00:00:07,360 --> 00:00:16,120 [Speaker 0]
[upbeat music] Welcome to our continuing conversations for A Wild and Ever-Changing World, a podcast focused on the intersection of human nature and wild nature. 

00:00:17,320 --> 00:01:06,840 [Speaker 0]
I am Bill Hodge, a nerd for the history of wilderness in America, a lover of public lands, and committed steward. I am joined, as always, by my friend and president of the Wilderness Land Trust, Anders Reynolds. Today we have a great conversation that digs into public land law and policy with two great legal minds, Andrew Mergen, who currently serves as the director of the Environmental Law and Policy Clinic at the Harvard Law School, and Justin Badeux, who is at the Environmental Law Program at the University of Arizona. It is a fun conversation. It is a deep conversation, so, uh, buckle up. Uh, be ready for this one. Anders, it's such a good conversation, but before we get to that, I have a question for you. Have, have you, have you had a wild summer? You're kind of in a new home here in Montana. Have you been out there experiencing your wild summer? 

00:01:06,840 --> 00:01:07,780 [Speaker 1]
Oh, hi, Bill. 

00:01:08,840 --> 00:02:23,800 [Speaker 1]
You know, it's... It has been a really wild summer. I can't, I can't deny it. I'm feeling feral lately. Um, I got to visit the Eastern Sierras for the first time, which were gorgeous. But yeah, you're right. Closer to home, my new home here in Missoula, I've got to do lots of exploring. I'm, you know, started local, went up into the, the Rattlesnake, which is, you know, the trail head's only a, a 15-minute drive for me. Saw a bear cub in a rubber boa on my first hike in the Rattlesnake, which was just charming, and I, I also saw a David Cohen. Shout out David Cohen. Saw him on the trail. Um, and a little bit further afield, you know, I've visited you in the Flathead, um, and even further northwest, I got to spend the night in a fire tower along the Yaak River, and so everything that Montana had promised me before I got here, it has provided. The, the... I keep telling my friends, "The vibes are right in Missoula." So I've got a guest room. Come visit, friends. There are, are plenty more adventures to be had. Um, and speaking of more adventures, um, I hear you've got something cooked up, Bill, for our listeners. 

00:02:23,800 --> 00:03:35,260 [Speaker 0]
Uh, I do. It's pretty exciting. I, uh... We wanna hear about their wild summer too, right? It was... I, I, I gotta say, hats off to you. I feel like you have, you have fully leveraged your first summer, uh, out here in the West and, and done some amazing trips already, and I'm sure there's more ahead of you. You know, you and I both like to think of The Wild Idea as more than just a podcast and more than just a company. It, it's a community. We hope all of you out there listening see it that way as well. And for that reason, we are rolling out a new promotion called Your Wild Summer, 'cause we wanna hear about your time in the wild, the things that you do in and for the wild, and we've partnered with our friends at FKT Sunglasses to bring you this promotion. Each week we are gonna ask you to visit our website at thewildidea.com and share your story of your wild summer with us. It could be journal entry about what you did, what you saw, the things that changed in you when you were out there in the wild place. It could be some photos from your trip. Maybe it's an epic video of your descent down a river that you've never been down before. We wanna hear about your wild summer, and we want you to go to thewildidea.com 

00:03:36,300 --> 00:05:32,200 [Speaker 0]
and send those stories to us, and each week, in conjunction with FKT Sunglasses, we're gonna be sending some of our community members a brand-new pair of FKT sunglasses. I've had a chance to wear mine up in the mountains already. Absolutely love the sunglasses and would love even more to hear your story. So again, Your Wild Summer, we wanna hear about it at thewildidea.com. We'll be giving you a different prompt every week. We're gonna be doing this the whole month of August, so if you can't get to it this week, that's okay. We're gonna be prompting you again next week, but we wanna hear about your wild summer, wherever that might be. Obviously, our friends at Okefenokee Swamp had a wild summer with the new, uh, designation as an UNESCO World Heritage Site. So many great things going on. We wanna hear about what's going on with you, so please take a moment, share those photos, share those videos, share those stories with us, and we may be sharing a pair of brand-new FKT sunglasses with you as part of your wild summer. Meanwhile, let's get to this amazing conversation with Andy Mergen and Justin Badeux. Andy, Justin, first, welcome to The Wild Idea podcast. From the moment Andy and I met just a few months ago, I have been excited about bringing this conversation to our community. Yes, we are gonna talk heavy law and policy stuff I am sure [laughs], but Andy, when we had a conversation a few days before we're sitting down to record, you used a line that will sort of transcend the legalese, I think. That line was an open-ended question, which was, "How do we make lands more public, not less?" I love that as a frame for our conversation, defining land as something more than public or private, not just being binary. So maybe, Andy, to get us rolling, can you tell me a step or an action that would make land more public that maybe the public wouldn't know? 

00:05:32,200 --> 00:07:14,900 [Speaker 2]
Yeah, I think that, the first thing I would say is that, you know, I come to this, you know, having litigated in the public land space for 33 years. Before I went to law school I worked for BLM in Wyoming, and all of my experiences as a litigator at the Justice Department and working for Bureau of Land Management before that, the thing that surprised me the most was... You know, growing up I, I knew public lands as a place to recreate, a place I really loved to be, and when I started working in this space professionally, what sort of got to me was how often we privilege sort of companies and private enterprise on the public lands. When I was working for BLM in Wyoming, I was, uh, keeping track of people doing mineral exploration on the landscape And they, they have a l- a lot of privilege, a lot of rights to be out there. And I think where we start is we start taking a look at those laws, certainly with the Mining Law of 1872, and we sorta say, "We can't do it this way anymore. We are taking what's public out of the lands." Other countries don't do minerals the way that we do. In Australia, all of those minerals are owned by the government, and so the government has the ability to say, "We're gonna develop here and not over there." But as you guys know, under the 1872 law, the, a law that's, you know, governed since the Grant administration, um, you know, it's the, it's the locator who really decides, "I get, I found this, these minerals over here, and I get to develop them here." And there are things that we can do, just switching to a leasing system away from a claim system, that would sort of make these lands more public and more responsive to the public. 

00:07:14,900 --> 00:08:21,020 [Speaker 1]
So I wanna dig into that a little bit, um, but first I just wanna say thank you both so much for coming on the show. Um, and this is a question that, that builds on Andy's idea of, of seeking, um, lands that are more public, not less public, but hopefully you both will have a take. Um, I guess I would just start with a, a premise, and have y'all tell me if it's wrong, and that premise is that public lands aren't a static inheritance, right? They're made more public, in your words, or less public every year by the laws and policies governing them. And for a while now, at least it seems to me, the m- the machinery has been sort of quietly, or maybe not so quietly [laughs], running towards less public. There's fewer staff to keep entrance gates open and, and then, uh, campsites maintained. There's planning regulations that, uh, have been turned inside out by congressional action. There's administrative e- exemptions for extraction that are sometimes granted in, in days if not minutes. So I guess my question is, is less public a fair description of our current trajectory? 

