This week on The Wild Line, we're tracking the Senate's passage of a Congressional Review Act resolution to enable mining in the headwaters of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, the Forest Service's proposed headquarters relocation to Salt Lake City, the Conservation Reserve Program's final deadline for 2026 offers, evidence of Trump administration coordination with Sen. Mike Lee's federal land sell-off proposal, the Confluence of States' 2025 Outdoor Report highlighting the $1.3 trillion economic value of outdoor recreation, a Gallup survey showing widespread concern about environmental protection, and a lawsuit challenging the administration's use of the "God Squad" to grant broad exemptions from the Endangered Species Act for Gulf oil and gas leasing. From federal public lands management to conservation policy, these stories highlight the accelerating pace of regulatory rollbacks and their implications for American wilderness and wildlife.

For more details about the links and resources mentioned today, visit our website at thewildidea.com.

Dr. Erica Smithwick, a distinguished professor of geography at Penn State University and director of the Earth and Environmental Systems Institute, joins us to explore the rapidly changing fire landscape in the eastern United States. 

For decades, fire was largely considered a western phenomenon, but shifting climate conditions and changing forest composition are transforming fire regimes across eastern ecosystems in ways that don't match historical patterns.

In this conversation, we examine why eastern forests are burning in new and unexpected ways, what the Eastern Fire Network is doing to address these challenges, and how communities can work together to manage fire in an era of climate change. Dr. Smithwick brings both scientific expertise and personal conviction to the discussion, sharing her perspective as both a researcher watching these changes unfold in real time and a parent concerned about what we're leaving future generations.

Learn more and find the links and resources mentioned today at our website, thewildidea.com.

This week on The Wild Line, we're tracking the Trump Administration's proposed budget cuts to the National Park Service, the controversial Forest Service reorganization plan, a new consolidated NEPA rule at the USDA, and legislative calls to action in Congress. From federal land management challenges to endangered species protections, these stories highlight the stakes for public lands policy and the staff who steward America's natural resources.

Learn more and find the links and resources mentioned today at our website, thewildidea.com.

Dr. William Keeton is a forest ecologist and silviculturalist at the University of Vermont who has spent most of his career studying old-growth forests in the eastern United States and around the world. In this conversation, he joins hosts Bill Hodge and Anders Reynolds to examine what old growth actually is, where it still exists in the East, and why its fate matters for climate, biodiversity, and the landscapes future generations will inherit.

The episode opens with a deceptively simple question: what is an old-growth forest? Keeton explains that old growth is not a fixed condition but a stage of forest development characterized by structural complexity, habitat diversity, and a suite of ecological functions including carbon storage, hydrologic regulation, and biodiversity support. He pushes back on the assumption that eastern forests have nothing to offer compared to towering Pacific Northwest Douglas firs or coastal redwoods, walking through the surprising inventory findings of the past few decades that reveal far more old growth in the eastern United States than was previously believed, from the Adirondacks of upstate New York to the Southern Appalachians and the longleaf pine systems of the Gulf Coast. The conversation also takes the listener below the surface, into the soil, where Keeton discusses the growing understanding of mycorrhizal fungi networks, deep soil carbon, and why a recent study found Swedish old-growth forests store eighty-three percent more carbon than middle-aged forests, with most of that difference buried underground.

For listeners who care about public lands, forest policy, and the long arc of ecological recovery, this is a conversation that connects the science to the stakes with rare clarity. Find out more about the links and resources mentioned today at our website, thewildidea.com.

This week on The Wild Line, we're tracking a proposed reorganization of the U.S. Forest Service, a sweeping Endangered Species Act exemption for Gulf of Mexico oil and gas operations, a court ruling against the Nantahala-Pisgah Forest Plan, a public scoping period threatening Chaco Culture National Historical Park, commercial fishing access in Pacific Marine National Monuments, and a rare wave of conservation wins from San Francisco Bay to Arkansas. From federal agency restructuring to bedrock wildlife law, these stories define the stakes for public lands in 2026.

Learn more and find the links and resources mentioned today at our website, thewildidea.com.

