­2021 was the first year of the biennial session of the Legislature and a busy one for the Maine BHA policy team. In addition to the big $40 million Land for Maine’s Future win, volunteers worked on number of issues of interest to BHA. From January to June we reviewed innumerable bills related to fish and wildlife and habitat conservation and identified 15 bills as BHA priorities. Bills are often scheduled for hearings on short notice and it can be a scramble to research the issue, develop a ...

Hunters will have new regulations for taking elk in the 2022-23 seasons, but the changes won’t be as dramatic as earlier proposed with an amended and unanimously approved update Friday by the Fish and Wildlife Commission. Earlier, the proposed regulations had elicited outrage by many hunters, and Friday, many members of the public on all sides of the aisle said the process had created so much confusion, they wanted the update tossed out and a return to the 2020-2021 regs. Instead, ...

The long-simmering debate over public access finally had a hearing in court earlier this month. We take no joy in filing lawsuits; this is always our least preferred option to settle conflicts. It’s our last resort. However, the situation in the Crazy Mountains, where landowners have been illegally blocking public trails and the United States Forest Service isn’t doing anything about it, was one of these scenarios where we have no choice. So, in 2019, we reluctantly resorted to legal ...

If elk were dimwitted and equally distributed across Montana, setting rules for hunting them might be easier. But the ungulates can apparently figure out where to elude bullets and arrows, and in the face of a more-than-healthy elk population in many places but too few in others, the Fish, Wildlife and Parks Department is working through a new set of hunting regulations to address the conundrum. “The reality is we’ve got places where there’s too many hunters and not enough elk on public ...

About this time last year the Wyoming Chapter launched our Access Raymond Raffle which raised $47,000 through a commissioner tag generously donated by Commissioner Gay Lynn Byrd. We donated these funds to Wyoming Game and Fish to construct infrastructure needed to utilize an access easement secured by RMEF. Through our combined efforts the public now has access to the 33,000 acre Raymond Mountain Wilderness Study Area. We thought we'd check in with the winner of this tag to see how his hunt ...