Open Country

Join the fight to access your public lands

The President Just Signed a Historic Conservation Bill That Will Help Buy New Public Lands and Fix Our National Parks
By Alex Robinson Natalie KrebsAugust 4, 2020
For decades, the conservation community has been advocating for the full and permanent funding of the Land and Water Conservation Fund, a program that uses royalties from offshore oil and gas operations to purchase new public lands and maintain public access. Today President Trump—who has often been criticized by conservation and public land advocates—signed a bill that will do just that.
The Senate Is About to Pass a Bill That Will (Finally) Fund Public Lands and Ease Maintenance Backlogs in National Parks
By Natalie KrebsJune 9, 2020
This piece of landmark bipartisan legislation will fully—and permanently—fund the Land and Water Conservation Fund at $900 million annually. The second major provision of the GAOA will address increasingly dire public-land maintenance backlogs.
Video: Meet the Duck Hunting Queen of Plaquemines Parish
By Alex RobinsonApril 22, 2020
Albertine Kimble takes us on a duck hunt through the biggest wetlands conservation issue of our time
Should Public Lands Remain Open During the Coronavirus Crisis?
By Alex RobinsonApril 17, 2020
So why not just close them all? If there is any COVID-19 risk associated with public-land use, why not mitigate it? In short, it’s because that’s not how the management of public lands is supposed to work. Our public lands are vast and diverse, and so are the communities that rely on them. What works in one place will fail in another. Management decisions are supposed to based on the best science available, they are supposed to consider all stakeholders—especially local ones—and they are supposed to conserve the resources while also allowing access to them.
What’s Gained and Lost by Privatizing River Access?
By Christine PetersonApril 13, 2020
In the West, where the water is for fighting and the whiskey is for drinking, we take a look at what's gained and lost by privatizing river access
Will Yellowstone Park Close to Public Visitation?
By Andrew McKeanMarch 23, 2020
The National Park Service is reportedly considering a request from public-health officials in neighboring Park and Gallatin counties in Montana to close Yellowstone Park. They said that by encouraging visitation to Yellowstone during the COVID-19 outbreak, the public—locals and visitors—could be endangered by inadvertent transmission of the virus.

WHAT WE DO

In order to hunt or fish, you need a place to do it, and Open Country is committed to sportsmen's access—getting it, keeping it, defending it, and celebrating it—so that you always have that place.