything but conservation. Wonderful because, at the last minute, a durable coalition of interests came together to make passage of Senate Bill 442 one of the best examples of bi-partisan cooperation to come out of the session. Hundreds of hunters, anglers, veterans, ranchers, and merchants testified in support of the bill.

Thanks to revisions that directed marijuana revenue to deteriorating county roads, along with conservation easements and habitat improvements, veterans’ services, and law-enforcement agencies, SB442 picked up over 130 votes in the Montana house and senate—far more than the minimum required to override a gubernatorial veto—and was passed on to Gianforte for his signature.

Unfortunately, the governor vetoed the bill, arguing that it created a “slippery slope” by devoting state resources to county roads. In his veto letter, Gianforte also expressed concern that county governments would use the weed-tax windfall on “capricious, unnecessary projects” that would increase citizens’ tax burden.

Governors veto bills all the time, and as unfortunate—and I argue misinformed—as Gianforte’s veto of SB442 was, it was the mechanics of the veto that have whipped up a firestorm in Montana, and ultimately led to the lawsuits by county-government and conservation groups.

Executive-Branch “Gamesmanship”

The fate of SB442 comes down to a question of timing. The legislature passed the bill on May 1. The following day the Senate adjourned for the session, while the House continued deliberations on unresolved bills. At some point during the day of May 2, Gianforte vetoed SB442, but because the Senate was already adjourned when the House got the news, neither chamber was able to initiate an override vote. Whether the timing of the veto was accidental, or whether Gianforte knew that SB442 had such overwhelming support that the clandestine veto would have been summarily overridden might never be known. Regardless, the lawsuits claim Gianforte’s “gamesmanship” of the situation is unconstitutional.

The two lawsuits filed in Lewis and Clark County District Court in Helena ask a judge for an order to allow the legislature to vote on a veto override of SB442. Failing that, they ask the judge to declare SB442 law because the governor’s office failed to follow proper procedures.

In a letter to Gianforte, lawyers representing Wild Montana claim “the legislative process has been stunted” by the governor’s timing, which they claim was intended “to hit the Senate in a no man’s land; too late for the originating house to consider and override the veto but also too soon for the Secretary [of State, also a plaintiff in the suit] to poll the Legislature.”

Essentially, the lawsuit claims that the executive branch, by failing to allow the legislature to participate in a critical step in the system of governmental checks-and-balances, is grabbing a constitutional authority—to legislate—reserved for the legislature. Montana’s constitution does not “contemplate this precise situation because the constitution necessarily presumes the good faith of Montana’s elected officials, not the exploitation of perceived loopholes,” the lawyers wrote to the governor. “The principles underlying our constitutional provisions and laws make crystal clear that the Legislature—not the Governor—has the last say on whether a bill becomes a law.”

All those cold, procedural questions are for the judge to consider. But the act of initiating the suit, a dozen volunteers like myself looking each other in the eyes and together deciding to challenge our state’s highest elected official, is the very essence of participation, of coming together around a shared commitment to an idea and an organization.

I’d also argue that our action is the very essence of citizenship, of demanding that our elected officials act transparently, with restraint, and concern for the future. Not coincidentally, that’s also the basis of conservation.

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A lawsuit that sought to clarify Colorado’s stream access laws and improve access for anglers there has been brought to a halt. The Colorado Supreme Court ruled Monday that 81-year-old angler Roger Hill does not have the legal standing to continue his lawsuit, State of Colorado v. Hill, in which he argued for the public’s right to wade in certain rivers that flow through or adjacent to private property.

In their June 5 decision, the justices wrote that Hill “does not have standing to pursue the declaratory judgment claim.” They found that because Hill’s case is based on a question of State property ownership and not his own “legally protected interest,” he did not have a legal right to carry the lawsuit forward.

Read Next: Armed Man Charged After Cussing Out Tournament Anglers on Public Lake

The court’s decision strikes a blow to the pro-public-access crowd and maintains the status quo allowing private landowners to exclude the public from certain streambeds in the state.