00:08:21,020 --> 00:10:18,520 [Speaker 2]
Uh, I think so, 100%. And I, but I really like, I think your insight is incredibly valuable because one of the things that, o- one of the ways that I think about public lands i- is in relation to this, uh, this phrase that Terry Tempest Williams has used, right, that our public lands represent the open space of democracy. And I think we live in a democracy, we have elected representatives, and they get, they, our public lands landscape evolves through the actions that they take, through the actions that our executive branch, the president, and his, you know, he, he [laughs], the folks who work for him make, change the public lands lands- public lands landscape. And I think for a long time now, the public lands have become, I think, I'll be interested to hear what Justin has to say, but more privatized and more really focused on those, those private interests in a way that is, that s- does not, makes me a little bit uncomfortable. And I think part of that relates to sort of what's happened to our democracy, too, right, which is that powerful corporate interests again and again have more say about what our legislators do, more powers in the executive branch, and that all leads to, uh, more privatization. And I think that, and even where there's not more privatization, like in our national parks, there's neglect, right? We're not investing in making them more public. We're not, you know, expanding the, the populations that those lands are p- are, are, uh, accessible to. And so I think that's also something that's going on. And i- and our public lands, no more than anything else, reflect the ills in our democracy and, and we've lost a lot of our democracy. Uh, it's been sort of chipped away at, and that has affect, uh, published, public lands management and stewardship as well. 

00:10:18,520 --> 00:11:46,880 [Speaker 3]
If I can just jump in on, on one piece of that disequilibrium that Andy's getting at between, um, say, corporate interest and the, the rights they acquire on public lands and, uh, tribes, recreational interests, you know, wildlife enthusiasts and the like. Uh, and it's in this way. Um, the only real certainty we have about public land management these days is once something is built, if it's built, when you get steel in the ground, when you start digging your well, you know you have a right. You have a pretty strong right even when the lease is issued. But if we're trying to conserve a landscape, if you're trying to, uh, maintain recreation for current and future generations, if you're trying to ensure that wildlife have the corridors they need to remain vibrant, not a lot of ways to make that stick, not a lot of ways to create durability. And durability is tricky in those spaces 'cause you also need to be able to adapt as the, you know, world changes around us. And so just that uneven playing field over years and decades in the 1872 Mining Law [laughs], you know, more of a, much more than a century, creates this huge accretion of private rights that overlap and constrict what the public can do, where they can go, what the agencies can do when they're trying to manage for various things. And on the other end of the playing field, all you need is one administration, one field manager, one company, one time to say, "You know what? 

00:11:47,920 --> 00:12:03,540 [Speaker 3]
We're gonna build a road here. You know what? We're gonna build an oil well here." And that casts a long shadow. Like, that's, that's done. That's when, that's when, um, uh, when, when the decision sticks. 

00:12:03,540 --> 00:13:07,832 [Speaker 1]
You guys were both really clear with those answers. I appreciate that clarity so much. Um, Andy, I wanna explore this idea that you, you mentioned that our, our public lands management sort of reflects the ills in our democracy at any given time. You've written in the past that, that public lands are sort of the last piece of American exceptionalism with genuine bipartisan support. But y- you know, the laws governing those, those lands, that exceptionalism were mostly written between, you know, let's say 1910 and 1975. The country that existed then looks really different from ours. [laughs] You know, it, it enjoyed half the population, it was unaware of the coming climate crisis. As you mentioned, corporations didn't play as large a role in governing, and it had, you know, it, it didn't have mechanized and motorized uses that Teddy Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot couldn't even dream of. So I, I... You know, so my, my question is, are we running exceptional software on obsolete hardware? Do we need to rethink the way we're, we're doing stuff? 

00:13:07,832 --> 00:14:03,232 [Speaker 2]
Yeah, 100%. We need to sort of reimagine the public lands and start thinking about our future and, and, you know, Justin's thought a lot about this. And many of your, your guests, and you guys do a terrific job, I'm just gonna say I really, uh, appreciate the space that you guys occupy. Um, you know, I think all of us who really care about these lands understand that we need to... We need new legislation. We need new efforts. I- in this way, the public lands, like, you know, Justin and I are, are both public- people who are really passionate about public lands, but also environmental lawyers. And, you know, the same is also true for, for, uh, the, in, in the environmental law space, right? We had this incredible period of lawmaking from, like, 1969 to, like, 1980 or 1990, if you count the Clean Air Act Amendments of, uh, of 1990. 

00:14:04,272 --> 00:15:03,972 [Speaker 2]
Clean Air Act Amendments, I would say, that came out during a Republican administration. Um, we don't have that sort of lawmaking. Congress is broken, and that's another way that the ills of our democracy are reflected in our public lands. But I just, for all of your listeners, y- this is, w- when the, when the political climate changes, Congress can do its work again. We need to be ready, thinking about, uh, what the future looks like, imagining how we're gonna manage these lands, uh, make them more public, manage them for resilience, uh, you know, uh, right many of the historic wrongs with the indigenous people of North America. There's a lot of space to do great things, and we need to start imagining it now. And I know that sounds a little crazy, 'cause more and more bad news pours out of DC every hour, but if we don't do it, then we're just... You know, the other side doesn't wait. They've got plans and plans, and invest in the future, and, and their vision, and we need to do the same. 

00:15:03,972 --> 00:16:45,272 [Speaker 3]
Yeah, and I'd say just on that, I think for a long time, um, people have been scared to think differently, right? Because, uh, what we have had in public land management and environmental law, uh, uh, uh, hasn't been perfect, but it's also been pretty good at a lot of things, a lot of things that we care about. Improving water quality and air quality, providing access, preserving wilderness, and the like. And so the idea of opening things up is a scary one. I think we are liberated from that fear now. I don't know if it's the worst that is happening, but we're in dark days, and, uh, the future has to look different from what the past did. Like, we can't say... Like, our, our, our future vision cannot be, "Let's go back to 2021, 2022," right? Uh, that's in part because 2021, 2022 aren't perfect, um, but also because the agencies are gonna look different. There's not gonna be the infrastructure there, uh, in terms of people and expertise and funding. Uh, uh, and, uh, our needs are gonna be different. Think about the climate crisis and the time we're losing every year. Like, the, it, it, it's, there's going to be urgency i- if we want to, you know, turn the, turn the tides in terms of both our emissions, but also preserving wildlife that is gonna need, uh, to be able to move. Gonna need space to find new places to live as the climate changes around them. And all of those things are gonna happen, and are happening sort of at the same time. And, you know, when, when, when you face those challenges, um, you know, y- you need to be willing to think differently and to find new allies. 

00:16:45,272 --> 00:16:49,472 [Speaker 2]
I wanna put a little more background paint on the canvas we're trying to, uh, 

00:16:50,492 --> 00:16:54,012 [Speaker 2]
sort of construct here for folks, and I'm gonna ask sort of a curiosity question. 

00:16:55,532 --> 00:17:05,692 [Speaker 2]
Is a national park, with its specific prescription for preservation, but with a set of limitations, all the fees or camping restrictions, more public 

00:17:06,772 --> 00:17:15,952 [Speaker 2]
than a parcel of BLM land that the average citizen may drive through without ever recognizing it as being public? Curious how you guys would respond to that question. 

