The Wild Idea

This week, the Bureau of Land Management proposes its first grazing rule overhaul since 1995, covering 155 million acres of Western public land and sharply limiting public participation in permit decisions. A coalition sues to block the Forest Service's largest restructuring in a century, and we track new wildlife crossing funding in Pennsylvania and North Carolina, a wildfire burning into a 50-ye...

Congress has taken 65 separate actions against U.S. public lands this year, and three outdoor industry leaders are done staying quiet about it. Recorded live on a panel at Switchback Spring 2026 in New Orleans, this conversation brings together Paul Hendricks of The Conservation Alliance, Jen McLaren of Altra, and Dawn Mancini Moyer of Fjällräven to talk through the real risk-reward calculus behin...

This week, the Forest Service opens a comment period on a proposed rule that would narrow public input into how national forests are managed, and the window closes July 31. The Interior Department signs a partnership with "de-extinction" company Colossal Biosciences on species genomics, raising the question of whether the tools complement or replace habitat-based recovery. A new lawsuit tests how...

Wilderness visitation surged 75% during the pandemic and hasn't come back down. Federal staffing hasn't kept pace. Meryl Harrell of Friends of the Forest Service and Lisa Ronald of American Rivers joined The Wild Idea at the National Wilderness Skills Institute to talk honestly about what that gap looks like on the ground, and where the stewardship community is actually filling it. They cover the...

This week on The Wild Line, we're tracking Farm Bill wilderness designations for Virginia, Arkansas, and Illinois; Kevin Lilly's confirmation hearing before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee; Interior's proposed rollback of oil and gas drilling safeguards; a leaked Flathead National Forest memo that would open recommended wilderness to off-road vehicles; an emergency Forest Service...

For nearly 30 years, whether fixed anchors belong in wilderness was answered differently by every park superintendent who had to decide. In 2023, the National Park Service proposed prohibiting them outright, nationwide. Congress stepped in. The Protecting America's Rock Climbing Act, signed in January 2025, established that climbing and fixed anchors are appropriate in wilderness and required fede...

Dillon Osleger is a geologist, conservationist, and trail builder whose debut book, Trail Work: Restoring the Paths and Stories of America's Public Lands , reads as both a love letter and a reckoning. Named after Dillon, Montana, and raised by field geologists who hauled him on their excursions through the Canadian Rockies and the rangelands of southwestern Montana, Osleger grew up learning that t...

This week on The Wild Line , we're tracking new federal directives reshaping wilderness management for climbing anchors and livestock grazing, a bipartisan bill that would restore nearly $2 billion annually for national park maintenance, and a legal battle over a proposed oil road through Utah's most culturally significant canyon corridor. From the Senate's quiet protection of Grand Staircase-Esca...

The Three Forks of the Flathead River in northwest Montana didn't just earn Wild and Scenic designation — they inspired the law that made it possible. In the 1950s, a proposed dam at Spruce Park would have dewatered the Middle Fork entirely, routing its flow through a mountain tunnel into Hungry Horse Reservoir. Wildlife biologists John and Frank Craighead floated the river to document what would...

This week on The Wild Line , we're tracking a lackluster oil and gas lease sale in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, a draft Forest Service memo that could open recommended wilderness to off-road vehicles, Senator Mike Lee's move to nullify the Roadless Rule, and a bipartisan bill to keep public land sales out of budget reconciliation. From Alaska to Appalachia, these stories come down to who d...

Kaitlin de Varona is the executive director of Southern Appalachian Wilderness Stewards (SAWS), the nonprofit that has spent more than a decade building a community of skilled, committed wilderness stewards across the Southeast. In this special episode, she joins Bill and Anders — both former SAWS leaders who helped shape the organization — for a wide-ranging conversation about what it takes to ke...

This week on The Wild Line , we're tracking the White House's repeal of decades-old off-road vehicle protections on public lands, House appropriations cuts to national parks and the EPA, the collapse of federal conservation program funding for farmers, and the withdrawal of NSF's deep-sea ocean monitoring network. From rolling back environmental safeguards to shrinking the public institutions that...