How the Stream Access Lawsuit Began

Hill’s legal saga started in the summer of 2012, when private landowner Linda Joseph accused him of trespassing and threw rocks at him while he wade fished a stretch of the Arkansas River adjacent to Joseph’s home. Then, in 2015, Joseph’s husband, Mark Warsewa, fired his handgun in the direction of one of Hill’s friends, who was wade fishing in the same spot on the Arkansas. (Warsewa served 30 days in jail for this stunt.)

Hill filed a lawsuit against Joseph and Warsewa in 2018. He argued that the two landowners did not have a right to exclude him from a portion of the Arkansas River near their home because that portion of the streambed should belong to the public.

Hill later added the state of Colorado to his suit. In doing so, he launched a campaign to clarify the state’s stream access laws and determine what right (if any) the public has to wade in certain rivers that flow over or adjacent to privately owned land.

Stream Access Laws in Colorado

At the root of Hill’s argument is the idea of “navigability.” This is a distinction that the federal government uses to determine whether a stretch of river has been used for commerce. The term became important when Western states received statehood, as the federal government considered the streambeds of “navigable waterways” to be owned by these states and therefore held in the public trust.

Colorado, however, did not declare any of its rivers to be navigable when statehood was established in 1876. And in 1912, the Colorado Supreme Court solidified this idea when it found that all rivers in the state were “nonnavigable within its territorial limits.” This has allowed private landowners in the state to claim ownership over streambeds that flow adjacent to or over private land.

Hill, meanwhile, has argued that the Arkansas was navigable at the time of statehood and remains navigable today, according to the federal government’s definition. He points to historical references of beaver trappers and railroad employees who used the Arkansas to transport pelts and railroad ties. (A Gold Medal trout stream and a mecca for whitewater paddlers, the Arkansas remains one of the most important commercial rivers in the state today.)

Furthermore, Hill has told reporters that the Arkansas is just one of many rivers in the state that should be subject to a navigability test. And he’s said that by avoiding any distinctions of navigability on the Arkansas and other rivers in Colorado, the “state has avoided its responsibilities for 150 years.”

Because Hill’s lawsuit could have opened the door to additional court cases based on the question of navigability, it had huge implications for stream access across the state. This led many pro-public-access organizations, including Backcountry Hunters and Anglers and American Whitewater, to join Hill’s side by filing amicus briefs. These groups argued that Hill’s case represented an important opportunity to address a murky and long-simmering public-access issue in Colorado.

Read Next: A Win for Anglers: U.S. Supreme Court Reaffirms New Mexico’s Decision that All Streams in the State Are Public

“Mr. Hill’s case in front of the state Supreme Court provides an important opportunity to public river users to have a say in clarifying their rights to use the amazing rivers of our state,” American Whitewater stewardship director Hattie Johnson said in a press release earlier this month.

Now, with Hill’s case being tossed out by the state Supreme Court, it seems that sense of clarity will continue to elude anglers, boaters, and other stream-access advocates in Colorado.

The post Colorado Supreme Court Throws Out Stream Access Case in Blow to Public Fishing appeared first on Outdoor Life.

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A Yellowstone tourist from Hawaii has been identified and charged for picking up a newborn bison calf near the Lamar River and Soda Butte Creek on May 20, which later had to be euthanized by park officials. 

Clifford Walters pled guilty to one count of feeding, touching, teasing, frightening, or intentionally disturbing wildlife in Wyoming district court on May 31. He was ordered to pay a $500 fine, a $500 Community Service payment to the Yellowstone Forever Wildlife Protection Fund, a $30 special assessment and a $10 fee. Walters thought he was helping the calf, and there was no indication that he acted out of malice, a press release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office District of Wyoming reads.

May 24: Wildlife officials at Yellowstone National Park are investigating an incident that occurred in the Lamar River Valley on May 20 and led to the death of a bison calf.

A herd of bison was crossing the river near the confluence of Soda Butte Creek when a calf became separated from its mother. Cue the clueless tourist, who park officials described as an unidentified, middle-aged white male wearing a blue shirt and black pants.