00:17:15,952 --> 00:18:34,656 [Speaker 3]
Well, I, I... Let me start here. I, I, I, I think there is something about national parks that is both ca- both captures the American imagination, or at least many people's imagination, but also is somewhat alienating to some folks. They're expensive. Um, some communities don't feel, uh, represented there. They feel, um, m- m- not welcomed. I think it's something that we've done a lot of work on in the last 10 years. You know, to really, uh, think about when I was at Department of Interior under s- uh, Secretary Jewell, the initiative she started to make sure that, uh, every family with a fourth grader had access to free national parks. Right? That was a, a, uh, uh, in my mind, one of the greatest things that came out of the Obama administration. Recognizing that public lands and national parks serve certain communities extraordinarily well, and haven't served other communities as well, and how do you try to, uh, change that? By welcoming everyone in. But there's a lot more that we can do, and, and I do think it goes to this notion of where do people feel... Where do they feel welcome? Where do they feel seen? Where do they feel, uh, like they know how to navigate the space without Um, feeling uncomfortable. And sometimes a parcel of BLM land may do that in a way that a national park won't for some people. 

00:18:34,656 --> 00:20:56,975 [Speaker 2]
I really love that question 'cause I, I have to think about it. I feel like, you know, my relationship with public lands goes back, uh, as a kid. I grew up in DC, but both my parents are from Nevada, and I spent every summer as a kid until I could really drive around by myself out in Nevada, and even when I could drive, I went out to Nevada to drive my family around. Um, and, you know, so my first exposure to public lands included the national parks. I think that's true for so many of us. But also just, like, taking the dogs out and walking on BLM land and knowing that this was, like, belonged to everybody. And, and it's really an incredible feeling to be out on some of those landscapes because there isn't a sign here or there. You're just out in space, right? And, and knowing that that space belongs to you, um, is really incredible. And, you know, my family from, from Nevada, there was the Republican side and there was the Democrat side, and the thing that they agreed on was that these lands were so important, you know? They didn't always vote the same way, but, and they did, and both felt that BLM was doing a bad job, right? Like, the, my [laughs] my one side felt like they weren't doing enough to protect everything, and the other side said there are too many rules. Um, so when I went to work for them, there were some shocks, but the, I, I just felt the incredible freedom of being out on these lands. These are great lands to... You know, for your listeners probably all know this. These are great lands to go camping on, right? All of a sudden, a BLM pa- campground in Wyoming, k- k- that's such a nice change sometimes from being in Yellowstone, right? Where the bison are throwing the visitors around, and then all of a sudden you're in a pretty peaceful place, you know? So I, I, I feel like they're, they both feel very public to me. And I, I, you know, one last thing. I love the fact that for, for years and years, and the Trump administration is rolling back, that the Park Service worked towards a more inclusive vision of the public lands. That we were seeing Reconstruction-era monuments. We were seeing Stonewall recognized. That there were all these efforts to make these lands more accessible and to tell real history on these landscapes, which I think is really important. But I, I don't know. I feel like they both feel very public to me. 

00:20:56,976 --> 00:22:10,096 [Speaker 1]
I like the way you guys both challenged, you know, the, the idea that there's one authentic way to experience public lands. That really kinda caps my hide when I hear that, and so I, I couldn't agree more with what you said. Um, Justin, earlier you said we can't go back, and Andy, you emphasized that the extractive side of this equation is constantly asking for more, asking for changes, you know, when our side isn't. Um, before I ask my question, I just, I really wanna endorse that thought. I, you know, up until January of this year, I was a registered lobbyist on behalf of [laughs] a conservation organization, and a conversation I, I got in a lot with, um, staff members in Hill offices is, "The other guys are in here all the time. Why aren't you?" [laughs] And it's something I really tried to talk to my colleagues about, but I think we're just, uh, conservation groups are just built a little different, and they need to, um, not be so afraid to get in there and say exactly what it is they want. Um, but that's, that's neither here nor there. Um, I, I, I wanna flip to, to offense, uh, Justin, this idea that we can't go back. If less public is the current trend, what does more public look like, uh, say, in law? 

00:22:11,176 --> 00:23:17,986 [Speaker 3]
Well, a thought I've had is that, um, we need to find ways to make wildlife recreation and these other interests more durable. Put them on a level playing field. Now, in the Biden administration, the Bureau of Land Management put out the public lands rule in part to try to do that, right? Create a leasing system around conservation interests and, and the like. Um, uh, that's been, gone away now, but it's the right, it's an idea that heads in that direction. I think we need something more, um, deep. Uh, in, in part because, uh, the way that we, sort of as Andy was describing, the way that we recognize, um, uh, these interests related to extraction on private lands is really driven by private profit motives. It's not driven by a vision of what do we need as a society. Um, we probably don't need more gold mines in my mind. We probably do need some lithium, um, in order to decarbonize our economy in a fashion that is going to set us on a path to being able to preserve, uh, our environment and public lands for, for the future. Public land law doesn't really distinguish between those things. It just says, "Hey, do you wanna go out and 

00:23:19,396 --> 00:24:39,716 [Speaker 3]
dr- run your pick into the ground, and you find something valuable? Go for it." So finding a path that says, yes, we're gonna need some renewable energy and transmission and, uh, critical mineral exploration with high quality or sort of high environmental standards. We're gonna need all those things. But let's, let's do that in a fashion that is holistic. Let's empower the agencies, uh, uh, to say, "Where are the things we need most when it comes to wildlife recreation, tribal cultural resources, all these things?" And create some real, um, uh, real protection for each of those things. And I do think that needs to look like legislation. You know, we have some examples. Obviously, the Wilderness Act, um, involved the wilderness inventory where the agencies, once they had identified areas of wilderness characteristics, sort of were supposed to manage to protect them until Congress made a decision about whether to release them or to designate wilderness areas. You could use a model like that for, uh, different kinds of uses. Um, uh, so I think there's a variety of ways we could try to get at it. But at the moment, the, the, the challenge that I think the agencies face is Congress has said- Figure it out. Full stop, right? There's lots of stuff out there. It could all be important. We're not gonna tell you what you should do. 

00:24:40,756 --> 00:24:59,656 [Speaker 3]
You know, go for it. Uh, and, and that, that does... That on the one hand, maybe that, that feels, uh, uh, that's freeing if you're an agency, but boy, does it not allow you to plan for the future because you know as soon as the politics change, as soon as anything changes, all of your plans go in the dustbin. 

00:24:59,656 --> 00:25:49,196 [Speaker 1]
Justin, you, you brought up, uh, congressional action. I wanna ask about reacquisition. Um, the Weeks Act to me is, like, a, a favorite proof that publicness can grow. Um, for listeners who may not know what the Weeks Act is, and I, I kinda hope a lot of people don't know [chuckles] what the Weeks Act is, but, um, just as a little bit of history, when it was enacted, when the Weeks Act was enacted in the early 20th century, um, Congress basically bought back cut-over private land in the East and made national forests out of, uh, and national parks eventually out of, uh, Appalachia and, and New England. Um, I guess a question for both of you is, is there, like, a Weeks Act scale move available to us today or is reacquisition a closed chapter at this point? 

