Reimagine Your Public Lands

Why It’s Amazing:  

The Owyhee Canyonlands is an Oregon treasure, and one of the most remote, significant and intact landscapes in the entire country. Here, natural conditions prevail, much of the area looks today as it has for thousands of years and opportunities for solitude and backcountry recreation abound.

What It Needs: 

With foresight, planning and responsive, conservation-focused management, we can preserve the most unique and ecologically significant areas of the Owyhee and prevent the sort of development and impacts that have quickly taken hold in other areas of the West. 

Tweet to Push for Owyhee Protection

Not active on Twitter? No problem, you can easily convert any of these facts and tweets into Facebook or Instagram posts. We have some additional tips at the end of this article. 

Why It’s Amazing: 

Deep glacier-carved gorges, stunning scenery, wilderness, wild rivers, a rich diversity of plant, fish, and wildlife species

What It Needs: 

More streams protected as Wild and Scenic Rivers.

While the Steens Mountain Cooperative Management and Protection Area provides solid protection for 400,000 acres in this area, many of the wild streams that traverse its rugged slopes remain unprotected, despite hosting phenomenal riparian habitat and unique opportunities to conserve native fish species. Home Creek, on the west side of Steens, offers the last, best habitat for Catlow Valley redband trout, one of only two endemic fish in Catlow Valley. Meanwhile, East Steens Mountain streams support federally protected Lahontan cutthroat trout, which are threatened throughout much of their range.

Tweet to Push for Wild and Scenic Rivers:

Why It’s Amazing: 

This region supports one of the longest and largest pronghorn migrations in North America, and is one of six remaining sagebrush strongholds that greater sage-grouse need to survive  

What It Needs: 

Greater Hart-Sheldon needs its key habitat corridors preserved through consistent conservation-minded management. 

Franklin D. Roosevelt’s original vision for the Greater Hart-Sheldon was to establish a single large wildlife refuge to conserve both core reserves and the vital migratory pathways between them. The present situation in this region is a complex land ownership pattern of two refuges, four different Bureau of Land Management districts, and state lands and private lands. Each of these agencies operates under different management objectives, some of which subject the land to uses that adversely affect the region’s rich and irreplaceable wildlife values.

Tweet To Encourage Sound Management:

You can easily convert any of these facts and tweets into Facebook or Instagram posts, too. 

Here’s a prompt to get you started: 

When I #ReImaginePublicLands, I think about conserving [insert place]. 

I hope to see it’s [insert a quality you appreciate] preserved. 

And, I hope that those who come after me will also benefit from the [a value or essential service] that this #BLMWild place provides. 

@mypubliclands, thank you for being a careful steward of Oregon’s high desert and seizing this moment to #FixThePlans.  

And, here are the hashtags and handles to make sure BLM sees your posts:  

• hashtags – #ReImaginePublicLands, #BLMWild, #FixThePlans 
• BLM’s Instagram handle – @mypubliclands
• BLM’s Facebook handle – @bureauoflandmanagement

There are many ways to reimagine what public lands management in the West can look like, and we applaud the BLM for taking this opportunity to reflect on their mission and how the agency can best serve the diverse needs and interests of the 328.2 million Americans that they report to.

Thank you for taking this opportunity to share your desert public lands connection.

Ready to keep on learning about the Bureau of Land Management and the public lands they administer? Challenge yourself with this seven-question quiz.