Seeing the calf struggle, the man grabbed ahold of it, pushing it up the riverbank and onto the roadway. In doing so, he inadvertently sentenced the animal to an early death.

“Interference by people can cause wildlife to reject their offspring,” NPS officials said in a news release. “In this case, park rangers tried repeatedly to reunite the calf with the herd. These efforts failed. The calf was later killed by park staff because it was abandoned by the herd and causing a hazardous situation by approaching cars and people along the roadway.”

Officials are searching for the unidentified man for violating the parks regulations. Park regulations require that visitors stay at least 25 yards away from all wildlife (including bison, elk and deer) and at least 100 yards away from bears and wolves.

“Disregarding these regulations can result in fines, injury and even death. The safety of these animals, as well as human safety, depends on everyone using good judgment and following these simple rules,” reads the release. “Approaching wild animals can drastically affect their well-being and, in this case, their survival.”

Responding to a flood of Facebook comments from people who criticized the agency for euthanizing the abandoned calf, park officials explained that relocation was not an option. Federal and state regulations make it difficult to transport bison out of Yellowstone and require these animals to undergo a months-long quarantine process. Since the abandoned calf was unable to care for itself, it was not a good candidate for quarantine.

“It’s important to understand that national parks are very different than animal sanctuaries or zoos,” NPS officials explained. “We made the choice we did because national parks preserve natural processes.”

Read Next: Watch: Drunk Dudes Harass Moose, Get Stomped

Death is an important part of these natural processes, and the agency pointed out that roughly a quarter of all bison calves born in the park this spring will die. While tourists might have good intentions when trying to “save” these animals, the best thing they can do is give them a wide berth.

“Please give animals room to roam,” NPS officials pleaded in a follow-up comment. “Stay at least 100 yards away from wolves and bears, and at least 25 yards away from all other animals. Help us make it socially unacceptable to do anything else.”

This incident is yet another example of national park visitors interfering with wildlife. In 2021 a woman was slapped with federal charges related to approaching and filming a grizzly bear at an unsafe distance. That fall, another tourist tripped over himself when charged by a bull elk, and last year, a Yellowstone bison gored a man who got too close.

Katie Hill contributed reporting.

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The corner crossing battle in Wyoming seems to be over, and public land hunters, at least for now, have won. Today the District Court of Wyoming found that it’s legal to cross from one corner of public land to another corner of public land, while stepping through private airspace.

The ruling comes after four hunters crossed a corner of the Elk Mountain Ranch, which is held by Iron Bar Holdings, managed by billionaire Fred Eshelman. Iron Bar Holdings brought criminal trespass charges (which the hunters beat last year), and filed a civil suit in federal court claiming that the trespassing diminished the ranch’s property value. The ranch claimed the men caused more than $7 million in damages.

Chief U.S. District Judge Scott W. Skavdahl ruled in favor of four hunters who crossed a corner of the Elk Mountain Ranch.

The Order states: “. . . the Court finds that where a person corner crosses on foot within the checkerboard from public land to public land without touching the surface of private land and without damaging private property, there is no liability for trespass.”

If you haven’t been following this case closely, corner crossing means walking from one corner of public land to another corner of public, crossing diagonally between corners of private land, without ever setting foot on private property. Phillip Yeomans, Bradly Cape, John Slowensky, and Zachary Smith, all of Missouri (and nicknamed the Missouri Four), used a small stepladder to cross from one parcel of public land to another while on a hunt in 2021 and in 2020. 

The fact that the hunters won the civil case will have broad implications for public land hunters in Wyoming. 

“It was a pretty full throated endorsement of the principal that as long as you don’t touch private land or cause harm to private land in some way, then you have the right to cross corner-to-corner of public lands,” says Eric Hanson, an attorney who represented Backcountry Hunters and Anglers on their amicus brief in this litigation. 