00:25:49,196 --> 00:26:46,516 [Speaker 3]
I mean, the first thing that goes to my mind is, uh, not acquisition of what we would call fee titles, so direct ownership, but all of these private rights that are out there, whether they're mining claims, oil and gas leases, sort of all of these... Again, since I'm a property professor in my day job, so these encumbrances, meaning these restrictions on, uh, that have, uh, grown on, on existing public land. I think there's a lot of space to figure out how to, uh, sort of clear the underbrush. Um, I just... You know, there's an interesting East-West conundrum I think here, too, right? You have so much public lands in some areas in the West. There's-- I think there's certainly some reacquisition possibilities, uh, i- in some of those areas. But in the East, uh, there's a lot of real deserts notwithstanding the, I don't mean literal deserts, but deserts of public lands. So, uh, it would be interesting to think about how to knit together, um, uh, large, uh, ar- areas of undeveloped private land, state lands, and the like into something, uh, 

00:26:47,716 --> 00:27:32,916 [Speaker 3]
uh, like what you're describing. You know, one, a good interesting example in Maine, uh, where I happen to be, it's my home state, is, uh, the Katahdin Lakes and Waters National Monument, right? Where you did have a private, uh, uh, individual go out and acquire a bunch of land from some of the timber companies who aren't doing a lot of timbering in Maine anymore, the paper products industry isn't where it's at, uh, and, uh, donated to the federal government to create this amazing national monument, uh, that has become a huge source of, uh, I think pride for folks in that area, an economic driver because it's brought people in, uh, and the like. And in a place like Maine, there's a lot of space for that, right? We have a lot of undeveloped forest lands that, um, uh, where you could begin to think differently about, uh, uh, about a state that has a pretty small federal footprint, but a lot of undeveloped land. 

00:27:34,156 --> 00:29:44,296 [Speaker 2]
Uh, I'm just so grateful, Anders, that you brought up Weeks and the Weeks Act. Um, y- you know, what an amazing piece of legislation and, and you read about what drove it, and y- you feel some of these same circumstances are here today. Remember that in part, it's this massive amount of flooding that they're seeing in these areas, right? The wa- the watersheds have been mismanaged, the timber's been cut away, and we see that in parts of Appalachia, right, where Kentucky has been hit really, uh, dramatically by flooding. Uh, Missouri, we're just seeing helicopters pulling people out, and I think that there's a lot of opportunity to federalize a lot of, uh, r- river areas, right? Places with rivers. There's so much room for land acquisition. We should get... move some people out of the WUI out West. Uh, my colleague, uh, uh, Jonathan Thompson, who runs the Harvard Forest, just did a study of some timberlands in Maine that show that there's, you know... We're so sophisticated at using technology to understand the landscape now, but there's tremendous amounts of old growth in Maine in private hands, and we should be acquiring that. We should be acquiring that for, for climate. We should be acquiring it because it's the right thing to do, right? We change the status of those lands. We can preserve that old growth. And I think the possibilities in terms of land acquisition projects, coastal, coastal lands that could be acquired and made more public, this is a way. Like, you know, Massachusetts, where I live, uh, a lot of private beaches, which I just think is an abomination, and that's a function of state law, but you can acquire those lands. We have incredibly successful national seashore spaces and things like that, and I think it has to be part of our, our, our overall climate planning, right? We have to reimagine this landscape. And, and I think that the reason we had the Weeks Act, and, you know, and this is something b- that Bob Marshall wrote a lot about, is at the end of the day, the federal government can do more to manage these lands for resilience than private landowners are incentivized to do. 

00:29:44,296 --> 00:30:37,532 [Speaker 3]
And just let me add one other thing. I, I just don't know that we wanna... We've asked about acquisition. You know, I, I think that, uh, is one part of the picture, but there are a lot of collaborations that can happen with private landowners, with states, tribes, and the like that don't involve acquisitions. They involve other kinds of arrangements, and we're beginning to see those happen, and I think those are really fruitful and, and exciting and bring more ideas and tools to the table. And so I just think we wanna, uh, sort of be ha- keeping our vision open, right? Not ha- putting our blinders on so that we're both looking for those opportunities, but also looking for ways to get public access into, uh, areas that are in private hands but have conservation easements or are in a nonprofit's hands and really knitting together the, uh, through the landscapes that we have across property owners. Uh, in, in that kind of a fashion 

00:30:37,532 --> 00:31:20,432 [Speaker 2]
And I agree with Justin a hundred percent, and there's so many opportunities for-- to partner with private landowners, with tribes, uh, with state government. But one thing that, you know, you guys have all been following the Corner Crossing litigation and, you know, that's another opportunity, right? To, like, take in some of this checkerboard or provide greater access. I mean, to me, that, the controversy over that litigation, uh, was again, something that united the traditional hunting crowd, I think, with all of us who are interested in public land access. But I agree with Justin a hundred percent. It's not one solution. There are many tools for conservation in our, in our toolkit. 

00:31:20,432 --> 00:32:21,912 [Speaker 0]
Yeah. I love this [chuckles] idea that we're not... Uh, the, I mean, a great defense is a great offense, right? Like, we're sitting here dealing with, you know, the threats of selling off public lands, and I love having a conversation about what if we were expanding the, the public estate. And, and Andy, good job on buttering up the host by dropping in a Bob Marshall quote because, uh, that butters me up every time. I love a good Bob Marshall line. So, you know, you've both flagged that the move toward tribal co-management is unfinished business, and like these other reasons that, you know, ecological reasons that may w- there may be acquisition, there could be, you know, public access issues, but there's also this unfinished business of tribal co-management and, and wrestling with our, our history of, of th-the dispossession of tribal lands. And you note that the Wilderness Act itself is, you know, sort of blind to the fact that native people lived on these lands since time immemorial. Does, does making lands more public requiring whose public we've been talking about for the last one hundred and fifty years? 

00:32:21,912 --> 00:34:00,032 [Speaker 2]
You, you come up with some hard questions, Bill. I mean, the answer is yes. The answer to your question is yes. That, um, you know, so many people have been dispossessed from their lands, uh, their cultural resources and spiritual resources destroyed, and they've been denied access to those things. I think there's a lot of opportunities to reimagine, like, uh, tribal co-management and also with the, with, with the public in mind as well, right? Um, uh, these are hard issues and hard conversations, but we see a lot of success stories, uh, across the country that don't get as much, uh, attention as they deserve. I think that in the Great Lakes region, the tribes do an amazing job of managing their wildlife. We see lots of, uh, tribal bison projects, and this is, this is too little, don't get me wrong, but I think that we can build on those models to do more. I think Alaska, there's so many... We have this incredibly crazy legal regime in Alaska with the corporations, uh, with, with, uh, ANILCA. And one of the places that I think we should start thinking about reimagining is how do we reimagine management of these lands in Alaska, where obviously, uh, you know, with the permanent fund, there is so much sort of, um, privileging of, of fossil in Alaska, and there's, there's so much we can do to sort of, um, e-equalize the playing field for all of those folks, uh, who have been there since time immemorial. 

