Trout Unlimited’s team of Washington, D.C.-based advocates are well -known in the conservation world and are a critical part of our placed-based work for trout and salmon.

Less well-known are the dozen Trout Unlimited staffers who cover state legislative work in places like Santa Fe, N.M.; Cheyenne, Wyo.; Helena, Mont.; and Salt Lake City, Utah.

Trout Unlimited is possibly the only conservation organization that staffs every western legislative session.

From January to June (depending on the state) our western legislative leads work on dozens of bills, ensuring that the voices of anglers, hunters and our state councils are represented at state capitols.

Our priorities vary from state to state and year to year, but we have a long track record of success that includes passing legislation regulating motorized vehicle use on public lands, funding bills for state wildlife agencies, natural resource trust fund bills, instream flow and water infrastructure legislation. Additionally, every year we defeat dozens of proposals that would diminish public lands, cut funding for fish and wildlife or deregulate industry at the expense of fish and wildlife.

In 2020, Trout Unlimited engaged on more than three dozen bills in Alaska, Arizona, California, New Mexico, Colorado, Washington, Wyoming and Idaho. The proposals included our successful opposition of a memorial supporting uranium mining near the Grand Canyon in Arizona to our successful support of instream flow legislation in Colorado, to regulating suction dredge hobby mining in Washington.

In Utah alone, Trout Unlimited successfully advocated for the creation of a Natural Resources Trust Fund, helped pass a constitutional right to hunt and fish for placement on the ballot, secured long term instream flow legislation and passed water banking amendments beneficial to trout.