However, the ruling does not mean that corner crossing in every state is now legal. It’s also possible that other private landowners could bring corner crossing civil suits, Hanson says. 

“This has to work its way up the chain of appeals before it becomes more binding,” Hanson says. “This is a big first step, but it’s not necessarily going to apply outside of Wyoming. The court was very careful to put this in just the context of the case, not a national context” 

But still BHA and the public land hunters of Wyoming have reason to celebrate. 

“Today was a win for the people, both in Wyoming and across the country,” says BHA president Land Tawney. “The court’s ruling confirms that it was legal for the Missouri Four to step from public land to public land over a shared public/private corner. Coupled with recent legislation passed by the Wyoming legislature, we are happy that common sense and the rule of law prevailed. Backcountry Hunters & Anglers applauds the court’s careful balancing of access to public land and respect of private property rights. We look forward to finding more solutions to access – together.”

Of course, the four hunters who have been battling these cases for years also have reason to celebrate.

“This is a long overdue and singularly great outcome for the entire American public and anybody who enjoys public lands,” the hunters’ attorney Ryan Semerad told WyoFile. Semerad says they “fully expect” an appeal.

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The Fishers of Men National Tournament Trail is supposed to be about catching bass and loving thy neighbor. But things turned sour on Millers Ferry Reservoir near Camden, Alabama, when Chris Pope and Craig Hamilton turned their boat around near Ronald Morgan’s two-story, multi-slip dock. The March 18 incident resulted in two misdemeanor charges last week for Morgan, who confronted Pope and Hamilton with a shotgun, Wired2Fish reports.

In the video, Morgan, 66, stands on the dock with a pump-action shotgun and a bad attitude. He accuses the anglers of trespassing and breaking the 10th Commandment of “Thou shall not covet,” but not before flipping the camera the bird and using some less-than-saintly language.

“I’m not on private property, I’m on the water,” one of the anglers shouts from behind the camera.

“You need to go somewhere else. There’s 17,000 acres here for you to fish,” Morgan says. “This is posted property. You come right up in here, I seen you turn around … in my boat slip thinking you could do something. You’re a damn fool.”

Morgan reportedly turned himself in on April 10, according to a newspaper clipping Alabama Bass Trail Tournament Series posted to its Facebook page on April 12. Authorities charged him with menacing and interfering with lawful hunting and fishing.

“Thanks to everyone who worked on this case,” the caption reads. “Home owners have rights but so do anglers. Good work!”

Under Alabama law, the only time a body of water is private is if the water is fully surrounded by land owned by a single person or entity. If multiple owners have claim to different sections of land adjacent to the water, that waterbody is entirely public. That includes the waves lapping against Morgan’s dock. Millers Ferry, formally the William (Bill) Dannelly Reservoir, is 17,200 acres in size with public access points and campgrounds along its 500-plus miles of shoreline.

Menacing, or intentionally placing a “person in fear of imminent serious physical injury,” is a Class B misdemeanor. Such a charge carries a maximum penalty of six months in jail and/or a $3,000 fine. Interfering with legal hunting and fishing is a Class C misdemeanor, which carries three months in jail and/or a $500 fine.

“This dude should not be threatening us with a gun,” Pope writes in his Facebook post on the day of the incident. “Wish I had my camera out quicker than I did. He toned down a bit when he realized I was filming him.”

Read Next: 7 Sneaky Ways Landowners Block Access to Public Lands

Pope and Hamilton placed 12th in the tournament. Fishers of Men will host two more tournaments on Miller’s Ferry this year, one on April 22 and one on May 27.

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When Drew Hanes thinks about the worst disputes over blocked public access she’s encountered in her career, she recalls the time when her friends found themselves arguing with an angry Montana landowner instead of hunting antelope.

“In Montana we have a history of leasing BLM land to large ranches [for grazing],” says Hanes, the executive director for the Public Land Water Access Association. “My friends were hunting on this BLM land and the owner of the leases came out and said ‘I own this, you can’t be here.’”

