What’s next for the Owyhee Canyonlands?

Long before dams were constructed on the Owyhee River, the current carved a series of deep canyons and ravines through the southeastern corner of Oregon, carrying salmon all the way to Nevada. Greater sage grouse, pronghorn, redband trout and more than 200 other species of wildlife live in the Owyhee Canyonlands today, as do 28 species of rare and endemic plants. The canyonlands’ rock spires and rolling sagebrush hills are also the ancestral homelands of the Northern Paiute, Shoshone and Bannock tribes. “That land is significant to us,” said Gary McKinney (Duck Valley Shoshone-Paiute) of the People of Red Mountain, a committee of traditional knowledge keepers and descendants of the Fort McDermitt Paiute, Shoshone and Bannock tribes.