00:34:00,032 --> 00:35:12,142 [Speaker 3]
Yeah, yeah, I, I agree. Uh, and I, I guess I'd just add two things. One of the things I was proud about in the Biden administration was that, uh, when we looked at national monuments, when the president focused on especially large national monuments, he was really, uh, foregrounding sort of the tribal, tribal interests, right? When were tribes coming forward to the president and saying, "Please protect these areas that are sacred to us." And, uh, in the proclamations he used in gr- um, uh, Ancestral Footprints, uh, in, uh, Arizona, which is my current home state, uh, uh, is sort of ce-central. Those proclamations speak to this question of dispossession, right? We're trying to, to, to acknowledge the history and use, um, this opportunity to protect an area that is sacred to tribes in a fashion that, uh, that reflects their, um, sort of their, their desires, their requests, and also has an ongoing meaningful, um, role for them to play. I mean, I think that is healing. It's not, it's not everything, but it is a different, it's a different approach to conver- conservation than I think, um, uh, 

00:35:13,152 --> 00:36:56,772 [Speaker 3]
that, that we have seen, and I, as again, it's certainly something I'm proud of. Um, the other thing, I, this is int- I'd be interested in Andy's re-reflection of the, on reaction to this. Um, you know, I mean, my interactions with tribes, and I've spent some time with tribal leaders. Obviously, there are lots of different perspectives out there. Um, you know, there are lots of cultural sites that they care deeply about, uh, and that there are certain moments in time where they feel, um, [lips smack] like they would like to have them be theirs to do- engage in their cultural practices. In my vision of public lands, we could accommodate that. It would be okay, and we should have a system for a tribe to be able to say, you know, "For these days, for this period of time, it really needs to be, uh, our tribe who is, is there engaging in our historical cultural practices." Not all the time, but for pieces of time. And you know, you see some, an exa- an interesting example of that in the Tenawrakuhtse Katse Ke Tue National Monument, uh, where because of the arrangement, this is in New Mexico, um, uh, where the road, the access road passes through the reservation. The tribe does have, uh, the ability to close the monument for a couple of days here and there in order to engage in their cultural practices. And I don't think that's something we should run away with. That, that doesn't take the public out of public lands. It just reflects all of the interests and says, you know, the tribes have a different relationship with these lands, and it's, they're their ancestral lands, uh, these lands that are of great religious and cultural importance to them, and we should, we should honor that and find a way for those practices sort of to, um, really conserve those practices, right? To allow those practices continue to honor, uh, the requests of those tribes, while also maintaining, uh, the ability of the rest of us to use those lands Uh, uh, at other times and other ways 

00:36:56,772 --> 00:37:40,602 [Speaker 2]
I mean, we've seen, you know, land managers work towards those accommodations, as you know, Justin, for a long time. I think back in the day, we defended a lawsuit over, uh, uh, national forest rules restricting access to medicine wheels in the, in the national forest in Wyoming. And the idea there is that we can do all sorts of accommodations, and this is where I, I wanna double down on the notion that our public lands project is the project of democracy. And that pluralism, you know, the ability to respect diversity, to accommodate different points of views, has, you know, until recently been understood to be a strength of our democracy. And I think, you know, I, I'm excited about 

00:37:42,132 --> 00:38:12,152 [Speaker 2]
thinking about public lands because I think there's bipartisan support for them, and they offer us an opportunity to do some healing from this administration, right? To go back to some things that we all care about, which is being able to accommodate different perspectives, to be able to accommodate different pathways, and that we can all do that and keep these lands, you know, k-keep the, the vibe of, of the public lands that have, I think, make, made us an exceptional country. 

00:38:12,152 --> 00:38:15,352 [Speaker 0]
Someone's gotta pay the light bill. We'll be right back after this break. 

00:38:15,352 --> 00:38:20,312 [Speaker 3]
Hi, my name is Sandy Compton, and I'm from here in Montana, and you're listening to The Wild Idea. 

00:38:20,312 --> 00:39:12,572 [Speaker 2]
Justin, let's talk about primary purpose direction versus multi- multi-use mandates for public lands and, and the land management planning processes that might be abstract to some of our listeners. How do we define management of a defined set of public lands with the public in the room with agency professionals, and how do we create a simpler roadmap for that work? Because I ask this as someone who gave up, I feel like, a decade of my life to the Nantahala Pisgah forest plan in North Carolina. But how do we, how do we create a process that, that people don't walk away fr-frustrated by? And, and you made, I think, a pretty compelling point that I'd like you to make here in your, in your piece, uh, in Ground Shift about, uh, maybe more prescription is better. And I, and you alluded to this in an answer earlier, but I'd love for you to talk more about that. 

00:39:12,572 --> 00:40:17,672 [Speaker 3]
Sure. I mean, l-let me just give my own characterization of, of, of where we are now. Obviously, this isn't every time, every place, uh, but we have this really broad direction from Congress, manage for multiple uses, and that can be everything from mining to wildlife to sort of energy everything. It's everything. Uh, and the, the idea, uh, in nineteen seventy-six, uh, when the Federal Land Policy Management Act was, uh, enacted, this is the act that governs the way the BLM manages public lands, and the National Forest Management Act, which is the act that governs how the Forest Service manage public lands, was that there would be this planning process. You would put out plans. It would be like land use plans, kinda like the zoning ordinances you have in a city or a town. Uh, and that would be the way that the public could provide input, and the agency experts would, would pore over, um, sort of the data they had, and they would figure out what we're gonna do where, and then we'll keep updating those plans, but it will give us sort of a holistic vision for how we're going to accommodate all of these different uses across the landscape. 

00:40:18,852 --> 00:44:11,440 [Speaker 3]
It's actually a pretty good idea. It just doesn't, hasn't proven workable. You know, we have land use plans. Uh, I think the oldest one, uh, was put in place before nineteen seventy-six. Uh, that was a-- it has never been updated. Uh, we have other land use plans that, uh, uh, are updated and then [chuckles] overridden by Congress as we've seen recently. It's obviously new. Uh, but the, the whole planning process is, uh, i-has become, um, uh, uh, you know, it's like the trailing indicator. Like, you don't... You try to accomplish things through land use planning. They're, they're, uh, they contract a lot of attention. But most management is happening on a project-by-project basis with a project-specific land use plan amendment. You wanna authorize an oil and gas, uh, uh, play in an area that's been closed to oil and gas, well, you just authorize it, and you do a site-specific land use plan amendment. You can do that for any use. And so it becomes this sort of system of atomized decisions that are totally, uh, uh, divorced from this notion of sort of landscape scale planning. And it's because the agencies are underfunded and, uh, and it, and it's hard and things change and priorities change and, and there's just the... So I guess my, uh, the, the, the piece, uh, that you're alluding to, Bill, that I... where I was trying to say, "Well, how might we do this differently?" And, uh, uh, it... The, the notion is that we probably need to create more durability around what we're gonna do where and designating a primary purpose for different landscapes, saying, "Over here, we're gonna do solar and wind development. Over here, we're gonna do recreation. Over here, we're gonna set this area aside for cultural purposes." Doesn't mean those are the only uses of those lands, but that is the sort of primary driver of management. And then if there's other stuff that is consistent with that, that's great. Now, I also don't think we should go try to do that across the whole country at one time, right? It's not... The notion isn't, uh, in twenty twenty-eight, we're going to, uh, designate primary purposes for a third of the country. I mean, what a mess that would be. Uh, but that we should create a, more vehicles for Congress and the agencies and the public working together to identify areas and what the primary purposes of them will be. And I do think that you could do this in a fashion that, um, I mean, this may be the idealist in me. You may call me Panglossian, uh, but, uh, that we could broker bipartisan support. We've seen this in public lands bills in the past, right? You have Some wilderness designations coupled with some other, uh, more resource-oriented provisions. And so you could have a very robust congressional debate about how to balance the way that we're thinking about designating primary purposes across sort of these different needs that we have, whether it's energy transmission, recreation, wildlife, tribal cultural practices. I mean, there's lots more that you could add to that list. And do it stepwise, piece by piece, build confidence in Congress that people can work together again. Again, this is where maybe I'm getting a little overly optimistic, but I do think, it, it's what Andy has said, like, the, the, the, the, the, the opportunity of public lands and thinking about public lands is that, that they offer us the opportunity to find compromise that can bridge some of our differences and sort of rebuild some muscle memory that, yeah, we may have some differences, but, you know, we all love this country, we all love the places that are here. We all want each other to succeed. And I do think that public lands can be a place where we begin to sort of remember, uh, our, our sort of our, the common story that we share, uh, in this country. 