Hanes’ friend pulled out a digital map to confirm that the group was standing on public land. But the landowner wasn’t swayed from his position that the group was trespassing. If anything, he was ready to stand his ground.

“The man had been drinking and had a gun,” Hanes tells Outdoor Life. “He said ‘I’m going to shoot you if you don’t get off my land.’”

Can landowners really block public access like this? The short answer is no, they can’t—or not legally, at least. That doesn’t stop a handful of bad apples from doing it anyway. 

“Just like there are sportsmen and women who drive in a landowner’s field and make landowners genuinely mad at the hunting community, there are bad actors on the landowner side too that go out of their way to keep the public from accessing their lands,” Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership VP of western conservation Joel Webster tells Outdoor Life. “On both sides, those people are a minority, but they color the debate because their actions are fairly strident and they result in polarization.”

But the blocked access issue is especially visible in the Mountain West as more out-of-state landowners buy property that either sits adjacent to state and federal parcels or underlies a public road or trail, experts say. What has come with this influx is a lack of understanding—or, in some instances, a blatant disregard—for public access. Here are some of the most common ways a few over-the-line landowners obstruct access to public lands and waters, and what to do if you run into it.

What Does Blocked Public Access Look Like?

You might not recognize blocked public access when you first see it. While it’s best to take the “innocent until proven guilty” approach and assume all obstructions are legal and purposeful, further research might tell you otherwise. Examples of blocked public access include:

1. Locked gates across public roads or trails

This might be the most widespread, instantly recognizable example of blocked public access, Hanes tells Outdoor Life. She also notes that, at least in Montana, it’s illegal to obstruct a deeded public road in any way.  

2. Strategically-parked cars or construction equipment

Big, immovable objects blocking public access pose a massive safety risk to anyone who either lives on private land past the obstruction or is recreating on public land. Firetrucks and ambulances can probably mow down a fence, but they don’t stand a chance against an excavator.

3. A big brush pile or a downed tree that is impossible to navigate around

In instances where the public trail goes over private land, stepping off the trail a certain distance to navigate around a downed tree could result in a trespassing citation.

4. A demand to sign in with the landowner first

This tactic is often used to erode undeeded, prescriptive easements (traditional public access that exists simply because the public has used it for an extended period). Signing in with the landowner means you’re seeking permission to use the trail, which helps the landowner prove that the public has abandoned the easement and therefore it no longer exists. (Don’t confuse this with lawful sign-ins required for voluntary hunter access programs on private lands.)  

5. Trail cameras used to monitor humans, not game

While running cameras on public land is legal in most states, using them to conduct surveillance on humans often leads to harassment. It certainly did for one hunter in Michigan, whose treestand was intentionally damaged by another hunter on public land. The offending hunter was monitoring the victim’s activity on a trail camera and got angry when the hunter wouldn’t leave “his spot” alone.

6. Misleading signs, including ones threatening legal action or physical violence

In one of Montana’s most infamous cases of blocked access, landowners posted a sign on a locked gate across Hughes Creek Road that read “Warning, No Trespassing: You quite possibly could get shot or hurt and then try to sue resulting in a long drawn out court battle. You will lose. Because this sign will be: ‘Exhibit A.’” (In fact, the Hughes Creek case involved several additional obstructions of access: the locked gate, brush piles, and an excavator parked across the public road.)

7. Confrontation with another person as a form of blocked access

Whether it’s a landowner or another hunter, someone might try to scare you away from public lands, waters, or roads. They could simply lie and tell you you’re trespassing on private land, or they could escalate to outright intimidation and threats, like the drunk rancher trying to run antelope hunters off his BLM lease.

You Found What You Think Is Blocked Public Access…Now What?

You don’t need to have all the answers immediately to address what looks like blocked public access, Hanes says. In most cases, it’s safer to avoid potential confrontation with an angry landowner or hunter (not to mention legal repercussions) by following these guidelines.

Know the Rules

The first step is to familiarize yourself with the laws in whatever state you’re hunting. State laws change frequently, so do a little research every year. In February, for example, Wyoming governor Mark Gordon signed a bill into law prohibiting anyone from falsely posting public land if a peace officer has already informed the person that land is public.