In this special episode, The Wild Idea brings its recent public webinar directly to podcast listeners. Join a high-powered panel of scientists, attorneys, policy veterans, and conservation advocates to examine one of the most consequential federal land protection policies in American history: the 2001 Roadless Rule. The rule has shielded 58.5 million acres of largely intact national forest land from new road construction and most commercial timber harvest for more than two decades, and it now faces a proposed rescission by the current administration.

The conversation opens with Mike Dombeck, the former Forest Service chief who oversaw the rule’s development, tracing the road system’s explosive post-World War II growth and the maintenance crisis that made the moratorium on new road construction both necessary and politically viable. From there, the panel moves through the science of wildfire ignitions near roads, the rule’s flexibility for forest health treatments, the economic value of roadless areas to outdoor recreation, and the water supply those landscapes provide to more than 60 million Americans. Monte Mills and Martin Nie bring legal and policy depth to questions of tribal consultation, indigenous land rights, and the gaps that rescission would leave in existing forest plans. Vera Smith of Defenders of Wildlife walks listeners through two interactive mapping tools that illustrate which threatened and endangered species depend on roadless forests, region by region.

The episode closes with the full panel reflecting on what, if anything, could be improved in the rule, and how everyday people can make their voices heard before the draft environmental impact statement is finalized. The answer that emerges, again and again, is that the public support which gave this rule its unusual durability remains the most powerful tool available to those who want to see it preserved.

Learn more about today's episode and the resources mentioned at our website, thewildidea.com.

This week on The Wild Line, we're tracking Oklahoma's new energy-executive senator, a congressional push to block wilderness at Big Cypress National Preserve, a proposed federal land swap with SpaceX in South Texas, and major staff cuts at E&E News. From Capitol Hill to the Lower Rio Grande Valley, these stories highlight the accelerating pressure on federal public lands and the institutions that cover them.

Get more details and the links and resources mentioned today at our website, thewildidea.com.

In this episode, Bill and Anders sit down with two researchers and advocates who are reshaping how we think about nature and public health: Dr. Carrie Besnette Hauser, President and CEO of the Trust for Public Land, and Dr. Pooja Tandon, a pediatrician and researcher at Seattle Children's Hospital who also serves as a senior scientist with TPL. Together they bring a rare combination of policy reach and clinical grounding to one of the most urgent questions facing American families: how do we make sure every child has meaningful access to the outdoors?

The conversation raises a deeper question that runs throughout the episode: what does it mean to bring wild nature to people, rather than waiting for people to come to wild nature? With 100 million Americans living more than a ten-minute walk from a park, and with school yards representing 2 million acres of largely underused civic land, both guests make a persuasive case that the opportunity to change those numbers is already in front of us. The challenge is political will, funding, and the recognition that access to green space is a matter of public health equity.

Find out more about the links and resources mentioned today at our website, thewildidea.com.

This week on The Wild Line, we're tracking Congress's move to block federal lead ammunition and tackle regulations, the first convening of the Endangered Species Act's God Squad in over 30 years, a public lands crossroads symposium in Salt Lake City, and a contested land swap at Cumberland Island National Seashore. From wildlife toxicology to oil and gas exemptions on federal waters, these stories define the current frontlines of public lands policy.

Find the links and resources mentioned today at our website, thewildidea.com.

Tim Mahoney has spent five decades navigating the corridors of Congress on behalf of wild places. A veteran of The Wilderness Society, the Sierra Club, and the Pew Charitable Trusts, he is one of the most experienced wilderness lobbyists of his generation. In this special St. Patrick’s Day episode, co-hosts Bill Hodge and Anders Reynolds sit down with the man Anders credits as his political mentor to trace the arc of a career built on the belief that the strongest protection you can give land is to protect it in law.

The centerpiece of the conversation is the Irish Wilderness in Missouri’s Mark Twain National Forest, designated by Congress in 1984. Mahoney walks through the full legislative history of that campaign: the bipartisan coalitions and back-room alliances, the opposition from the mining industry, the procedural losses in the House, the creative use of appropriations riders to forestall mineral leasing, and the formal conference committee that ultimately split the difference on acreage.

Mahoney does not pretend to know what the next twenty years will bring, but he is clear on what he values: the skills required to pass wilderness legislation, the willingness to work across deep ideological divides, and the humility to take a partial win over a virtuous defeat. His parting challenge to a new generation of advocates is as practical as it is pointed.

Learn more about today's conversation at our website, thewildidea.com.