Bjorn Dihle has lived his entire life in southeast Alaska, hunting and fishing from the Tongass National Forest to the northern Brooks Range and beyond. He is a family man, a wilderness and wildlife guide, a conservationist, and a contributing editor at Alaska and Hunt Alaska magazines. Bjorn is the author of the books Haunted Inside Passage, Never Cry Halibut, and A Shape in the Dark: Living and Dying with Brown Bears. Listeners might also know his work from his riveting story in Outdoor Life, entitled The Infamous and Murderous Sheslay Free Mike, about a mysterious and thoroughly-unhinged trapper that haunted the wilds of the Taku River country in the 1970s and 80s. Join us for an episode that veers from the usual nuts and bolts of life, hunting and fishing and conservation, and into the shadows of the paranormal, the places out beyond the light of the campfire, where anyone, and anything, might be lurking and watching. 

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BHA. THE VOICE FOR OUR WILD PUBLIC LANDS, WATERS AND WILDLIFE.

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“It is astonishing that this law has escaped fundamental change.” John Leshy, author of The Mining Law: A Study in Perpetual Motion

The 1872 Mining Law represents one of the most extraordinary give-a-ways of American assets in the history of our nation. It has been the target of reform and repeal almost from the very moment it was passed. No other nation on earth allows the mining industry to simply extract the public’s wealth without paying. The cost of administering it- the legal process of giving away America’s public lands and minerals- is astronomical. It has been used by grifters and scammers to privatize millions of acres of public land. It has resulted in an estimated 500,000 abandoned mines on public lands, $35 billion in cleanup costs, and over 10,000 miles of waterways forever impacted or ruined. Billions of dollars’ worth of gold, silver, and other minerals are taken out each year – nobody even knows the extent, because there’s no regulation to make them report the totals. Even the mining industry, until recently, was embarrassed by it.

As the US sees a new boom in mining on public lands- lithium, cobalt, the rare-earth minerals in such furious demand by the alternative energy and EV industry, the 1872 Mining Law should be the first item on the agenda of reform. But nobody is even talking about it.

Why not?

Please join us for a conversation with law professor and former General Counsel of the Department of Interior John Leshy, who literally wrote the book on the Mining Law, and has over fifty years’ experience in public land law and policy. Leshy is also the author of Our Common Ground: a History of America’s Public Lands, and will be returning to the BHA podcast to discuss that book in a few weeks.

Alaska’s proposed Ambler Road is back on the table, and Americans are once again asked a fundamental question about what we value and what kind of world we will pass on to our children.  We covered the Ambler Road controversy in Episode 168 of the podcast, and a quick re-listen to that episode will be handy for getting the information we need to make informed decisions in this coming time of decision and consequence. Here’s a quick breakdown of the issue: The proposed Ambler Road is a proposed 211-mile industrial corridor through public lands along the southern flanks of the Brooks Range and one of the last and largest protected roadless areas on earth. The road would be built from the Dalton Highway at Mile Marker 161 to the Ambler Mining District on the Ambler River, passing through the Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve, bisecting the migration route of the embattled Western Arctic caribou herd and crossing nearly 3,000 streams and 11 major rivers including the Kobuk and Koyukon.

Our guest today is Seth Kantner, who was born in a sod igloo on the Kobuk River in the 1960’s and has been hunting, trapping, fishing and making a life on the land there ever since. He’s a renowned wildlife photographer and a commercial fisherman, best known for his extraordinary novel Ordinary Wolves, his non-fiction books Shopping for Porcupine, Swallowed by the Great Land and A Thousand Trails Home: Living with Caribou, and a children’s book, Pup and Porcupine. We thought that, with all the controversy over the Ambler Road, we should find a person who could speak to what was there in that country now, and what is truly at stake if the road project goes forward. We’ll have Seth back to talk about subsistence hunting and trapping and life in the Arctic, but for now, let’s address this pressing issue of the Ambler Road.