Other states already have regulations in place that support hunter access, even when it comes to private land. In North Dakota, for example, if you legally shoot game and that animal runs onto private land, you can legally retrieve it without landowner permission (as long as you don’t carry your gun or bow onto the land).

Document the Blocked Access

If you find what you suspect is deliberate obstruction of public access, record the details. That could be a locked gate, an intimidating sign, or something else fishy, says Backcountry Hunters and Anglers CEO Land Tawney.

“Record it with a cell phone or even just with pen and paper afterward so you remember the facts and where you were,” Tawney says. “Communication technology has increased so much. Everyone has a video camera in their pocket, everyone has a GPS in their pocket, so they know where they are.”

Documentation comes in handy for hunter harassment cases, like an instance in North Dakota when a landowner argued with a group of duck hunters for hours over where the property boundary was. One of the duck hunters recorded the whole interaction, which was later used in charging the landowner with hunter harassment, among other misdemeanors.

Make Your Phone Calls

If you have cell phone service, call the authorities, Hanes says. Consider saving phone numbers for various officials who have jurisdiction in the areas where you hunt or fish. This might come in handy if you have just enough service to make a call but not enough to search the Internet for a phone number.

“Go to an enforcement person who is in charge wherever you are, whether it is a county attorney or a state game warden, a Forest Service employee, whoever has jurisdiction,” she says. “Show them your documentation and show them what the issue is.”

Don’t expect the officials to know exactly what the state laws are, Hanes warns. They have a lot of regulations to keep track of, and may not have been approached about your specific issue before. This is why it’s important that you arm yourself with up-to-date information.

Depending on your unique access situation, you may need to approach a private attorney familiar with property and access law, or an organization like PLWA. But no matter what, it’s important to report your experience. Hanes estimates that over 90 percent of hunters who come across blocked public access or are otherwise harassed don’t report anything, leaving those situations unresolved and ripe for another hunter, angler, or public land user to walk right into. 

Get Ready to Walk Away

Even if you know deep in your gut that the law is on your side, conflict is often not worth it, Tawney says. 

“Physical barriers, sign-ins, surveillance cameras … all these things are some level of intimidation,” Tawney says. “These are always tense situations and folks need to do their best to be respectful, state the facts, share the legality that we foresee—but don’t escalate things.”

If any battles should be fought over blocked public access, they’re best fought in a court of law.

“At PLWA, we play the long game, and sometimes it takes years,” Hanes says. “We get precedence established so that we don’t have to risk someone getting shot at every single gate. We want to get the gate taken down and show why this is so important.”

Longterm Solutions to Blocked Public Access

Contested public access is nothing new, but solutions to the issue are evolving, onX Hunt senior access advocacy manager Lisa Nichols tells Outdoor Life. The rise in popularity of onX allows hunters and landowners to see the same boundaries, easements, and access points.

“For anyone who is using onX, whether it’s a landowner or a recreator … it gets everyone on the same page—especially for new landowners in the West,” Nichols says. “Seeing where the public is allowed or not allowed really helps avoid conflict.”

Another major boon to protecting public access is currently being implemented at the federal level. In April 2022, President Biden signed the Modernizing Access to our Public Lands Act, also known as the MAPLand Act, into law. The Department of the Interior, the U.S. Forest Service, and the Army Corps of Engineers are now required to digitize and publish GIS data on close to 100,000 easements that are currently only filed on paper and stored in dusty field office basements across the country. 

The act requires that agencies digitize all those easements by 2026, and so far, they’re about halfway there, Webster says. Once the project is complete, that data will populate apps like onX and countless more access opportunities will resurface, including a few that might currently be blocked.