Jaime Loucky is the CEO of the Washington Trails Association, one of the largest trail stewardship nonprofits in the United States. The organization now facilitates more than 160,000 hours of volunteer trail work each year, runs gear lending libraries that generated 5,000 outdoor experiences for youth last year alone, and serves one to two million website visitors monthly looking for reliable info...

This week on The Wild Line, we're tracking a new bill to nullify the Gulf of Mexico Endangered Species Act exemption, $67 million in national park entrance fees redirected to Washington, D.C. beautification projects, a steep drop in Forest Service wildfire fuels reduction, and conservation wins in the House surface transportation bill. From the Gulf to the Rockies, these stories capture the pressu...

The federal lands fight has shifted since Tracy Stone-Manning last sat down with Bill and Anders in June 2025. The workforce cuts she warned about have arrived; the Roadless Rule is days from final rescission; and on the day this episode was recorded, the BLM Public Lands Rule was formally rescinded. Stone-Manning, who led the Bureau of Land Management under President Biden, returns as the show's...

This week on The Wild Line, we’re tracking the Senate confirmation of Steve Pearce as Bureau of Land Management director, the Trump administration’s restoration of cyanide trap devices on public lands, new reporting on how automated bots are locking everyday users out of Recreation.gov permits, the launch of a free community shuttle connecting Colorado residents to outdoor destinations in the Gold...

John Leshy has spent sixty years tracking the arc of federal public land policy, which makes his assessment of the current moment unusually grounded and unusually sobering. He is an Emeritus Professor at UC Law San Francisco, former Solicitor of the Interior Department under President Clinton, and the author of Our Common Ground: A History of America’s Public Lands (Yale University Press, 2022).  ...

This week on The Wild Line, we're tracking the Bureau of Land Management's rescission of the Conservation and Landscape Health Rule, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum's congressional testimony — including his description of designated wilderness areas as "death sentences for forests" — a House bill that would block North Atlantic right whale protections through 2035, the authorization of chainsaws in...

In this episode, Bill and Anders sit down with Greg Treinish, founder of Adventure Scientists, and Lara Birkes, the organization's newly appointed executive director, for a wide-ranging conversation about what happens when outdoor skill meets scientific purpose.  Greg launched Adventure Scientists 15 years ago after growing restless on expeditions across the Andes and Appalachian Trail, feeling th...

This week on The Wild Line , we're tracking the Senate's imminent floor vote on Steve Pearce's nomination as BLM Director, Montana's escalating campaign against American Prairie's bison grazing permits, a federal land transfer tied to the Ambler Road corridor in Alaska, an Alaska court ruling allowing unlimited bear killing in southwest Alaska, a pending Forest Service decision on chainsaw use in...

In this episode, Bill and Anders are joined by Autumn Gillard, coordinator for the Grand Staircase Intertribal Coalition, and Steve Bloch, legal director for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA), for a wide-ranging conversation about one of the most contested and celebrated landscapes in the American West: Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. Autumn brings a Southern Paiute perspec...

This week on The Wild Line, we're tracking the withdrawal of the Trump administration's National Park Service nominee, a Forest Service plan to spray glyphosate across 10,000 acres of public land, a federal lawsuit to stop a controversial West Virginia highway, a proposed blast mine threatening the San Joaquin River, new University of Montana survey data on public lands attitudes, a coalition fram...

Dalton George is the mayor of Boone, North Carolina and the national organizing director for the Endangered Species Coalition. He came up through community organizing, founded a tenant rights organization, led the campaign to make Boone the first carbon-neutral municipality in North Carolina, and got himself elected to town council before becoming the youngest mayor in the state.  The thread conne...

This week on The Wild Line , we’re tracking a major Endangered Species Act victory on Capitol Hill, proposed Forest Service rule changes that would open wilderness areas to chainsaws and fast-track mining exploration on national forest land, Interior and Agriculture secretaries facing congressional budget scrutiny, and a landmark master plan approved for California’s Great Redwood Trail. From fede...

Cumberland Island National Seashore is one of the most ecologically rich and historically layered landscapes on the American East Coast, and it faces a pivotal moment. In this episode, Bill and Anders sit down with Jessica Howell-Edwards and Dani Purvis, the volunteer advocates behind Wild Cumberland, to explore what makes this Georgia barrier island so extraordinary and what forces are working to...