Rainbow Trout from Big Hole River near Twin Bridges, Montana. Photo by Mike Cline taken October 2007.
How to Report Public Access Challenges and Opportunities
New digital reporting tool created by onX helps users share information to improve public land and water access
by: Randall Williams / posted in: Sportsmens Access / June 25, 2020
Ever since we teamed up with onX to produce our first report on inaccessible public lands in the West, sportsmen and women from around the country have reached out to share stories of hard-to-reach or landlocked hunting and fishing opportunities that they’ve encountered while scouting or in the field. Almost every time, these stories end with a question: How can these situations be resolved?
This week, onX released a new digital tool to report on-the-ground obstacles to public land and water access. Launched in partnership with TRCP as well as Backcountry Hunters & Anglers and the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, onX’s Report a Land Access Opportunity platform will allow sportsmen and women to pinpoint areas where access for outdoor recreation is limited or non-existent and to share information that can be used to help improve the situation.
Examples of the types of situations that could be reported include:
- A property currently for sale that could secure new public access to public lands
- Public land parcels that have no legal access routes
- Out-of-place roadblocks, gates or signs that restrict travel to public lands
- Public waters that are difficult or impossible to reach
In addition, private landowners can use the platform to share routes across their property that they allow the public to use to access public lands, or flag areas where they commonly encounter issues with trespassers trying to reach public lands.
The tool found at onX’s website guides you step-by-step through the reporting process. Powered by TypeForm.
Detailed instructions for the submitting an access challenge or opportunity can be found at onX’s website
No onX membership is required to submit a location. If you use the onX App, you can submit locations directly through the App using the Waypoint Sharing feature. Non-members can sign up for a free App trial or submit locations through the reporting form found here.
When you submit a location, the team at onX will add the location to a database, ensure that the description matches the location, categorize the access situation, and follow up with you if there are any questions. onX will also assess patterns in the data, such as a cluster of reports from a single area, to determine whether there are underlying or systemic causes in a particular region that impede public access. At that point, onX will share the information with the partner organization that best aligns with each project.
“One thing we’ve noted over many years of access work is that there is a mountain of work to do to secure access to many beautiful places and public lands, to open new recreation opportunities near cities and, surprisingly, to secure access to places we already enjoy,” noted onX Founder Eric Siegfried. “We believe the only scalable way to do all this work is to empower people within their community to have a voice and to take action. We thought a good first step was to give people a place where they can easily report an access concern or opportunity, then get connected with the appropriate organization who could help. With that in mind, we’ve created this first iteration of Report a Land Access Opportunity. It’s another small step to achieving this vision, and all of us at onX are excited to see what we can do next with our incredible access partners and you.”
The first round of submissions will be open through December 2020.
