Policy/Politics/Laws
There’s a certain solitude and wonder that only public lands can provide. It’s freedom in its most tangible form. These places have given me some of my strongest memories, but it is no longer safe to assume they’ll remain public forever.
The press release arrived October 4, 2024: “Cox Enterprises Acquires Loop Tackle.” Atlanta-based Cox Enterprises Inc. is a 127-year-old, privately held, global media and automotive empire worth around $30 billion. Its purchase of a relatively small European flyfishing brand seemed odd. But, free country and all that.
FANS OF THE early-2000s political drama “The West Wing” may recall an episode in the show’s first season where Josh (Bradley Whitford, as Deputy Chief of Staff) tells President Bartlet (Martin Sheen) how he can use the Antiquities Act of 1906 to prevent a mine from being built in Montana: “You’re gonna establish Big Sky National Park!”
With every victory comes new challenges to public lands. After concerted pressure from conservation groups, the House of Representatives dropped any public land sales from President Trump’s budget reconciliation bill. But the Senate is trying to sneak it back in… in a big way.
ON JUNE FIFTH, the seven members of Colorado’s court of last resort unanimously ruled that 81-year-old flyfisherman Roger Hill “lacks standing” to continue his decade-long legal battle for public access along the Arkansas River (Hill v. Warsewa).
The first email arrived on July 14. “Reaching out to pass along some fresh ‘industry happenings’ from the heart of Bolivia’s golden dorado region,” it began. “I figured the Drake might be interested in looking into it, as it seems on par with the prior articles investigating Deneki.”
“The topic of stream access illustrates one of the most perplexing types of legal conflicts that can arise… Indeed, it is difficult to find a legal issue that is more tangled and uncertain.” —A Wildlife Primer (2009), by Eric Freyfogle and Dale Goble
Colorado’s river laws might be in trouble. Roger Hill, the octogenarian trying to fulfill his dream of legally wade-fishing the Arkansas River, was at the Colorado Court of Appeals on January 27 and got good news about his case—Hill v Warsewa.
“Judge Sharon Gleason, U.S. District Court Judge for the District of Alaska, ruled last week that the Forest Service violated federal law by approving future logging in the 16.7 million-acre Tongass National Forest.”
I pay my bills here in Southeast Alaska, at least in part, by having short and intense conversations on airplanes. I help wedge wadered clients from all over the globe into DeHavilland Beavers, then drop in on some of the planet’s most spectacular temperate rainforest
RAPIDS CAMP LODGE, built from the ground by founder Jerry Shults, is nestled in the Katmai-Naknek region—a short jump from Anchorage, depositing anglers in a Bristol Bay nucleus noted for its big rainbows and all five species of salmon.
riter and historian David T. Courtwright calls them “limbic capitalists”—people or companies that target our limbic system, the part of our brains primarily responsible for emotion, especially as it relates to pleasure, motivation, and survival. Courtwright is author of The Age of Addiction: How Bad Habits Became Big Business. “Biological evolution shaped the limbic system,…
As a lifetime Oregon resident, angler, and guide, I spend 40-60 days a year on the rivers of the Southern Oregon coast. I interact with anglers that use all types of methods, and every one of them I’ve talked to has noticed a significant decline in encounters with wild steelhead. How can this be explained?…
Marijuana cultivation’s impacts on our rivers Chris and James stand on the lawn behind Indian Creek Resort, stomping their feet against the cold while passing a joint back and forth. Recreational pot has been legal in California since January 2019, so the two aren’t breaking any laws. Tomorrow the three of us will be rafting…
Revivalists and renegades in South Florida’s Everglades It begins as a subtle unzippering across the surface. Nothing more than shape and motion—forcing the brain to calculate distance to target, direction of movement, and speed of travel. These computations form the basis of what comes next: an attempt to drop a bottlecap-sized fly in the path…
