The Congressional Review Act and Central Yukon RMP with Dr. Kevin Fraley
Backcountry Hunters & Anglers Podcast & Blast with Hal Herring
Release Date: 12/02/2025
Backcountry Hunters & Anglers Podcast & Blast with Hal Herring
Hunters and anglers across the country may never set foot on Alaska’s Dalton Highway—but what’s unfolding there affects every American who cares about public land. In this episode, Hal Herring sits down with fisheries ecologist and writer Dr. Kevin Fraley to unpack a sweeping threat to some of the most accessible caribou and fishing country in the entire state. A new push in Congress aims to throw out the Central Yukon Resource Management Plan—a plan built over a decade with input from hunters, anglers and local stakeholders—and potentially reopen millions of acres around the Dalton...
info_outlineBackcountry Hunters & Anglers Podcast & Blast with Hal Herring
BHA's new President & CEO Ryan Callaghan probably needs doesn't need an introduction. But you may be wondering what he and BHA are planning for the future, why now is such a critical moment in the history of public lands and waters, and how and why you should get involved with BHA. Here's your chance to learn the answers to those questions and a whole lot more as Cal sits down with Podcast & Blast host Hal Herring for a conversation you don't want to miss.
info_outlineBackcountry Hunters & Anglers Podcast & Blast with Hal Herring
During the 2025 fight against the mass sell-off of America’s public lands, Utah-born cowboy, big game guide, and U.S. Army veteran seemed to be everywhere, from his barrage of fiery commentary on X to the Tucker Carlson and Shawn Ryan podcasts, to addressing public meetings across the West. He was the most powerful and tenacious conservative voice of the pro-public lands movement. He hasn’t let up, and he never will. Join us for the story of a true American original, a soldier who suffered catastrophic injuries in a suicide bomb attack in Ramadi, Iraq, in 2006, and fought successfully to...
info_outlineBackcountry Hunters & Anglers Podcast & Blast with Hal Herring
A controversy over public lands’ management in Indiana’s 204,000-acre Hoosier National Forest turns out to be a microcosm of a burning (pun intended) national debate over using fire and targeted logging operations to create habitat for wildlife and a healthier, more diverse and more resilient forest. From the 1960s to 80s, The U.S. Forest Service, in the grip of the so-called “timber beast” style of management, clear-cut millions of acres of publicly owned forestland, leading to widespread loss of wildlife, sediment-filled streams, and a furious backlash from conservationists. A...
info_outlineBackcountry Hunters & Anglers Podcast & Blast with Hal Herring
The American pronghorn is North America’s most unique big game animal, a Great Plains living relic from the end of the Ice Age—a creature of speed, agility and beauty that once shared the landscape with the American cheetah, lions, dire wolves, steppe bison. The pronghorn has outlasted them all to become an icon of the wide open spaces and a species honored and beloved (if sometimes cursed in frustration) by anyone who has ever hunted them. But now, the pronghorn, like the American Great Plains ecosystem, needs our help. Beset by the disruption of migration corridors, the conversion of...
info_outlineBackcountry Hunters & Anglers Podcast & Blast with Hal Herring
The U.S. Department of Agriculture is taking public comments on the proposal to rescind the 2001 Roadless Rule, which affects 45 million acres of our national forests. Why is this such a big deal? Why are we throwing this baby out with the bathwater? Join Hal and Trout Unlimited President and CEO Chris Wood, who knows this subject inside and out and was working for the U.S. Forest Service in the late 1990s--when the Roadless Rule was created after decades of study, conflict, watershed failures, and the quest for both balance and fiscal responsibility in public lands’ management. You'll...
info_outlineBackcountry Hunters & Anglers Podcast & Blast with Hal Herring
BHA’s Podcast and Blast is proud to be sponsored by Silencer Central, the nation’s largest clearinghouse for silencers. Motto: “Silencers Made Simple since 2005.” This episode features Brandon Maddox of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, who founded Silencer Central 20 years ago from his home. He saw both the growing demand for silencers and the difficulty of navigating federal regulations. Today, Silencer Central handles it all—from expert guidance on the right fit to a step-by-step process (simple enough for even Hal, a self-proclaimed Luddite) that delivers a silencer directly to your...
info_outlineBackcountry Hunters & Anglers Podcast & Blast with Hal Herring
Join us for a conversation with Carmen Vanbianchi, Research Director and Co-founder of Home Range Wildlife Research, based in Winthrop, Washington, in the Methow Valley. Home Range’s mission is “to advance wildlife conservation by conducting high-quality research, educating aspiring biologists, and engaging local communities.” Carmen is a field biologist dedicated to the study of lynx and other carnivores, living a life as a tracker, skier, deep observer, and a student of winter weather and tough terrain. Part of her personal mission is to make sure that more people like herself,...
info_outlineBackcountry Hunters & Anglers Podcast & Blast with Hal Herring
The Northeast is the most densely populated part of our country, and is rich in opportunities for hunting, fishing, hiking and camping, due to an extensive network of public lands and the massively successful wildlife restorations and legislation to clean up rivers and reclaim the industrial and mining mishaps of the past. None of our outdoor pursuits exist here by accident or by luck. The hunting and fishing, the habitat, the access that they depend upon, is the result of work inspired by a passion for making sure that something wonderful can go on and on, in the face of ever increasing...
info_outlineBackcountry Hunters & Anglers Podcast & Blast with Hal Herring
Kyle Lybarger, a native of Hartselle, Alabama, is a botanist and restoration ecologist and the founder of the Native Habitat Project. He’s also a father, a conservationist, a lifelong whitetail and turkey hunter, sauger and bass fisherman. Kyle is a man on a mission: to save or restore as much of the South’s native plants, grasslands, savannahs, limestone glades and open woodlands as he possibly can, and to start a movement of motivated Southerners to do the same, anywhere possible and on any scale, from a tiny corner in a suburban front yard or replacing the sterile turf around a new...
info_outlineHunters and anglers across the country may never set foot on Alaska’s Dalton Highway—but what’s unfolding there affects every American who cares about public land. In this episode, Hal Herring sits down with fisheries ecologist and writer Dr. Kevin Fraley to unpack a sweeping threat to some of the most accessible caribou and fishing country in the entire state. A new push in Congress aims to throw out the Central Yukon Resource Management Plan—a plan built over a decade with input from hunters, anglers and local stakeholders—and potentially reopen millions of acres around the Dalton to industrial leasing, restricted access and the kind of locked-up landscapes already seen on the North Slope.
Fraley brings deep on-the-ground knowledge of the Brooks Range, the Dalton corridor and the fish and wildlife that depend on it, explaining in clear terms what’s at stake and why this unprecedented use of the Congressional Review Act matters for anyone who values public access, wild fish and fair-chase hunting. Whether you’ve dreamed of a DIY caribou hunt, care about responsible management of America’s lands or just want to understand the real story behind a fast-moving political fight, this episode lays out exactly why this moment demands attention.