national monuments

Senate Passes Massive Public Lands Conservation Bill

Senate Passes Massive Public Lands Conservation Bill

In a rare bipartisan push, the U.S. Senate voted overwhelmingly in favor of a major public lands package on Tuesday. The Natural Resources Management Act, approved 92-8, establishes 1.3 million acres of new wilderness, adds 694,000 acres of new recreation and conservation areas, creates four new national monuments, among other important conservation measures, according to […]

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    Zinke Increases Hunting and Fishing Areas in 30 Wildlife Refuges

    Zinke Increases Hunting and Fishing Areas in 30 Wildlife Refuges

    Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke is expanding or opening hunting in 30 National Wildlife Refuges, the Department of the Interior (DOI) announced Friday. The move will open more than 251,000 acres and raise the total number of places where hunting is permitted to 377 and where fishing is permitted to 312. The expansion will be in […]

    NOAA Proposes Opening Marine Monuments to Fishing Within 90 Days

    NOAA Proposes Opening Marine Monuments to Fishing Within 90 Days

    When reports surfaced in June that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) might shift the language of its mission statement away from climate and conservation and towards security and the economy, acting head Rear Admiral Timothy Gallaudet rushed to reassure reporters that the agency’s mission would remain unchanged. But a copy of the presentation […]

    The Hiker’s Guide to Communing With Nature

    The Hiker’s Guide to Communing With Nature

    By Jillian Mackenzie If you’ve visited the wilderness recently, you may have noticed something: people. People with walking sticks, people with selfie sticks, people with more people in tow. Surging numbers of visitors are hiking, camping, and all-around loving the outdoors. A whopping 330,882,751 of them spent 1.44 billion hours in our national parks in […]

    Trump’s BLM Ready to Sacrifice Ancient Rock Art for Gas Drilling

    Trump’s BLM Ready to Sacrifice Ancient Rock Art for Gas Drilling

    By Sam Schipani While the Ancestral Puebloan people of the Southwest were building citadels like Chaco Canyon, the Fremont people were carving mysterious petroglyphs depicting horned, broad-shouldered triangular men and sweeping carvings of desert snakes. Nowhere is their legacy more apparent than in eastern Utah’s Molen Reef. Fremont artifacts dominate this cultural heritage site, but […]

    Rock Climbers and Supporters ‘Climb the Hill’ for Public Lands

    Rock Climbers and Supporters ‘Climb the Hill’ for Public Lands

    U.S. rock climbers and their non-profit and corporate allies are setting themselves a difficult challenge this week—persuading Congress to act to protect public lands. Thursday marks the second day of the third annual Climb the Hill event in Washington, DC, organized by leading climbing-advocacy nonprofits American Alpine Club (AAC) and Access Fund to give climbers […]

    Native American Climber Works to Restore Indigenous Names to Peaks

    Native American Climber Works to Restore Indigenous Names to Peaks

    By Ryan Dunfee The 14,351-foot summit of Colorado’s Blanca Peak erupts 7,000 vertical feet from the pancake-flat San Luis Valley to its west and gains its incredible altitude in just six miles. From any vantage point north, west or south, the peak and the surrounding Sierra Blanca Massif groan improbably upward from the sagebrush plains. […]