Bonus Episode: The Public Lands in Public Hands Act
Backcountry Hunters & Anglers Podcast & Blast with Hal Herring
Release Date: 03/27/2024
Wilderness meets Modern Society -- Seth Kantner Part II
Backcountry Hunters & Anglers Podcast & Blast with Hal Herring
Wilderness meets Modern Society -- Seth Kantner Part II Alaska’s Seth Kantner is back with us, as promised, for part two. Seth was born in a sod igloo on the Kobuk River in the 1960s and has been hunting, trapping, fishing, and making a life on the land there ever since. He is the author of the novel , considered one of the most powerful, gritty, and true-to-life Alaska books ever written. His non-fiction books, Shopping for Porcupine, Swallowed by the Great Land, and A Thousand Trails Home: Living with Caribou, illustrated with the photos that have made him a world-renowned wildlife...
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Our Common Ground: A History of America’s Public Lands -- Part II with John Leshy
Backcountry Hunters & Anglers Podcast & Blast with Hal Herring
As promised, John Leshy is back on the Backcountry Hunters & Anglers Podcast & Blast to discuss his recently published and definitive book, . Our Common Ground is the most comprehensive and incisive history, both legal and political, ever written about the American public lands. It is an absolute must-read for anyone who loves our national forests, parks, grasslands or BLM lands, especially right now, when the entire institution of the American public lands is being questioned by so many- most of whom have no idea what they are putting at risk. John Leshy is a former...
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Haunted by Alaska: Bjorn Dihle on Life, Bears, and Mystery (ep. 195)
Backcountry Hunters & Anglers Podcast & Blast with Hal Herring
Bjorn Dihle has lived his entire life in southeast Alaska, hunting and fishing from the Tongass National Forest to the northern Brooks Range and beyond. He is a family man, a wilderness and wildlife guide, a conservationist, and a contributing editor at Alaska and Hunt Alaska magazines. Bjorn is the author of the books Haunted Inside Passage, Never Cry Halibut, and A Shape in the Dark: Living and Dying with Brown Bears. Listeners might also know his work from his riveting story in Outdoor Life, entitled The Infamous and Murderous Sheslay Free Mike, about a mysterious and thoroughly-unhinged...
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They Gave It All Away: The 1872 Mining Law with John Leshy
Backcountry Hunters & Anglers Podcast & Blast with Hal Herring
“It is astonishing that this law has escaped fundamental change.” John Leshy, author of The Mining Law: A Study in Perpetual Motion The 1872 Mining Law represents one of the most extraordinary give-a-ways of American assets in the history of our nation. It has been the target of reform and repeal almost from the very moment it was passed. No other nation on earth allows the mining industry to simply extract the public’s wealth without paying. The cost of administering it- the legal process of giving away America’s public lands and minerals- is astronomical. It has been used by grifters...
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BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. #193: NO to Alaska's Ambler Road
Backcountry Hunters & Anglers Podcast & Blast with Hal Herring
Alaska’s proposed Ambler Road is back on the table, and Americans are once again asked a fundamental question about what we value and what kind of world we will pass on to our children. We covered the Ambler Road controversy in Episode 168 of the podcast, and a quick re-listen to that episode will be handy for getting the information we need to make informed decisions in this coming time of decision and consequence. Here’s a quick breakdown of the issue: The proposed Ambler Road is a proposed 211-mile industrial corridor through public lands along the southern flanks of the Brooks...
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REBOOT: Ron Mills, Legendary Montana Outfitter (Ep. 44)
Backcountry Hunters & Anglers Podcast & Blast with Hal Herring
We're spending Thanksgiving week with our families and bringing you one of our favorite podcast episodes from the archives: Ron Mills, an outfitter, hunting guide and packer in the Bob Marshall Wilderness since 1959! Ron has authored a new book called , a raucous and astoundingly funny account of his adventures as a guide, horseman and packer, farrier and ranch hand in some of the wildest country left on the planet. (Hal wrote the forward to the book, as seen in the spring 2019 issue of .) Ron and Hal discuss the book, life in the saddle and in 20 different camps across the Bob, and what...