00:44:11,440 --> 00:44:14,840 [Speaker 2]
Can I, can I just say one word about planning? Uh, which is just that, 

00:44:15,920 --> 00:45:37,900 [Speaker 2]
you know, the, it clearly hasn't worked as intended, but I, I, I do think that we really need to reimagine it in the ways that Justin has mentioned. But also, I just couldn't live with myself if I didn't come on this podcast and say something about the federal workforce, which has really taken an enormous hit. And you guys know this and have talked about this, but, you know, the Forest Service, BLM, Park Service, I, I just- we- my heart goes out to those folks. They work really, really hard. They work long hours. The work they do is incredibly important, and they've really taken a hit under this administration. And when we think about planning and planning processes, we have to under- understand that we're not going back to where we were before, which was clearly insufficient for managing these lands. But there's something really good about knowing the lands that you have, understanding how they work, and keeping track on the changes on the landscape. And I think one place we could see bipartisan support is leveraging technology to do a better job. We can do so much with sl- satellites, et cetera, that we need Congress to engage in sort of reimagining planning ASAP, because we're not gonna go back to the way we were doing it before, and the way we were doing it before was insufficient. 

00:45:38,160 --> 00:45:46,820 [Speaker 1]
Justin, I wanna ask you a quick follow-up. I, I don't think that you're, um, Panglossian, and I actually think that, uh, uh, 

00:45:48,129 --> 00:46:55,000 [Speaker 1]
I, I am probably more ready to admit that these kinda bills can be bipartisan, um, much more quickly than a lot of my colleagues. But I will say, one of my fears, and it's because I've seen it happen, is that you see, you know, public land users across the spectrum come together with a plan, uh, an idea for, like, their big backyard, and it often has some component of forest management. Let's say the conservation side agrees to not throw up hurdles in, uh, in order that it can get done, and then the sort of extraction side of thing agrees to, say, like, wilderness acres in places where they, they may have opposed it. And what I see time and time again is, like, the forest moves immediately on the management stuff because they don't need congressional approval to do it, and the wilderness part of that formula just sits in front of Congress for years and years, sometimes decades. And to me, it's not the balance we've gotta fix. It's, like, the ability to put all the ingredients in the pie, right? It feels like one side always gets what they want [chuckles], and the other side, which is my side, never gets what it really, really wants, or it has to wait way too long to get it. I... How do you address, like, a critique like that? 

00:46:55,000 --> 00:48:22,520 [Speaker 3]
Oh, I mean, I think I agree with the critique, right? This sort of goes a little bit to what I was saying before, that the only certainty in public land management is steel in the ground, right? And, and the, the imbalances that we see, um, I think that's where we need to look for radical hope and say that we're, that things are so bad that we are going to be in a moment where we can get, uh, support to do things differently. And, and some of the things that we need to do differently is make sure that we're addressing the conservation alongside those other uses. And I would put another piece on it. Um, and the... A lot of our public lands are in pretty bad shape. Invasive species, they're not resilient, I mean, maintenance backlog. But even if you look past that and think about wildfire mitigation and all of these challenges that we face that require s- serious investment from the public to restore our public lands, right, to, to address these, these challenges. Uh, and the... I- I- In thinking about that, and how do you create certainty around that? You know, we have the Land and Water Conservation Fund for land acquisition. Can we have something that looks like that for restoration work? Um, you know, the, the, uh, idea of a climate corps never really took off, uh, in the Biden administration for a variety of understandable reasons. But if we look further back to the Civi- Civilian Conservation Corps, like, is there a model there that we can use to get people out on the ground being paid 

00:48:23,700 --> 00:48:53,920 [Speaker 3]
to restore our public lands? 'Cause that's what it's gonna take. A- and I will say, one of the great things about restoration work is it's, it's relatively AI-proof, at least for the time being. So, like, this is a place that we could be building, uh, uh, sort of a, a, an economy that is focused on stewardship. And having a stewardship-based economy is one, uh, that will, uh, leave our public lands healthier, uh, more accessible, uh, and I think build just a more vibrant, uh, uh, country. 

00:48:53,920 --> 00:49:20,000 [Speaker 2]
Yeah, I, I just have to jump in here and say this all sounds like a plan that needs to continue to be built upon. And I don't know, I was just thinking about giving it a name. Something catchy Project 2029, does that work? We, we call it Project, Project 2029. Just a lot of really good ideas here, and I'm, and, uh, I just, I'm, I, I can't sit still because I'm so excited about what is gonna come out of the backlash to what's going on now. 

00:49:20,000 --> 00:49:26,100 [Speaker 1]
Wow, somebody is angling for that DOI secretaryship in the Mondami administration. 

00:49:26,100 --> 00:49:27,900 [Speaker 2]
[laughs] 

00:49:27,900 --> 00:50:10,680 [Speaker 1]
Okay, so you have both advocated for Congress to charter a new Public Land Law Review Commission, the first, uh, since 1964. Um, maybe you could walk us through the original, which happened at the urging of Representative Wayne Aspinall and drove Congress to authorize the creation of a commission, uh, that was meant to engage in a comprehensive review of federal land policy and, and recommended revisions to that policy. Uh, it took five years and, like, thousands of witnesses, but all of it led to, uh, the aforementioned FLPMA, uh, which would declare, uh, you know, that these lands would stay public forever. Why did that work? What went right? 

00:50:10,680 --> 00:53:09,220 [Speaker 2]
You know, there's a lot of people that say, "Oh, it didn't work. It was a mess. The c- the recommendations were all contrary. We can't sort through what they really did, and, you know, if you were picking sides, extraction won and preservation lost." There's a lot of criticism of the '64 Land Commission, which is just one of several, right? Like, I, what I wanna r- remind people is that Congress used to be a lot more engaged on public lands than it has been before. And, you know, I'm, I'm trying to write about fire right now, and I look at the proposals like the Fix Our Forest Act and things like that, and I think, like, there aren't any new ideas kicking around Congress. It's the same people pushing the same points of view. So what, what do I like about the 1964 Commission? What I like about it is that there were thousands of witnesses, that Paul Gates was a genius of a historian. Whatever else, I don't think e- either side of the spectrum have to recognize that Gates was a singular talent. And they put together, they gathered a lot of information, and we can be unhappy with the recommendations, and we can be unhappy with s- parts of the process. And, uh, but there was a real engagement. And what I found as a lawyer at DOJ defending public lands decisions is that if I had a question about some obscure public lands, let's just say the Pickett Act or something like that, I could go to the commission and find good information about that, right? Like, just as an information gathering process, it was incredibly helpful. And my thought here is that because there is bipartisan support for public lands and because we need Congress, can I swear on this, to do effing something, right? They don't do anything. Isn't this a good place to start? And maybe we can be sort of ecumenical about the approach. We could say we're gonna hear from people who like ORVs, even if that's not my jam, and we're gonna hear from wilderness advocates, and we're gonna hear some new ideas, so it's not just the same lobbyist pushing the same thing. And, you know, even if we didn't do it through Congress, there's some, as John Leshy... I've talked with J- John a lot about this and wish I could talk to him some more about it. But he's like, "You know, remember for oceans, Pew did the study. You went outside of Congress, and they convened the experts in a sort of bipartisan spirit." But we need to generate new ideas. I mean, that's clearly part of what Ground Shift is about. That's what Justin is doing in his scholarship. We need to, like, hear from more people, and the, and the commission gives us an opportunity to do that. And it won't be perfect, and people won't all be happy with the recommendations. But if we convene a process that involved as many hearings and as many witnesses as they had from '64 to '70, we will get some good ideas. 