…and What Not to Do

When navigating an instance of blocked public access, there are a few negative responses that experts say should be avoided at all costs: 

• Don’t plow through the fence or rip down the sign. This simply invites more conflict. Channel that energy into documenting the obstruction instead for future legal action.
• If a landowner is blocking a public road or trail, don’t trespass on their property to get to public land. Trespassing won’t do you any favors when you need local law enforcement and government on your side to legally resolve the issue. Besides, trespassing is a great way to get arrested.
• Don’t assume all private landowners oppose public access. Don’t let one bad experience with one private landowner ruin your relationship with others. Neighboring landowners might be able to help you document other access obstructions. If all landowners thought all public-land hunters were trespassing assholes, Tawney points out, voluntary hunter access programs wouldn’t exist.

Above all, you can’t help fix the problem for the next public land user if you’re lying in a hospital bed or, worse, dead. That’s why Hanes’ friends ultimately decided not to risk life and limb for their right to hunt antelope on the BLM land. 

Read Next: “I’d Have to Bury You Out Here.” The New Mexico Stream Access Battle Is Far From Over

“They finally said ‘We apologize, we must be lost. We’re so sorry.’ And they got up and left,” she recalls. “That was the right thing to do. When you’re standing there and someone has a gun, you probably go on your way that day. Then you bring those issues to organizations to do the research and handle it in a different way. It’s not worth getting hurt over.”

The post 7 Sneaky Ways Landowners Block Access to Public Lands appeared first on Outdoor Life.

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On March 30, the U.S. Department of the Interior announced a proposal to reshuffle the priorities of the Bureau of Land Management in a way that would put conservation on equal footing with other land uses like grazing and natural resource extraction. Hunters in BLM-rich states have long watched wildlife interests take a backseat to the national demand for energy production, natural resource extraction, and grazing on BLM lands. This proposal stands to change that by balancing those interests, experts say.

The new regulations would require the BLM to “protect intact landscapes, restore degraded habitat, and make wise management decisions based on science and data,” the proposal reads.

Once published in the Federal Register, the proposal will be open for a 75-day public comment period. If passed, balancing conservation with other established land uses would allow the BLM to continue serving America’s wildlife and the broader outdoor community, BLM director Tracy Stone-Manning tells Outdoor Life in an emailed statement.

“The BLM has welcomed record numbers of hunters, anglers and recreationists to our nation’s remarkable public lands in recent years,” says Stone-Manning, who repurposed some of the proposal’s language. “By better conserving intact landscapes, restoring degraded habitat and balancing responsible development, the proposed Public Lands Rule will help us ensure future generations of Americans will have these very same opportunities. We look forward to hearing from the public on this proposal.”

Conservation as a BLM Land Use

Under this proposal, conservation would be clarified as an official “use” of BLM lands, a potential change that has perked up hunters’ ears.

“This proposal clearly says that conservation is not some passive thing the BLM does by denying [other] uses or inaction,” Backcountry Hunters & Anglers Nevada chapter chair Nicholas Maus tells Outdoor Life. “[It’s] elevating conservation to a legitimate, equally valid use of the land. That’s profound.”

This would give the federal agency the ability to lease BLM land specifically for conservation work. Under the proposed rules, entities could apply to lease a chunk of BLM land for a conservation project involving habitat restoration or mitigation. This is similar to how a rancher might apply for a grazing permit or a mining company might apply for a mineral lease. And just as a grazing permit doesn’t prevent public access on that land, BLM lands under conservation leases would still be open to any public use that doesn’t interfere with restoration work, according to the current proposal.

This opportunity could support a variety of wildlife management initiatives that impact game animals in the West. Among them are stopping the annual bleeding of sagebrush acreage, mitigating wildfire and drought, and keeping habitat and migratory corridors intact. Fragmentation has been an especially big issue in BLM-heavy states with major renewable energy value, says Nevada Wildlife Federation executive director and hunter Russell Kuhlman.

“When a wind or solar energy company leases BLM land, a lot of times the first thing they do is build a big fence around it and block it off, and put roads in there so employees can access the [infrastructure],” Kuhlman tells Outdoor Life. “And that obviously has been detrimental to bighorn sheep and mule deer migrations in that range.”

