The Landscape

Aaron talks with Tracy Stone-Manning, president of The Wilderness Society, former director of the Bureau of Land Management, and three-time guest on The Landscape, about how to rebuild federal land agencies after years of political disruption and why the current moment may be a once-in-a-generation opportunity to rethink public lands law from the ground up. They discuss the Forest Service reorgani...

Kate and Aaron talk to Jayson O’Neill, a longtime public lands watchdog and Montanan who previously led the Western Values Project and now heads up a campaign called Save Our Parks . Jayson explains how the Trump administration is using the National Park Service to funnel money into Trump’s vanity projects in DC, as well as how President Donald Trump and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum subverted Am...

Kate and Aaron are joined by Dr. Steve Feldgus, an independent consultant who served as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Land and Minerals Management at the Interior Department under President Biden. Dr. Feldgus talks about how to improve mine permitting in the US, a topic he worked on while at Interior. News Falling behind: Forest Service fuel treatment gap puts communities at risk – Cent...

Floodlight News reporter Evan Simon joins Aaron and Kate to break down a controversial Forest Service land swap in Montana’s Crazy Mountains that quietly gave Yellowstone Club — a private club for billionaires — near-exclusive access to what should be public land, and how Interior Secretary Doug Burgum’s involvement in the club raises serious questions. In the news this week: House Natural Resourc...

In this special episode of The Landscape, the entire Center for Western Priorities team joins us for an interview with Jennifer Rokala, CWP’s outgoing executive director, to celebrate her 11 years leading the organization. Jen reflects on key victories throughout her tenure at CWP, the organization’s evolution as a communications-driven conservation hub, and her advice for Aaron as he steps into t...

In the second part of our series on the borderlands, Aaron and Lilly are joined by Bob Krumenaker, former superintendent of Big Bend National Park and current chair of Keep Big Bend Wild . They discuss the proposal for a border wall through one of America’s national treasures, the bipartisan coalition rallying to stop it, and what’s at stake for the park, communities, and local economy. Plus, Inte...

In the first installment of a two-part series on the borderlands, Aaron and Lilly are joined by Laiken Jordahl, National Public Lands Advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity, to discuss his work protecting public lands along the U.S.-Mexico border. Laiken shares a boots-on-the-ground perspective on what makes these places special and how border wall construction is actively impacting our p...

Producers Lauren Bogard and Lilly Bock-Brownstein are joined by Timothy Ingalsbee of Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics, and Ecology (FUSEE) . Timothy explains why the Trump administration’s rushed reorganization of federal firefighting is so risky, what it means for the firefighters already heading into a dangerous season short-staffed, and why he sees the whole effort as less like reform and...

In this week’s episode, Aaron is joined by guest co-host Lauren Bogard for a conversation with Jonathon Klein, editor-in-chief of RideApart , an online news source for the motorized vehicle community. Jonathon makes the case that the OHV and powersports community has more at stake in the public lands fight than many of its members realize. He argues that the current moment is a rare opportunity fo...

Aaron is joined by Alan Spears from the National Parks Conservation Association to discuss his recent testimony before Congress about the Trump administration’s efforts to erase difficult histories from national parks and historic sites. As America approaches its 250th anniversary, Alan makes the case that telling the full story of our past is patriotic. He warns about the consequences of sanitizi...

In this episode, Aaron and Kate are joined by Jesse Chakrin, Executive Director of the Fund for People in Parks . They discuss how his organization supports smaller, overlooked national park sites across the West through philanthropy and partnerships. From multilingual signage to junior ranger programs in American Samoa, Jesse shares how they’re making parks more accessible and welcoming while nav...

In this episode of The Landscape, Aaron and Kate speak with Jim Pattiz of the More Than Just Parks newsletter about public lands news after the first year of the second Trump administration, including Jim and his brother Will’s list of 70 major public-lands setbacks in 2025 and CWP’s assessment of Project 2025 . Aaron also covers Steve Pearce’s confirmation hearing to lead the Bureau of Land Manag...

In this episode of The Landscape, Aaron welcomes pollsters Lori Weigel from New Bridge Strategy and Miranda Everitt from FM3 to discuss the 16th annual Colorado College Conservation in the West Poll . The bipartisan polling team breaks down voter attitudes across eight Western states on public lands, conservation priorities, and the Trump administration’s funding cuts and policy rollbacks. The pol...

In this episode, Kate and Aaron are joined by Professor John Ruple, a public lands law expert at the University of Utah and former attorney at the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), to discuss the Trump administration’s dismantling of the CEQ’s authority over NEPA regulations. He breaks down what the Trump administration means when it claims to have ended NEPA’s “regulatory reign of terror” a...

In this episode, Kate and Aaron discuss how Congress is using the Congressional Review Act (CRA) to overturn public land management plans, creating chaos and uncertainty for federal lands. Steve Bloch from the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance explains that the CRA, originally designed to review agency rules, is now being weaponized to repeal resource management plans and even national monument pl...

Aaron and Kate speak with Zachary Fort, president of the New Mexico Shooting Sports Association , about his opposition to Steve Pearce’s nomination to lead the Bureau of Land Management. Fort, a former Republican and gun rights advocate, explains why hunters and shooting sports enthusiasts are concerned about Pearce’s track record on public lands. He discusses Pearce’s history of sponsoring legisl...

Kate and Aaron talk to Kelly Mitchell, executive director of oil industry watchdog FieldNotes , about what Venezuela President Nicolás Maduro’s capture by the US means for oil and gas producers here in the West. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum has also been making the rounds on Fox cheering on Trump’s actions in Venezuela and calling on US companies to start drilling there, which we also touch on....

In this episode of The Landscape, Aaron and Lauren ask veteran wildland firefighter Bobbie Scopa about the state of America’s wildfire response. Bobbie, who is a retired firefighter with the organization Grassroots Wildland Firefighters, shares insights from her five-decade career, exploring how recent federal layoffs and policy changes are impacting fire mitigation, hazardous fuels reduction, and...

In this episode of The Landscape, Aaron and Sterling talk to Cody Perry, a filmmaker and founder of Rig to Flip, and Professor Mark Squillace, an expert in public lands and environmental law at the University of Colorado, about the ongoing battle to change Colorado’s restrictive stream access laws. The conversation centers around Perry’s documentary “Common Waters,” which follows Prof. Squillace’s...

On this episode of the Landscape, Kate and Aaron are joined by filmmaker Annie Ersinghaus, rancher Don Schreiber, and Gail Evans, an attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity, to talk about the impact poorly regulated oil and gas extraction has on New Mexico’s environment. Gail and Don appear in Annie’s new film, The Land of Sacrifice: The Burden of New Mexico’s Oil and Gas Extraction. New...