00:53:09,220 --> 00:53:12,400 [Speaker 3]
I would just jump in and say, I, I mean, I, um, I, 

00:53:13,600 --> 00:53:32,970 [Speaker 3]
I give Andy a hard time about this idea from time to time. Um, I mean, I, I like it in concept. Uh, my big concern is that it takes a really long time, and we can't wait 12 years to actually have some new ideas floating. And so I guess the way I have thought about something like what he's describing is the way to do it would be, um, 

00:53:34,280 --> 00:53:40,490 [Speaker 3]
to front-load some change, right? We need to, we need to be able to manage public lands better 

00:53:41,920 --> 00:54:16,220 [Speaker 3]
on day one of a new administration, and we need to be rebuilding the civilian w- workforce on day one. And we need to be doing all of these things fast because the need is great. And we also need to be taking the kind of approach Andy is take- is describing, where we're hearing from everyone. Um, uh, and, uh, but I, uh, I, I wor- you know, I guess that this is always my anxiety is that, um, uh, if we, you know, if, if there's a new president, uh, in a couple years and that president spends four years 

00:54:17,440 --> 00:54:56,160 [Speaker 3]
planning and hearing from people and trying to hire folks, we're not gonna convince the American people that we can govern. And that is part of the, the, I mean, the, the, one of the rocks at the heart of the current moment is that the American people have lost faith in the government as an institution. And that is... There's a crisis there that we need to address, and we, and so I, uh, again, it, it, I endorse the idea. It's just, to me, part of this larger picture of how do you rebuild confidence that we can manage public lands for all different kinds of folks 

00:54:57,640 --> 00:55:02,140 [Speaker 3]
now while also hearing from people about what they want the future to look like. 

00:55:02,140 --> 00:55:11,590 [Speaker 1]
I couldn't agree more with you about the politics at play, and I, I do share your anxiety. Just to play devil's advocate, Andrew, I, I just, I have to ask, even though, you know, I'm, I'm-

00:55:11,944 --> 00:55:49,464 [Speaker 0]
Sure, I'm wrong. You know, Aspinall extracted this original commission as his price for the Wilderness Act, you know, and he was no conservationist. And I guess I wonder what stops a new commission from becoming just this sort of bipartisan letterheaded vehicle for divestment in some public lands or for making public lands less public with better paperwork. You know, I, I guess what I'm trying to ask is c- can, can you help me convince the skeptic inside myself that five years of hearings isn't a luxury we can't afford while the roadless rule is just being rescinded in real time? 

00:55:49,464 --> 00:57:39,104 [Speaker 2]
Uh, you know, I, I, you raise really good points, and I guess what I... I, I mean, part of, like, the reason I wrote that piece is to be sort of provocative. I mean, how do you keep the bad guys from capturing something? That, that's a, that's a tough question, right? And the way that the bad guys did it with, with Project 2025 is by doing it themselves, right? And, and our community doesn't have the single-mindedness of the people that produced 2025, right? They have a vision. I personally think it's a dark vision for our country, but they could, like, all get lined up behind that vision. But if we... You know how many points of view there are on public lands, and somebody needs to manage the process, and that process, you know, by, by investing it in Congress, at least it's, it's representative, right? But I, I, I do think that there are plenty of risks. I don't deny that. I think I, I have a lot of nostalgia for a time when Congress worked and when there were people like, you know, w- as... If you study, like, environmental law, you know, right, like, people like Leon Billings, uh, working for Muskie, those guys did amazing work, right, from the Hill, like churning out things that were durable, right? They, they haven't kept up with our times, but nobody could anticipate that Congress would stop working. And I think that the Public Lands Commission is an opportunity for us to say, "Congress, we're gonna entrust you with one of the things that's most important about this country, that makes it exceptional in my view, and can you be serious and take it on?" And maybe they can't, and maybe it w- maybe it's a terrible idea, but we need to have ideas to get Congress to, to work cooperatively and think hard about things. 

00:57:39,104 --> 00:58:12,984 [Speaker 0]
What I hear in this whole conversation is we're gonna have to figure out a really good balance between durability and speed. Um, and maybe this lightning round couple things I have for you guys here to wrap up, uh, being mindful of our time, is a couple things that have happened that are examples of that maybe we don't have durability right yet. Um, just in the last couple days, including while we've been recording, a couple things have happened, and I wanna take advantage of having two lawyers on our podcast at this moment for this quick lightning round. 

00:58:14,204 --> 00:58:25,024 [Speaker 0]
Is it as simple that the Trump administration just changed the definition of harm to not include destruction of habitat? Am I right? Is it that simple, or is it more complicated? 

00:58:25,024 --> 00:58:36,584 [Speaker 3]
More complicated, I would say. Um, they... That's certainly what they're trying to do, right? But the, the, the... Technically, they deleted the, they deleted the definition, so there is no definition. They're leaving it up to the courts. 

00:58:37,604 --> 00:59:40,084 [Speaker 3]
And there are... We could spend an h- an hour talking about why they did it that way and how that shapes the potential litigation that will come and the like. But that's clearly where they're heading. That's clearly what they want. And that notion, the idea that the Endangered Species Act only protects an animal from being shot, is a dangerous idea and one that will, uh, uh, destine many of the species that we love to extinction, because most species are not at risk of extinction because they're gonna be shot. It's habitat, it's climate, it's a lot of other stuff. And that's... And, um, the habitat side, the Endangered Species Act has been quite successful, uh, at, uh, uh, at ensuring that habitat doesn't get destroyed wantonly. Um, there are mechanisms embedded to make sure that private property owners can engage in mitigation and do other stuff so that they can continue to use their property. Uh, but at the end of the day, you continue to make sure that species have the habitat that they need. Uh, uh, and I do think that idea is in danger. 

00:59:40,084 --> 01:01:12,624 [Speaker 2]
One thing that I would encourage your listeners to take stock of when we think about harm is the incredible extent to which where we've landed here is part of a legal revolution pushed by conservative causes, right? This is all tied up in, uh, these very obscure to folks who don't track kind of conservative legal thinking about originalism, original public meaning, this Loper Bright and the role of agencies. Th- This legal revolution is where, why we ended up where we are now. And the effect that they're shooting for, right, is that, you know, harm doesn't include habitat destruction. But it, what it's, what it rests on is this idea that Justice Scalia sort of like, I think in a drive-by sort of analysis, came up with, which is that take must always mean the intentional killing of an animal and sort of reducing it to your possession. And we saw that concept also reflected in Trump One, in their changes to the interpretation of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, and they have built on this dissent from Scalia to where we are today. And this is why, like, we can't just focus on public lands. We have to pay attention to what's happening in the bigger space, and this is the result of a lot of planning and hard work by the conservative legal movement, which has always been incredibly hostile to, to the environment. 