A winter of discontent in Ennis If your summer plans include a tailwater weekend along Montana’s Madison River, you won’t be alone. In early April 2018, after years of surveys, public meetings, and citizen advisory committees, Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks (FWP) released its draft Recreational Management Plan for the Madison, which included some alarming…
Every year for the past decade the proposed Pebble Mine in Bristol Bay seems to die, only to rise again from its still-warm ashes. Despite lawsuits, a rigorous permitting process, and continued opposition by local organizations, Sam Snyder, campaign manager for the Wild Salmon Center, says the mega-mine isn’t just hanging on, it’s gaining momentum.…
The last week in September can be one of the finest of the year for flyfishers, but lodge owner Jerry Shults and his daughter Amy Herrig did not look to be enjoying it in 2018, as they spent the week in the Federal courthouse in Dallas facing 17 counts of drug trafficking, conspiracy, and money…
When I opened the car door, a mangy border collie barked and charged at us. Mike Murtha yelled, and the dog backed off. Mike was in his 80s and wore a dusty-brimmed Stetson and tattered Wranglers. He smoked Camels, and his hands resembled the harsh, cracked earth of the surrounding desert. Tin cans filled with…
If you (or a good friend) enjoy the outdoors and live in California, this is a must-read. In 2017, the California state legislature passed Senate Bill 5, which will allow the issuance of bonds to finance drought-recovery, water, parks, climate and outdoor access programs. That bill, now known as Proposition 68, will appear on California voters’…
PIPELINES GET A BAD RAP, which they often deserve. Last November, the Keystone Pipeline—of Standing Rock protest fame—leaked more than 200,000 gallons of oil from a below-ground crack, adjacent to Sioux lands near the Lake Traverse reservation. The irony was lost on no one, least of all the protesters who were forcibly evicted from their…
Cocaine smuggler’s former Clarks Fork property returns to the spotlight for a public lands squabble Boat captain Stewart Allen Bost and his pals almost slipped into obscurity after they smuggled more than 3,000 kilos of Columbian cocaine from the Bahamas to South Florida in 1986. With approximately $1.35 million lining his pockets, Bost sought early…
THE YELLOWSTONE RIVER’S pristine headwaters are tucked into some of the most remote land in the Lower 48, draining roughly 70,000 square miles across Wyoming and Montana. These wild waters serve as a stronghold for native Yellowstone cutthroat, and, combined with Yellowstone Lake, make up the largest inland population of cutthroat in the world.
The proposed Pebble Mine, subject of 20 years of controversy, 2.2 million public comments, a dozen Congressional hearings, multiple documentary films, media campaigns, ballot initiatives, lawsuits, and the most ubiquitous sticker in all of fishingdom, is back on the table. Seemingly the result of one 30-minute meeting between two men: EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt and…
A week from now the creek at our boots will be too thin to float. Fueled by the dregs of a heavy winter snowpack atop Wyoming’s Bighorn Range, its window is on the verge of being shuttered. “Hard to say how it’ll fish,” Clark Smyth says from under the brim of an oversized straw hat.…
IN THE SPRING OF 1996, President Bill Clinton created the 1.8-million-acre Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, encircling a swath of twisted canyon country in southern Utah. Using the Antiquities Act, he sidestepped Congress—as 16 presidents have done, creating 157 national monuments—and delivered the proclamation in a ceremony on the rim of the Grand Canyon.
This was once one of my favorite spots in the Catskills. Paul and I used to fish it a lot before he moved to Montana. It’s a good place for Isonychias in the fall, and fishing a big dry in October in the East is something to be relished. I was last here more than…
The first places I explored as a kid, outside of my backyard, were the small creeks and wetlands near my home. They were full of tadpoles, salamanders, and, if we were lucky, turtles. I spent countless hours trying to fit various animals into Mason jars, but mostly I just covered myself in mud.
Simms Fishing Products‘ new Save Our Streams (SOS) campaign detonates this month with a focus on Montana’s Yellowstone River, where two foreign-backed gold mining companies (Lucky Minerals and Crevice Mining Group) are busy eyeing dig sites along the watershed’s upper tributaries.