Tag: Public Lands
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Last best streams- #1731.
The note pegged to the kiosk was too small for the whole story. Every every summer, every year, thousands of underpaid graduate students fan out across the country collecting data for their projects. If their work isn’t the backbone of modern conservation, it’s certainly one of the most important data streams available. Like most essential…
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The Colorado experience.
I was not prepared for this Colorado experience. I came through the southeast corner in the evening and passed a mile of concrete feed bunks with a cowboy on a horse in full regalia- the hat, the snap shirt, everything- trotting back and forth, waving an American flag over the heads of hundreds of gorging…
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Forest Service launches Great American Outdoors Act Dashboard
You’ll be forgiven if, with all that happened in 2020, you missed passage of the Great American Outdoors Act. The legislation permanently funded the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF), which provides matching funds to state, federal, and local governments for the acquisition of parks and easements designed to protect fish, forests, and wildlife. The…
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Looking backward. Looking forward.
Another trip around the sun, another solstice tradition- a big meal, a nice bottle of wine, some time around the fire, welcoming the sun’s return on the shortest day of the year. A little bit pagan, sure- but based off something I can see. Something I can make sense of. Something I can get my…
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Last best streams: year in review.
I’ve been holding back on writing up fishing trips this season, save the monthly trip to the local trout water. I wanted to save something for the cold of winter. It was a good year. Maybe not epic by the definition of some, more back roads and brook trout than monster fish on name-brand streams.…
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The value of wilderness.
When we think of western wilderness, we think big. Big landscapes, big game, mountains and buttes and brawling rivers, broad meadows with elk and moose and bear. We think less often of smaller things, of native fish like Yellowstone cutthroat trout. Each subspecies of cutthroat trout is typically restricted to a few major watersheds, each…
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Michigan ditches twenty-seven dams.
Fish need room- on the scale of days and months, room to move, forage, grow, and spawn. On the scale of years, room to mate, to explore and swap genes with fish the next drainage over. Room to find better habitat. Room to avoid calamity. Michigan Department of Natural Resources received $5 million from the…
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Last Best Streams: #854.
I’ve been out this season, working away at The List, though I haven’t been writing the up. The persimmons and the woolly worms say it’s going to be a rough winter, and I want to have something to look forward to. I knew I wanted to do this one first, though. It had come up…
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Waters to Watch 2022.
The National Fish Habitat Partnership is a cooperative effort between the US Fish and Wildlife Service, state conservation agencies, and external groups to address long-term declines in the quality of our aquatic habitats. Since 2006, the partnership has provided more than $20 million to assist with recovery of rivers, lakes, and estuaries. Along the way:…
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The outside bend. 