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BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 192: Healing Waters and Veterans' Journeys
Backcountry Hunters & Anglers Podcast & Blast with Hal Herring
Almost ten years ago, career firefighter and paramedic Beau Beasley embarked on a journey to tell the true stories of America’s veterans, honestly and in their own words. He was a respected outdoor writer and flyfishing guidebook author, and was deeply affected by the friendships he’d made through his involvement with Project Healing Waters, an organization that connects veterans with fishing and other outdoor opportunities. “I had no idea what I was doing when I took this on,” Beau says. “I only knew I had to do it.” Beau’s book “Healing Waters” holds the stories of 32...
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BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 191: The Fight for Clean Water After the Kingston Disaster with Jared Sullivan
Backcountry Hunters & Anglers Podcast & Blast with Hal Herring
Episode 191 with Jared Sullivan, former editor of Field and Stream and Men’s Journal, on his new book, Valley So Low, about the 2008 coal ash disaster near Kingston, Tennessee, its catastrophic aftermath on the health of those who cleaned it up, and holding our federal agencies accountable. In 2019, Tennessee native and former Field and Stream editor Jared Sullivan reported on the aftermath of massive coal ash spill from the TVA’s Kingston Fossil Plant. That spill- at 1.1 billion gallons, the largest coal ash spill so far in history - flooded homes, obliterated a portion of the Emory...
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BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 190: The Battle for Mobile Bay
Backcountry Hunters & Anglers Podcast & Blast with Hal Herring
Blaring headlines: “Battle lines hardening in dispute over Mobile ship channel deepening project” “No more federal mud dumping' — Standing room only at Baykeeper town hall” A newly deepened and widened shipping channel created by the US Army Corps of Engineers makes Mobile, Alabama, the second fastest growing port in the US – the amount of cargo handled this year more than doubled from previous years. Some of the world’s healthiest commercial and recreational fisheries, vibrant towns, waterfront properties that date back centuries, all because of the health of one of the most...
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BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. #189: Utah Wants Your Public Lands
Backcountry Hunters & Anglers Podcast & Blast with Hal Herring
Utah files landmark lawsuit challenging federal control over most BLM land Yes, it is to retch over. Once again, the Utah legislature is coming for America’s public lands, this time by way of a lawsuit filed against the US government to lay claim to 18.5 million acres of public lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management. Utah has a new website called “Stand for Our Land” designed to support the lawsuit – it’s a slick campaign, maybe the slickest yet- and chock-full of the half-truths and outright falsehoods long devised and parroted by the generations of would-be landgrabbers...
info_outlineRepresentative Ryan Zinke (R-MT) and Representative Gabe Vasquez (D-NM) are co-sponsoring The ‘Public Lands in Public Hands Act” which would ban the sale or transfer of most public lands managed by the Department of the Interior or the Department of Agriculture (which includes the vast majority of federal public lands – Bureau of Land Management is under Interior and the National Forests are under Agriculture).
The bill also requires Congressional approval for disposals of publicly accessible federal land tracts over 300 acres and for public land tracts over five acres if accessible via a public waterway.
Are we witnessing the beginning of a bipartisan consensus on the value of our federal public lands? What motivated these two Western Congressmen to draft and sponsor this bill? Does it have a chance to become law? Join us for the answers to these questions and a lot more.
Read the bill here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/12Z21FJ6XLZwyma9qaDajehFH1luY2xxa/view
Read the press release from New Mexico Representative Gabe Vasquez: https://vasquez.house.gov/media/press-releases/vasquez-introduces-bipartisan-public-lands-public-hands-act
Read the press release from Montana Rep. Zinke: https://zinke.house.gov/media/press-releases/zinke-introduces-bipartisan-public-lands-public-hands-act