Two new executive orders from President Trump continue his administration’s push to expand hunting and fishing on public lands.
At a White House dinner last week with hunting interest groups and companies, Trump announced the wide-ranging orders, which direct federal land agencies to take several steps to improve hunting and angling opportunities. The actions include exploring conservation easements to make it easier to reach landlocked parcels and turning to volunteers to help manage wildlife and invasive species.
More broadly, the directives promote the ethos that hunting, fishing, shooting and other forms of recreation should be allowed on federal lands — except within national parks — unless a specific closure is justified.
“We believe that public lands belong to the American people and to the public, and hunters, fishers and outdoorsmen should be able to access them,” Trump said at the announcement.
“This executive order seeks to do a lot of good things,” said Jack Polentes, the policy and government relations senior manager for Backcountry Hunters and Anglers, referring to the order about hunting titled “Reinvigorating America’s Hunting Heritage.”
Polentes said the recognition of the role that hunting and angling play in conservation is powerful; the sports help fund wildlife agencies through taxes and fees and can be used as a tool to manage wildlife populations. He also applauded the call from the White House to open hunting at two specific national monuments: Castle Mountains National Monument in California and Craters of the Moon National Monument in Idaho.
However, Polentes said his organization has concerns that other administration proposals could be at odds with expanding hunting and fishing, like scrapping the Roadless Rule and rewriting regulations for off-road vehicles.
“I think there's a lot of nervousness about how changing so much, how revising so many federal regulations that make sense — like the roadless rule, like the travel management rule — have the potential to give short-term access as opposed to long-term, durable access for generations to come," he said.
The executive actions follow an order from Interior Secretary Doug Burgum earlier this year, which also emphasized that federal land should be open to hunting and fishing as a default. Following that order, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recently announced many new recreation opportunities at wildlife refuges.
Hunting is generally allowed on lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service, and many wildlife refuges are open to hunting. On the other hand, hunting is prohibited in most national parks, though Burgum's order inspired some parks to loosen their regulations, drawing ire from critics over impacts to wildlife and visitor safety.
David Willms, the associate vice president of public lands at the National Wildlife Federation, said the impact of Trump's executive orders will depend on how federal agencies choose to carry out the directives.
“The 'how we do it,' that's the thing I'll be waiting to see — the proposals for how to do each of these things that are laid out,” he said.
Per the timelines in the orders, those actions are expected anywhere from the next couple of months through the next year.
This story was produced by the Mountain West News Bureau, a collaboration between Boise State Public Radio, Wyoming Public Media, Nevada Public Radio, KUNR in Nevada, KUNC in Northern Colorado, KANW in New Mexico, Colorado Public Radio and KJZZ in Arizona as well as NPR, with support from affiliate newsrooms across the region. Funding for the Mountain West News Bureau is provided in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and Eric and Wendy Schmidt.
