Match My Mountains

Want to know why some movements with serious policy power don't have much grassroots stability? Part of it is organizing; part of it is the kind of media their members consume; part of it is whether those members see themselves as part of a coherent and serious movement at all. The public lands movement could use a few new media projects to go along with its existing advocacy groups and publi...

The National Park Service makes sure to remind Americans of the role of industry and innovation in our country's development, in sites from Chesapeake and Ohio Canal National Historical Park, Rosie the Riveter / WWII Homefront National Historical Park, Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historical Park, and many more. That is a tradition that has literally built much of this country, and it co...

Over 80 years ago-- at the height of the Second World War, during those years we remember as the most united and resolved the American people have ever been for a common cause and a beautiful future, the United States government committed one of the three or four worst oppressions it has ever committed upon its own people. 120,000 Japanese-Americans, the majority of whom were native-born American...

The National Park Service makes sure to remind Americans of the places and people who were integral to its founding, from the memorials to George Washington and Thomas Jefferson in D.C. to the memorial to Alexander Hamilton in New York City to the hallowed complex of founding sites at Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia. In celebration of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration...

There's a little expanse of land in Southern Utah that's been the subject of an intensive game of political football for over ten years now-- it's called Bear's Ears National Monument. It's a beautiful, glorious spot, with grand sandstone rock formations and mysterious water-cut canyons as wonderful as any in the nearby national parks. And once upon a time we mined uranium...

Chaco Culture National Historical Park is an underrated little gem out in the New Mexican plains, near the homelands of the Navajo and the Pueblo and many others. Their ancestors, the Chacoan civilization of the high middle ages, left behind splendid haunting ruins of their spiritual and economic centers, and the most magnificent are preserved here at Chaco Canyon. (Definitely take a look sometime...

This one's dedicated to all Philmont staff, past and present, the ones I've met and the ones I haven't. What would it be like, someone asked me once, to live as though all the world were Philmont? Well, aside from cheerfulness and helpfulness and adventure, I think there's one big thing this beautiful place teaches-- and that is the virtue of stewardship, the conviction that we...

I was in the Southwest already and stopped by Big Bend National Park to take a look around at the site where they're bulldozing a service road for the border security stuff (not quite a wall). It's not that bad yet, but there's something a lot worse-- the fact that they waived about 30 environmental laws to pave the way to build this stuff is a terrifying precedent. Here's some...

In which I literally just read you a list of National Historic Sites, National Historical Parks, National Monuments, National Battlefields, and National Historic Trails! The National Park Service single-handedly protects more historic heritage across a wider array of historical narratives than any other single entity in the United States of America, including many most people don't know exist...

Most of the people I'm criticizing here are Republicans, so it's time I finally confirm to everyone that I actually do have cred as a Republican, and that this project actually is, in part, an internal critique of my own side. A lot of books, some of that political commentary people have been asking for, and some more extended looks at the ways conservative conservationists are continual...

Chris Keyes, editor of Republic. Land, joins the show to talk on why there aren't enough journals and magazines covering public land conservation issues these days, why the field has historically tilted left, what needs to be done to build a broader coalition and get more people in on the issues, and all the rest. Take a look at his work and follow https://www.republic.land/

There's a very simple, straightforward idea of the public land system everyone who thinks of themselves as a conservationist should hold themselves too: keep it staffed, funded, protected, managed, and whole. Unfortunately, my fellow Republicans do not seem to be getting the message much of the time. So a position that should be moderate is, nowadays, radical. Here's some unhinged raving...

When two or three conservatives are gathered together, there too is a conversation about philosophy with them. Andrew Sandstrom and I are no different. Beyond philosophical bases for conservation, we talk about the pendulum of national politics screwing up carefully-crafted local consensuses on land management, the mindsets and arguments of Utah Republicans supporting land sales, and the nitty-gri...

Former Chief Ranger of the National Park Service Walt Dabney spent a long career pulling climbers off of Mount Rainier, counting alligators around the Everglades, keeping the gates open in Southern Utah, and otherwise having great adventures in public service around the national park system. He takes us deep, deep down in the weeds on the different tasks rangers do across the parks, how those need...

Here is a long and winding and obscure extended metaphor of the American identity as being, more than anything else, the the collaboration and compromise of multiple many things for the common good in the long term-- just like our wonderful National Forests. (And our chili bowls too, while we're at it.) So what are we all doing in this big beautiful American experiment together, and how shoul...

National Parks and public lands are an issue everybody cares about, after they care about everything else— and most people don’t really understand the dynamics of public land policy. This means it’s quite common for very well-intentioned supporters to completely lose their minds over comparatively unimportant things— most recently, the bad-but-not-existential restructuring of the U.S. Forest Servi...

Everybody knows about the two great American traditions of cOnSeRvATiOn aNd PrEsErVaTiOn (and if you don't, we're exploring it here!) Not many people look backward beyond John Muir and Gifford Pinchot. We all assume American conservation started when the big evil oligarchs cut down too many trees and a few idealists convinced Teddy Roosevelt to stop them. But conservation came from somew...