FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Oct. 1, 2025
Contact:
media@backcountryhunters.org
Backcountry Hunters & Anglers: Hunters, Wildlife and Public Lands Pay the Price of Shutdown
BHA urges swift resolution to preserve access and stewardship efforts
WASHINGTON, D.C.—As the leading voice for the conservation of our wild public lands, waters, and wildlife, Backcountry Hunters & Anglers (BHA) today issued the following statement from its policy leadership team in response to Congress’s failure to avert a government shutdown:
“America’s public lands and waters are the foundation of our nation’s outdoor heritage and recreation economy. Hunters, anglers, and communities across the country depend on these shared resources—not just for recreation, but for livelihoods and traditions passed from one generation to the next. A shutdown locks people out of these lands, disrupts conservation work, and deals another blow to local economies that rely on outdoor recreation.
The impacts will be felt immediately. Habitat restoration, wildfire recovery, invasive species control, and other conservation projects on lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), U.S. Forest Service (USFS), National Park Service (NPS) and U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (USFWS) will grind to a halt. Meanwhile, federal employees—the dedicated professionals who steward our public lands and waters—will be furloughed, placing them in personal financial hardship and stalling their important work. With on-the-ground management halted, opportunities for sportsmen and women would be lost and critical conservation work that sustains fish and wildlife left undone.
Adding to this upheaval are documented plans at the Department of the Interior and U.S. Department of Agriculture to permanently shrink the federal workforce through expedited reductions in force. By using the shutdown as leverage to eliminate the civil servants who manage our public lands and waters, the administration risks hollowing out the very capacity needed to steward wildlife habitat, manage access, and sustain outdoor traditions for future generations.
We strongly urge Senate and House leaders to come together in bipartisan negotiations to promptly end the shutdown. Even the threat of a prolonged lapse in funding is detrimental to our public lands and natural resources, and to the hunters, anglers, and outdoor enthusiasts who depend on them. Our wild public lands, waters and wildlife—and the civil servants who steward them—should not be political bargaining chips. Now is the time to put aside political differences to keep our public land managers, hunters and anglers in the field where they belong.”
Backcountry Hunters & Anglers seeks to ensure North America's outdoor heritage of hunting and fishing in a natural setting, through education and work on behalf of wild public lands, waters, and wildlife.
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