Trout Unlimited CEO Chris Wood helps Jael catch a fish. Photo: Nick Sobczyk
Conservation group Trout Unlimited is angling for bipartisan wins on funding for mine cleanups and climate resilience efforts.
Why it matters: After Trout Unlimited helped kill the Pebble Mine and securing public lands funding in both the IIJA and IRA, you shouldn't bet against Wood's group.
Axios' Jael Holzman and Nick Sobczyk went fishing at Fletcher's Cove in D.C. with CEO Chris Wood and its new government affairs guy, Lindsay Slater, who joined from Rep. Mike Simpson's office. Here's what we learned on the water:
🏔 Good Sam stuck: TU is now focused on passing a bill that would launch a pilot program for "Good Samaritan" cleanup projects at abandoned mines.
- Sen. Martin Heinrich put forward the bill last year, though he has yet to reintroduce it. It got a hearing last Congress but didn't advance.
- It would let the government test a process for letting nonprofits and environmental groups restore old hard-rock mining sites without facing onerous legal liability.
- "I still believe that good ideas that have merit will find their way into law," Wood said.
⛏ Mining for permits: Wood hopes a grand bargain on a permitting bill becomes a pathway toward long-sought changes to the 1872 mining law.
- "I think if the [mining] industry was smart, they would see there was an opportunity to cover some of the [public] weaknesses that they're exposed to," he said.
💯 Other priorities: TU's going to be a group to watch in the farm bill debate, fighting to keep robust conservation funding from the IRA.
- We're also watching how they engage in the fight over the lower four dams on the Snake River.
- Slater was a key player behind Simpson's groundbreaking proposal to remove the dams to restore the river's salmon runs, but other Republicans aren't so keen on the idea.
