The Wild Idea

This week, a Senate committee drops most of its wilderness, national park, and wild and scenic river bills in favor of energy permitting measures, a federal judge in Anchorage clears the way for transferring more than 2 million acres along the Dalton Highway corridor to the State of Alaska, while the Interior Department cancels the Endangered Species Act's blanket 4(d) rule and NOAA rejects a bid to expand North Atlantic right whale critical habitat. We also cover new reporting linking paused DOGE wildfire-prevention funding to the fires burning across northern Minnesota, the removal of tribal signage at the newly shrunken Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante Monuments, and the closing comment period on proposed changes to the Forest Service Directives System. Plus: peak viewing at Katmai's Brooks Falls bear cam and a relaunched wilderness management certificate program at the University of Montana.

Full show notes and links at our website, thewildidea.com.

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What would it take to rewrite the rules of American conservation?

Lynn Scarlett, former Deputy Secretary of the Interior, and Matt Lee-Ashley, Executive Director of Ground Shift, join Bill and Anders to talk about a new initiative asking that exact question, crowdsourcing ideas for what public lands and waters should look like in ten, twenty, and fifty years.

The conversation covers essays on the Ground Shift platform that challenge conservation orthodoxy, from private land tools to a class and sovereignty critique of the movement itself, along with the case for and against a modern Public Land Law Review Commission. Scarlett and Lee-Ashley also dig into what makes place-based collaboration succeed or fail, why implementation, not just the law itself, often determines whether the Endangered Species Act and NEPA actually work, and how public pressure, not just a good white paper, is what moves policy.

Full show notes and links at our website, thewildidea.com.

This week, proposed federal rules would gut tribal consultation and historic-preservation protections under the National Historic Preservation Act, and the Trump Administration opens a comment period on drilling near Chaco Canyon, a UNESCO World Heritage site. We also cover a nearly one-third cut to Canada lynx critical habitat, a Montana Land Board grazing policy widely read as targeting American Prairie's bison herd, and a busy week for the House Natural Resources Committee.

Plus: two Forest Service employees kidnapped at gunpoint in Northern California, a flash flood that killed five members of one family in Utah, a Mother Jones investigation into wildfire betting markets, criticism of a Blue Ridge Parkway logging plan, wildfires closing the entire Boundary Waters, and Okefenokee's bid for UNESCO World Heritage status.

Full show notes and links at our website, thewildidea.com.

Brooks Lamb has spent his career trying to answer a hard question: who will own rural America?

As Special Advisor for Strategic Communications at American Farmland Trust, Lamb works on one of agriculture's most urgent and least-discussed problems, the more than 300 million acres of U.S. farmland set to change hands over the next two decades as current owners retire or pass away.

Recorded live at the Old Salt Festival on the Mannix Ranch in Montana, this conversation covers why succession planning gets avoided until it's too late, the three fates that often befall transitioning farmland, and the creative leasing and policy tools, from Tennessee's Greenbelt law to a Kitsap Peninsula land-share arrangement, helping some families keep their land in agriculture. Lamb also talks about Love for the Land, his book on why farmers keep farming against the odds, and Landed, AFT's new podcast on farm transition stories from across the country. 

Full show notes and links at our website, thewildidea.com.

This week, President Trump signs executive orders cutting Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears National Monuments by nearly 3 million acres combined, over tribal leaders' objections that they were never consulted. Federal agencies rescind the Endangered Species Act's core habitat protection, and Interior proposes returning grizzly bear management to Western states. We also cover a court ruling on grizzly and bull trout habitat in Montana, a House committee vote on whale protections, new funding for endangered species recovery, and rare good news: four litters of wild red wolf pups born in North Carolina. Plus, Ferncliff begins removing a dam to restore an Arkansas stream, and we mark a fourth death tied to Colorado's Gold Mountain Fire.

Full show notes and links at our website, thewildidea.com.

For decades, the story of American conservation has been told almost entirely through male protagonists: Thoreau, Muir, Abbey. Journalist and author Heather Hansman joins The Wild Idea to make the case for three women who belong in that story too. Her new book, Fierce Country: The Untold Story of Three Women Who Ignited America's Love for the Wild, profiles Georgie White, one of the first commercial Grand Canyon river guides; Anne LaBastille, an off-grid Adirondack biologist whose research helped support the Clean Air Act; and Dolores La Chapelle, a backcountry ski pioneer who became a founding voice of the deep ecology movement.

Hansman talks with Bill and Anders about why she refused to smooth over each woman's flaws and rivalries, what it means to write "a girl book" without being boxed in by it, and how the same nostalgia that keeps people attached to old maps and decommissioned lighthouses shapes public land policy today. The conversation also touches on the shrinking landscape of environmental journalism and Hansman's own reporting on inequities in the federal Recreation.gov permitting system.

Full show notes and links at our website, thewildidea.com.

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-year-untouched Colorado wilderness, and a new free tool for tracking public lands comment periods. We also remember David Page of the Winter Wildlands Alliance.

Full show notes and links at our website, thewildidea.com.

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 behind corporate advocacy: what it costs a brand to speak up, what it costs to stay silent, and how they're each building tools, coalitions, and community partnerships to do something about it. They cover The Conservation Alliance's 170-company Brands for Public Lands coalition, a new economic study on national monuments, Altra's trail-running access work, and Fjällräven's fire-mitigation partnership in Boulder, Colorado, plus a candid take on Interior Secretary Doug Burgum's framing of public lands as a financial asset.

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

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 far Congress can stretch the Congressional Review Act against land management plans. We also cover a volunteer-built replacement for the shuttered Climate.gov, the opening of the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library in Medora, and hard news from the fire line in Colorado alongside the closing of National Parks Traveler. 

Find the full show notes and links at our website, thewildidea.com. 

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 federal capacity crunch, American Rivers' 2025 National Protected Rivers Assessment (which found that over 80% of U.S. rivers lack adequate protection), the management pressure building on the Flathead Wild and Scenic River, and the technology reshaping how visitors move through wild places. They also bring specific examples of partnership models working right now: a single advocate driving a Wild and Scenic designation for Florida's Myakka River, and the Flathead Rivers Alliance building community river patrols in Montana. And they're direct about what "showing up" actually requires, beyond the trail.

Before diving into that conversation, we kick off the episode with host Ashley Arnold previewing Raising Wild, Wild Idea Media's new podcast about raising kids in nature.

Full show notes and links at our website, thewildidea.com.