Balancing Wildlife with Clean Energy Demands

But Kuhlman also points out that the death-grip climate change has on the ecosystem is proof that a renewable energy transition is still critical to wildlife health and the future of sustainable hunting in these places.

“Nevada hunters are really starting to see the effects of this major drought. Around the water cooler, mule deer hunters and upland game hunters alike are talking about how it’s getting harder to find quality habitat and quality animals,” Kuhlman says. “On top of the drought, wildfire is another big issue. In Nevada, deer archery season starts in August. I’ve had to ask myself if the wildfire smoke is going to push me out of my area, because it’s hard to glass for mule deer when you can’t see past 100 yards. There’s going to have to be this balance of responsible renewable energy development and protecting these priority habitat areas.”

Read More: BLM Unlocks 75,000 Acres of Private and Public Land With Major Purchase in Wyoming

In addition to emphasizing conservation work on BLM lands, the new regulations would also require that BLM officials consider a specific set of land health standards when signing off on any land use. (As it stands now, agency officials only consider those standards when authorizing grazing permits.) Additionally, the BLM would be encouraged to establish more Areas of Critical Environmental Concern. These are sections of land with “important natural, cultural, and scenic resources.” The ACEC designation is attractive because those areas would still be open to hunting, as well as hands-on restoration and mitigation projects, Maus notes. This makes them a “powerful conservation tool.”

The post The BLM Wants to Make Conservation a Bigger Land-Use Priority appeared first on Outdoor Life.

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When the novelty of a pet goldfish wears off, people often dump them in water may allow goldfish to spread and overpopulate places far and wide. This is bad news for native critters and healthy waterways, say government officials in British Columbia, where released—and reproducing—goldfish are showing up in lakes across the province.

“They’re not the little fish you see in the pet store,” Brian Heise, a natural resources professor at Thompson Rivers University and former chair of the Invasive Species Council of BC, told the Canadian Press. “They actually get quite large, and they have the potential to get even larger, especially in some warmer, more productive waters.”

Read Next: Is This the Biggest Goldfish Ever Caught?

Goldfish can grow to football size and larger, and Heise says female goldfish can drop 50,000 eggs per spawn. They can spawn three times in a summer to produce as many as 150,000 eggs.

“Females don’t even need a male [to reproduce]. They have a special process called gynogenesis in which a female will get sperm from a different kind of minnow, starting egg development, even though they’re not fertilized,” Heise said. “So she produces clones of herself. They’re very good at spreading rapidly.”

Goldfish in the wild carry diseases and parasites that can impact salmon. Goldfish also eat food that native fish species require. Goldfish have spread from Vancouver to lakes in far-ranging areas of British Columbia over the last 10 years.

How Do You Get Rid of Invasive Goldfish?

Electrofishing can help remove goldfish from a waterway, but it’s an expensive process that never completely eradicates goldfish. So electrofishing must be done regularly to be effective, says Heise.

A three-year electrofishing program at Dragon Lake in Quesnel, BC produced over 6,000 goldfish. Heise believes more funding for expensive electrofishing is needed where goldfish threaten salmon and trout. He also says the aqua-pet industry needs to allow customers to return unwanted goldfish to pet stores rather than dumping them in open water.

“I think if pet stores are bringing in exotic animals, and they’re selling them to the public, it behooves them to then follow up and make sure that the public realizes that you can’t put these creatures in the wild once you finish.

“It doesn’t matter whether it’s a snake, a turtle, a bird or a fish, you just can’t put it into the wild. It’s often going to be harmful to that animal because they’re not adapted to that place, but it’s also going to harm local animals and plants.”

Read Next: The Largest Python Ever Captured in Florida Is Nearly 18 Feet Long

Goldfish have spread to many of America’s waterways following release as pets by owners. Hundreds of non-native species also have spread in other states, such as pythons in Florida, snakeheads along the Eastern Seaboard, and nutria along the Gulf Coast. Such non-natives fish, animals and plants negatively impact native species almost wherever they’re found.

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