Powder River Sportsmen's Club

Powder River Sportsmen's Club (PRSC) is a 550-member nonprofit chartered in 1954 in Baker County, Oregon (current pop - 16,000).

PRSC has operated the Virtue Flat Shooting Range (VFSR) on a BLM Recreational & Public Purposes (R&PP) lease since 1968.

PRSC is integral to the Baker community. The club has a legacy of local conservation programs and has provided a venue for practice, public training, public education, public matches, Oregon Hunter Education, Youth Hunter Education Challenge, law enforcement training, and other community services, for decades. 

The purpose of R&PP leases is to help communities and nonprofit organizations obtain land at no or low cost, for public purposes. Typically, R&PP land is leased to a prospective operator for some years before BLM conveys title for the land to the operator.

PRSC has discussed conveyance of title with BLM since 2012, but BLM has postponed that discussion pending completion of the local Resource Management Plan, expected in ~2028. 

In 2023, BLM added three new "conservation" restrictions to the PRSC lease. The new restrictions were pointless; they did not achieve any conservation objective. 

PRSC attempted to convince BLM to remove the restrictions from the lease, but BLM refused.

PRSC appealed that decision to the Internal Board of Land Appeals. As of March 2024, the appeal was still under IBLA review. 

In March 2024, members of PRSC launched fixBLM to pursue the goals described in the fixBLM Mission statement.

One of the goals is to convince Congress to instruct DOI/BLM to give the shooting range land to PRSC.

This is a realistic and justifiable goal: Congress already instructed DOI/BLM to convey land title for a shooting range to its operator in Powell, WY in 2013, at no cost. 

DOI literature describes two avenues for conveyance of public land to communities and nonprofits: the R&PP process, and Congressional Directives.

Our goal is a Congressional Directive.

See the next article: Why give PRSC the shooting range?