We're spending Thanksgiving week with our families and bringing you one of our favorite podcast episodes from the archives: Ron Mills, an outfitter, hunting guide and packer in the Bob Marshall Wilderness since 1959! Ron has authored a new book called Under the Biggest Sky of All, 75 Years on Montana’s Rocky Mountain Front, a raucous and astoundingly funny account of his adventures as a guide, horseman and packer, farrier and ranch hand in some of the wildest country left on the planet. (Hal wrote the forward to the book, as seen in the spring 2019 issue of Backcountry Journal.) Ron and Hal discuss the book, life in the saddle and in 20 different camps across the Bob, and what it is like to work with a man who turns out to be a coldblooded American serial killer.

Almost ten years ago, career firefighter and paramedic Beau Beasley embarked on a journey to tell the true stories of America’s veterans, honestly and in their own words. He was a respected outdoor writer and flyfishing guidebook author, and was deeply affected by the friendships he’d made through his involvement with Project Healing Waters, an organization that connects veterans with fishing and other outdoor opportunities.

“I had no idea what I was doing when I took this on,” Beau says. “I only knew I had to do it.”

Beau’s book “Healing Waters” holds the stories of 32 American military veterans who, through flyfishing, rod building, flytying, and being part of a vibrant outdoor community, “came across from the dark side of the river to the light.” 

By turns harrowing, tragic, and joyful, these stories cut to the bone, portraits of the price that some of us are willing to pay for this mighty experiment in freedom and responsibility that is the United Sates of America. Join us, and please, if you are a veteran, or know a veteran, who could benefit from this book or this connection to Project Healing Waters or BHA's Armed Forces Initiative, listen and pass it on.

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THE VOICE FOR WILD PUBLIC LANDS, WATERS, & WILDLIFE.

www.backcountryhunters.org

Episode 191 with Jared Sullivan, former editor of Field and Stream and Men’s Journal, on his new book, Valley So Low, about the 2008 coal ash disaster near Kingston, Tennessee, its catastrophic aftermath on the health of those who cleaned it up, and holding our federal agencies accountable.

In 2019, Tennessee native and former Field and Stream editor Jared Sullivan reported on the aftermath of massive coal ash spill from the TVA’s Kingston Fossil Plant. That spill- at 1.1 billion gallons, the largest coal ash spill so far in history -  flooded homes, obliterated a portion of the Emory River and sent poisons into the main Clinch River. It never should have happened- the coal ash pit was unlined, its dam was absurdly weak, the toxic ash should never have been stored there in the first place. But the real tragedy went far beyond the ruin of the rivers and lands.  

The writing of the story introduced Jared to the many hardworking Tennesseans who worked in the multi-year effort to clean up the spill, and who were poisoned by the mercury, radium, arsenic and other heavy metals and chemicals present on the jobsite.

Jared’s new book Valley So Low is a legal thriller about a David vs. Goliath fight for justice, about federal agencies, lies, and lack of accountability, and the true human cost of treating our world like a dumping ground.

Any opinions expressed within this podcast do not necessarily represent those of Backcountry Hunters & Anglers.

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BHA. THE VOICE FOR OUR WILD PUBLIC LANDS, WATERS AND WILDLIFE.

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Blaring headlines: “Battle lines hardening in dispute over Mobile ship channel deepening project”

“No more federal mud dumping' — Standing room only at Baykeeper town hall”

A newly deepened and widened shipping channel created by the US Army Corps of Engineers makes Mobile, Alabama, the second fastest growing port in the US – the amount of cargo handled this year more than doubled from previous years.

Some of the world’s healthiest commercial and recreational fisheries, vibrant towns, waterfront properties that date back centuries, all because of the health of one of the most beautiful and historically and ecologically-important bays in the world.   

90 million cubic yards of mud, dredged and disposed of over the next 20 years. Already the impacts on seagrass and reefs and fisheries are severe.

Join us to find out what’s going on, from the locals with everything at stake: William Strickland, Mobile Baykeeper, and fishing guides Capt. Patric Garmeson, and Capt. Richard Rutland.

