Journalist Jimmy Tobias started out working on backcountry trails for the US Forest Service and Montana Conservation Corps. Since then, he has become one of America’s hardest-hitting investigative reporters specializing in public lands, conservation, and the outdoors. Tobias’ story about the link between ecosystem disruption and tick-borne illnesses, “How Lyme Disease Became Unstoppable,” was published in June 2022 in The Nation. That story was the original inspiration for this interview, but Hal and Jimmy range far afield, from ticks to endangered species protection and the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, which promises to dismantle federal public lands and their management once and for all.  Join us.

Ep. 175: Outdoor Investigative Journalism: From Lyme Disease to Endangered Species with Jimmy Tobias

Hunting. Angling. Public Lands. That's the meat of what BHA's Podcast & Blast with Hal Herring is about, and we cover the gamut. With guests that range from outdoor writers to backcountry hunters to legendary anglers, we seek to uncover the stories, the truths, the controversies, and the epic conversations that our public land heritage provides.

Sports & Recreation

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Amateur

Outdoor

College & High School

20 Years of Backcountry Hunters and Anglers with Ben Long and Patrick Berry Ben Long is a founding board member of BHA, the author of the Hunter and Angler’s Guide to Raising Hell, and a lifelong hunter-conservationist of the old breed. Ben came to Rendezvous this year to meet with new BHA CEO Patrick Berry of Vermont and help chart a course for the future of the most dynamic hunter and angler conservation organization in history.  Join us as Hal, Patrick and Ben look back at the origins of BHA, the people, the fire, and the issues, and revel in the memories of where we’ve been and celebrate where we’re headed. Recorded live at the BHA Rendezvous in Minneapolis.

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 180: 20 Years of Backcountry Hunters and Anglers with Ben Long and Patrick Berry

Alabama’s iconic Coosa River was recently named America’s fifth most endangered river. It’s vast watershed, all 280 miles of tributaries and lakes, begins in the mountains of north Georgia and flows south through the very heart of Alabama. The Coosa, like so many American rivers today, faces intense pollution from industrial-scale poultry production and other agricultural runoff, as well as an array of other threats. The Coosa is also one of Alabama’s most popular rivers for fishing, powerboating, kayaking and swimming. To clean it up, and keep it that way in the face of everchanging and growing challenges, the river needs tireless defenders who can be out on the water, day after day, mile after mile, in every season. Join us today to meet one of them, award-winning Coosa Riverkeeper Justinn Overton, born and raised on the rivers of Alabama, an outdoorswoman, hunter, forager, and a fierce advocate for the waters of her home. 

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 179: Justinn Overton, Executive Director of the Coosa Riverkeeper

Tom Reed, of Harrison, Montana, is a founding board member of Backcountry Hunters and Anglers and a true son of the Western plains and Rocky Mountain wilderness. Born in Colorado, Tom worked as a horse and mule packer and a small-town reporter in Wyoming, edited a bass fishing magazine in Arizona, spent years with Wyoming Fish and Game as writer and editor. Throughout his life, he’s pursued the foundational passions that drove him as a youngster- horses, hunting and fishing, wilderness, dogs, good guns, family. And he’s written beautifully about it all, in books like Great Wyoming Bear Stories, Blue Lines, and Give Me Mountains for My Horses, and in hundreds of columns and stories for Trout magazine, Wyoming Wildlife, Mouthful of Feathers and many other publications. Join us in a conversation with one of the American West’s most powerful voices for conservation and public lands, recorded in Tom’s writing cabin on the backside of the Tobacco Root Mountains.

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 178: One of the West’s Most Powerful Voices for Conservation: Tom Reed

In April of 2022, Libby Tobey, Hailey Thompson and Brooke Hess skied into Marsh Creek in Idaho’s Sawtooth Range, towing their kayaks and a sled full of camping gear. The goal: trace the route of anadromous fish from the source of the Salmon River to the Pacific Ocean and advocate removing the four dams on the Lower Snake River that block that migration and are killing that river system. 78 days and 1000 miles away down the tiniest tributaries to the massive whitewater of the main rivers, through soul-killing paddling slogs in dead impoundments, portages amid highways and traffic, wind and sun, joy and tribulation, they found themselves on a spit of sand and mud at the mouth of the Columbia, drinking champagne amid wind-driven waves of salt water. Hal caught up with Libby Tobey in Idaho and with Hailey Thompson in Alaska for an account of the adventure, and a discussion of what is at stake in the debate over the fate of the lower Snake River dams.

BHA Podcast & Blast, Ep. 177: Salmon Source to Sea Expedition with Libby Tobey and Hailey Thompson

Representative 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

Ep. 175: Outdoor Investigative Journalism: From Lyme Disease to Endangered Species with Jimmy Tobias

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