The Owyhee Canyonlands in southeast Oregon are a vast undeveloped landscape seldom seen in the modern world. It is a land of wild critters, very dark night skies, and quiet vistas – precisely the places hunters and anglers like to spend their time.
Fortunately, the Owyhee Canyonlands still hold healthy, wild populations of big game like elk, mule deer, and pronghorn, and offer excellent hunting for all three. California desert bighorn sheep also roam the area in solid numbers. There are numerous upland bird species and plenty of opportunity to pursue them. In the Owyhee Canyonlands one can hunt chukar, turkey, sage-grouse, and doves. The area has also been named one the six remaining strongholds for the greater sage-grouse – a species the sporting community has spent the better part of a decade working to protect.
The reason for such abundance is the incredible intact landscape for critters to access various habitats. The Owyhee Canyonlands are one of the largest remaining intact landscapes in the United States at roughly 2.5 million acres. It was recently declared one of the most important mule deer migration areas in the country by the U.S. Geological Survey. Connectivity is a critical component of the area due to the neighboring wilderness areas and contiguous connection with the Owyhee mountains in Idaho. Conservation of the Oregon side would create one the largest protected and connected landscapes in the U.S. and allow ungulates uninterrupted access to flow between their summer and winter ranges – something rarely possible in modern times.
For the angler, multiple opportunities abound as well. From the high-quality tailwater trout fishery below the Owyhee reservoir dam to warm and cold water species in the Owyhee river and the rare and sought after redband trout in the upper reaches of the watershed, numerous fishing opportunities await the intrepid angler. As we know with many native trout species of the Western U.S. like the redband, the main thing these special fish need is cold, clean water and intact landscapes – luckily the Owyhee Canyonlands abide.
The incredible values and the once-in-a-lifetime conservation opportunity have drawn many conservation organizations to work for permanent protection for the Owyhee Canyonlands. Efforts to protect the area span clear back to the 1920’s when the U.S. Forest Service and Biological Survey first formally recognized the area as a unique, full of abundant wildlife, and “the area can be made a wilderness area supreme from which the ranchmen within the area will benefit from the improved condition of the range and the money brought into the locality by those who seek out the area to hunt and fish..”
In more contemporary times, protection efforts resurfaced in the early to mid-2000s when several conservation organizations asked the Obama Administration to consider the area for National Monument designation. Unfortunately, a few misguided miscreants decided to “occupy” the nearby Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, which squashed designation conversations, at least for a while.
But the outstanding natural values remained and conservationists didn’t quit. The latest attempt at National Monument designation surfaced around 2015 and gained such momentum that Oregon Senator Ron Wyden and local stakeholders decided to draft legislation that would protect approximately 1.1 million acres. Iterations of this legislation, the Malheur Community Empowerment for the Owyhee Act, remain to this day but have been stalled for the past several years.
In the meantime, new threats have bubbled up in the form of increased visitation and unmanaged recreation, mostly from the fast-growing Boise, Idaho area. Increased visitation, unmanaged motorized use, overgrazing, drought, and lack of management plans have resulted in increasing degradation of the area. Small scale mining and even some prospecting for the newly important critical mineral lithium have also found their way to the Owyhee Canyonlands area.
Proponents of protecting the area have grown doubtful at the prospects of legislative protection due to the gridlock in Congress. Consequently, many individuals and organizations have begun supporting a parallel, and revived effort to designate the Owyhee as a National Monument.
That leads us to today, where a large and diverse coalition of hunters, anglers, landowners, decision makers, and conservationists continue to push, with louder and louder cries, to get the Owyhee Canyonlands protected. We simply aren’t willing to sit idly by while the modern world continues its push to overwhelm this magnificent area.
We are calling on all the powers that be to work tirelessly to secure protection for the area in 2024. We think the best path forward at this time is for designation as a National Monument. That’s why we’re asking for Senator Wyden to join us in asking the President to designate the Owyhee Canyonlands as a National Monument as soon as possible.
A monument designation would launch an inventory of the special resources, and encourage better planning for recreation, grazing, drought, and wildfire. Things the Owyhee Canyonlands sorely need and definitely deserve.
Please lend your voice and ask Senator Wyden to support designation of the Owyhee Canyonlands as a National Monument.
The Great American Outdoors Act will fully and permanently fund the Land and Water Conservation Fund while investing in a backlog of public land maintenance, providing current and future generations the outdoor recreation opportunities like boat launches to access fishable waters, shooting ranges, and public lands to hunt as well as the economic stimulus we need right now.