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BHA. THE VOICE FOR OUR WILD PUBLIC LANDS, WATERS AND WILDLIFE.

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Utah files landmark lawsuit challenging federal control over most BLM land

Yes, it is to retch over. Once again, the Utah legislature is coming for America’s public lands, this time by way of a lawsuit filed against the US government to lay claim to 18.5 million acres of public lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management.

Utah has a new website called “Stand for Our Land” designed to support the lawsuit – it’s a slick campaign, maybe the slickest yet- and chock-full of the half-truths and outright falsehoods long devised and parroted by the generations of would-be landgrabbers before them.

Some say this is just more performance politics, another ploy to lock-in votes from a mouth-frothing base that demands raw meat, however illusory, to stay motivated.

It is not. Utah is a complicated place, and the motivations and legal mechanics of this lawsuit need to be understood by every American who loves our public lands and our freedom to experience them, and who believes that freedom should be safeguarded for the future. Know what is happening. Join Utah BHA leaders Caitlyn Curry and Perry Hall, and BHA CEO Patrick Berry, for the inside look at what is happening, what is at stake, and exactly what is coming down this road.    

“Once more into the breach!” as Henry the Fifth commended his valiant soldiers, and so must  we, defenders of public lands and our American birthright, go, yet again, and as many times as it take. 

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www.backcountryhunters.org

From ballot initiatives that mandate wolf-reintroduction or banning the hunting of mountain lions and bobcats, wildlife management decisions are increasingly being made by voters instead of biologists.

It is called “ballot biology” and it is a result of some highly motivated anti-hunting and animal rights groups reaching out to a ballooning demographic of non-hunting, often urban, voters who may be well-intentioned (“protect mountain lions and bobcats from being slaughtered!”) but who don’t know how wildlife is managed, how it was restored from near-extinction, or who pays for habitat and biologists and all the moving parts of the world’s most successful wildlife model. Only about 6 out of every 100 Colorado residents buys a hunting license- if it becomes a contest of us against them, a hot culture war decided by votes, we will lose. The wildlife will lose with us.

There is trouble ahead, and a new and formidable challenge for all of us who love hunting and wildlife. Join us for an interview with Gaspar Perricone, who is on the frontlines of this battle in Colorado, and has a plan to win it.    

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BHA. THE VOICE FOR OUR WILD PUBLIC LANDS, WATERS AND WILDLIFE.

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Join Hal and Florida archeologist Jeffrey Shanks for a lost tale of British Marines and Jamaican privateers, American maroons, Creek Indian warriors, rogue Choctaws, religious prophets, and the bloody and tenacious struggle for freedom.

The Apalachicola National Forest in Florida’s Panhandle holds some of the most remote swampland wilderness in the US, forbidding blackwater mazes of cypress and black gum and tupelo, whining with biting and stinging insects, the natural home of alligator and cottonmouth, redbreast bream and bass.  It also holds some of the most fascinating and complex history in America.

On the far western edge of north Florida’s Apalachicola National Forest, there is a place called Prospect Bluff, a slight rise in the land that overlooks a channel of the mighty Apalachicola River itself. It’s the site of Fort Gadsden, a modest construction that played a small role during the First Seminole War, and then was abandoned during the American Civil War. 

In 2018, Hurricane Micheal, a Category Five storm, wreaked havoc on the Panhandle and on the Apalachicola National Forest. On Prospect Bluff, massive oak trees, three hundred years old and more, were uprooted. Forest Service and National Park Service archeologists surveying the damage to the site found curious artifacts in the excavations left by the roots of the toppled trees. At some point, lots of human beings had lived here, and they had built a powerful fortification. They had farmed and traded and been well-prepared for war, which did indeed come to them. The story that came to light is one of the most complicated and fascinating episodes in American history, with echoes and ripples out as far as the Bahamas, Trinidad, Sierra Leone and Nova Scotia, where the descendants of the men and women who fought and died at Prospect Bluff are living right now.