01:01:12,624 --> 01:01:13,684 [Speaker 0]
One final

01:01:14,424 --> 01:01:37,884 [Speaker 2]
topic was the news that broke while we've been recording this, this evening, that the Trump administration, just like Trump one, has decided to shrink the national monuments of Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears, uh, apparently by a combined 3 million acres. Is this the end of the Antiquities Act? Is this just an expansion of the Antiquities Act? What does this mean? 

01:01:37,884 --> 01:04:03,624 [Speaker 3]
I think neither. It's not the end of the Antiquities Act. It's also not the end of the fight. Uh, I mean, as you said, Trump won. They rolled back Bears Ears and Grand Staircase. There was a massive, uh, swell of opposition, I think more than they ever imagined across the country, of people saying, "These are lands we cherish, we care about. These are places that need to be protected." And, uh, um, Biden administration put those proclamations back in place. So here we go again. We're rolling back. We're gonna roll them back bigger. You know, we may not have seen the end of it. They may take some swings at other pub- uh, national monuments. But these monuments are amazing places, and they're amazing places that people love. And I at least think that's gonna matter at the end of the day. I mean, I don't know what they got out of the first rollbacks. I think there was, like, an alabaster mine or something. Uh, but at the end of the day, it's a, uh, it- it's a symbolic fight. It's a symbolic fight about what public lands mean, whether conservation matters, whether tribes matter, uh, whether, uh, uh, whether all people matter or whether it's just a few special interests who wanna be able to control public lands for themselves that matter. And I think that's, those are the stakes. But if you think about the stakes that way, uh, I'm hopeful that we're gonna win the... We're gonna win because people don't want public lands that are, uh, maintained only, uh, for a few and only for private industry. They want, uh, the lands that they love, uh, to be preserved. So I, that's- that's the hope I'm taking from this. And, uh, um, yeah, we'll- we'll see. I'm sure there'll be lawsuits and all. I mean, I, I was involved in a lawsuit, uh, during the first Trump administration representing four of the tribes challenging, uh, uh, the president's action on Bears Ears. Um, uh, uh, I'm not, uh, representing anyone at the moment. Um, but I'm sure there will be lawsuits, and there will be tumult, and there will be lot... But the, this is also a real clarifying moment for people. You know, what do you stand for? Who do you want to be managing our public lands? Do you want the people to be managing our public lands to be people who are, uh, uh, trying to make sure our children have places to hunt and fish and hike and recreate and that, uh, tribes have places to preserve, uh, and continue to engage in, uh, uh, their, their cultural practices that have happened since time immemorial and the like, or not? Or do you want people who just don't, don't really care? They're just, they're just willing to write it all off with a, with a stroke of a pen. 

01:04:03,624 --> 01:06:14,744 [Speaker 2]
Anybody thinking about writing a book about the Trump administration and the environment, I, I would ask you to consider this for your title. Nobody wants this. I mean, the Trump administration has taken a lot of actions that are incredibly unpopular and are, are just, uh, I think performative in so many ways. I think the bulk of Americans support these monuments. I don't think by any means is this the end of the Antiquities Act or, or, um... And I think that's true for the harm rule too, right? They tell us that they, that this is burdensome. Actually, they don't really tell us this. They tell us that Justice Scalia, in his dissenting opinion in Sweet Home, understood what this term meant, and they can't justify that change on the basis that the harm rule has, it has had dire economic consequences for anybody because it hasn't. And they can't justify the, the shrinking of these monuments on any sort of dire economic consequences. These decisions are the tyranny of a powerful minority of people who think that it is their personal interest to move these changes along. They do not represent the views of the America, of the American public, for whom the Antiquities Act and the ESA are incredibly popular. This is a corrupt administration. It is entirely transactional. And when we have had these moments in the past, go back to Teapot Dome. I don't love everything about mineral leasing in this country, but there were reform movements because at the end of the day, Americans understand that there's c- th- this is rank corruption, and that is a large part about what's driving this decision-making. And so I think we can be hopeful that the tide is gonna turn here, and I think it's gonna turn sooner rather than later. But nobody really wants these things. People want the endangerment fighting. They want us to do something about climate change. Industry can deal with the changes that we impose on them. If they couldn't, we'd hear more about it from, from credible sources. But these are all driven by not credible people. I'm sorry. 

01:06:14,744 --> 01:06:28,934 [Speaker 3]
Yeah, just to jump in, Andy, on what you were saying earlier, people don't want a federal w- workforce in trauma and enervated, and they don't want to drive people out of, out, you know, a, a federal government that can't, can't deal with their problems. So, 

01:06:30,244 --> 01:06:43,094 [Speaker 3]
uh, I mean, the list goes on about, uh, I like your title. Uh, I guess that, that's just me agreeing with your title that this is, uh, this is, this, that we're, we're, we're in a world where, uh, what we're seeing in environment, natural resources, and public lands, uh, uh, 

01:06:44,184 --> 01:06:50,614 [Speaker 3]
is, is, is not reflective of, of, of, of the America that I want us to be and, in fact, the America that I think we are. 

01:06:51,644 --> 01:07:30,503 [Speaker 1]
No, Andy, that is a great final word. I am so grateful to both of you for coming on today. Um, you guys are so sharp. Bill and I had to skip so many questions because the conversation has just been, like, so rich, and I am so appreciative to both of you for that, for reminding us that the politics of this moment demands action and that private profit models and harmful legal strategies are, are driving the attacks on public lands and the agency staff who steward them. Um, but also for reminding us that there's a path forward and, and one that honors pluralism and democracy and all the best qualities of our country. So I, I'm very, very appreciative of your time. Thank you so much. 

01:07:30,504 --> 01:08:22,904 [Speaker 2]
Yeah, thanks, guys. It's just been an honor to have you on. Coming up on The Wild Idea, we will take a little more time to dive into the monuments in southern Utah that the administration just took a chainsaw to, and we'll explore fly fishing stories with someone that has many of them and has turned some of those experiences towards changing young lives. We want to remind our audience that our show, The Wild Line, is now in its own podcast feed. So search for it on the podcast player of choice, and be sure to subscribe, uh, s- to stay on top of all the land stories that are breaking every week. Subscribe to our newsletters at thewildidea.com, and if you love what we are doing, you can support our work through Buy Me A Coffee, which you can also find on our website. Across the way, you can find show notes for all of the topics we covered, uh, today with Justin and Andy. And let's all lace up our boots, head for our favorite public lands, and when we do, we will see all of you on down the trail. 

01:08:23,984 --> 01:09:00,284 [Speaker 4]
The Wild Idea is a production of Wild Idea Media and hosted by Bill Hodge and Anders Reynolds. Production and editing by Bryn Russell at PodLab. Digital support by Holly Wilcheski at Datepack Digital. Our theme music, Spring Hill Jack, is from Railroad Earth and was composed by John Skehan. Our executive producer and ringleader is Lara Hodge. You can find The Wild Idea wherever you listen to or download your favorite podcast. If you have a minute, please take a minute to give us a rating, and if you really like us, we hope you'll subscribe. Learn more about us at thewildidea.com. [upbeat music]