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The Wild Idea is an exploration of the intersection of wild nature and our own human nature. The hosts, Bill Hodge and Anders Reynolds, through conversations with experts and thought leaders will dive into the ways that humans have both embraced and impact the function and vitality of our remaining wild places.
[upbeat music] Welcome to The Wild Line, where land stories are the lead stories. This is our report for May 22nd, 2026.
On Monday, the U.S. Senate approved a block of 50 presidential appointments, including that of former New Mexico Representative Steve Pearce to head the Bureau of Land Management. As has been widely reported, Pearce spent his congressional career trying to sell off public lands, and since his retirement, has enjoyed close ties to the oil and gas industry. He's now in the position of overseeing those same public lands and industries as the top man at a land management agency that just a week ago decided to de-emphasize conservation in favor of extractive uses by repealing the public lands rule on over 245 million acres of public land.
House and Senate Appropriations Committees are continuing hearings and markups for the fiscal year 2027. Last week, the House Appropriations Committee held its markup of the FY27 CJS bill, which included steep cuts to NOAA Fisheries, but did include some other surprises, including level funding for the crucial Prescott Marine Mammal Rescue Grant Program, 5 million for developing and deploying fishing gear technologies aimed at reducing right whale mortality, and 10 million for a National Fish and Wildlife Foundation grant program supporting effective approaches to reduce harmful interactions between ocean users and whales.
And on Thursday, the House subcommittee took up consideration of the Interior and Environment bill. That measure will be considered by the full committee on June 3rd. On the Senate side, it appears the Appropriations Committee is looking to June 4th as a tentative date to start their FY27 markups.
The Trump administration is lifting a ban on the use of M44 devices, AKA cyanide bombs, on public lands, reversing course over the objections of environmentalists. The Bureau of Land Management will once again allow the use of the devices, which are indiscriminate spring-loaded traps intended to kill coyotes, foxes, and other animals, but often kill endangered species, birds of prey, and beloved pets.
Over three years ago, 14-year-old Canyon Mansfield and his dog Casey stumbled upon an M44 cyanide bomb while playing near the family's backyard outside Pocatello, Idaho. The spring-activated device sprays sodium cyanide. It was placed by Wildlife Services, an arm of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, tasked with protecting livestock through, quote, predator control, which often involves killing animals such as coyotes. This incident changed their lives forever, resulting in Casey's tragic death, a slew of health problems for Canyon, and the lasting trauma of watching his dog die.
Since then, the Mansfield family has been vocal advocates for the Chemical Poisons Reduction Act, also known as Canyon's Law, which would prevent the use of sodium cyanide and sodium fluoroacetate used in livestock protection collars and predator management devices nationwide. The Mansfields' determined efforts recently led to a victory in their lawsuit against the USDA, which agreed to pay them $38,000. Critically, the government also admitted negligence in placing the M44 on public lands. A 2016 environmental assessment stated that M44 cyanide bombs were only to be placed on private lands.
Florida's Wildlife Commission voted last week to end a controversial policy that allowed the capture of wild manta rays, a federally threatened species, for overseas aquariums. But the commission will still allow U.S. companies to seek approval from Florida's wildlife officials if they want endangered marine wildlife for their displays. The new rules effectively end an open permitting program for the capture of certain federally threatened Florida wildlife for educational purposes. Now, if a company seeks an animal on the endangered species list for their exhibitions, like a manta or queen conch, it will require approval from wildlife commissioners instead of staff issuing permits.
Recreation.gov, the federal reservation platform that manages everything from river permits to national park campsite bookings, has grown enormously in the last few years, from 3.5 million reservations in 2019 to 11 million reservations in 2024. But a new story this week by Heather Hansman in Republic shows the system is increasingly broken. Her story uncovers that online bots are scooping up highly sought permits, like spots on Idaho's Middle Fork of the Salmon, in just seconds, leaving human users with no chance to snag a reservation, while reserve campsites frequently sit empty. A web developer profiled in the article was able to demonstrate the situation by running automated scripts that simultaneously secured multiple rare river permits in under a minute, while a friend of the author's got nothing by clicking manually. Here is Heather Hansman on why she decided to dig into this issue.
I am a river runner. I love being on rivers. And in my kind of river community, for the past several years, there's just been kind of this grumbling that nobody was getting permits through rec.gov anymore, which manages a bunch of the most desirable river stretches in the country. Um, nobody I knew was getting permits. We didn't know what was going on. Um, it felt really frustrating. And this wasn't just true of river permits too. I think this is also true of campground reservations and some really desirable hikes in national parks and on public land. It felt like nobody was getting them. Um, and I got kind of clued into the bot piece of it. There's this guy, Sam Carter, who does a podcast called The River Radius, and he did a really good episode a few years back about bots in the river permit system. And he had somebody that he knew build a bot for him, and it went in, and it grabbed a bunch of permits, and it worked. So it kind of became clear that something was happening within the system that skewed the power towards people who have this kind of technology. And that was really interesting to me. I'm kind of always thinking aboutwho gets outside and why and what the barriers to entry are. And this kind of technology piece felt like it was a really interesting and sort of powerful barrier to entry because, you know, I was kind of seeing that show up in my own life. So I started to dig into that, um, and see how that was impacting recreation.gov, which is this big clearinghouse website that manages most of the reservable things on public land from campgrounds to these permits to, um, timed entry tickets to, you know, tree cutting permits. It manages all these things. Um, and rec.gov is really interesting because it is managed. It's a federal website, but it's run by a government contractor. It's run by Booz Allen Hamilton, which is, I think they're...
I was gonna [laughs] didn't know the number for this. I think they're the twelfth biggest government contractor, and they manage a bunch of defense contracts and some things like that. Um, and they got the contract to manage rec.gov, um, in 2016, and they changed how they did things. Um, the previous contractor had gotten paid kind of hourly, and when Booz Allen Hamilton got the contract, they changed things so that they now get paid per transaction. They get a little fee add on for every permit, every reservation, every- everything that goes through the site. Um, and that has, A, that's made them a whole bunch of money, and it's not totally clear how much money they're making. They won't release those numbers. Um, we FOIA'd it. We asked them. Nobody-- There's kind of this like secret sauce that they want. You can, you can know total numbers, but you can't know how it breaks down. Um, and, you know, they're making that money
whether a person makes a reservation or whether a bot makes a reservation. Um, and so-- And they, as part of their contract, are obligated to crack down on bad actors, crack down on bots, that kind of thing. Um, and the pe- the sources that I talked to who were able to break in and, you know, get reservations for these kinds of things found that they weren't doing their due diligence, and they weren't even kind of closing the easy loopholes to prevent people from doing this kind of thing. And that creates this really interesting equity issue that a lot of researchers are looking at where, um, that means people who have access to computing power and money and servers and that kind of thing have a way better chance of getting reservations and sometimes holding onto reservations and blocking other people from getting them, um, than, you know, normies like me [laughs] who are just trying to use the system in a normal way,
um, you know, by f- going the morning that the reservation's open and trying to get the permits that we want. So it's sort of this really interesting mix of how technology is changing things, how that becomes an equity issue, and then how,
um, these large private companies are profiting off of
our public resources.
Staffing cuts driven by DOGE have worsened oversight, and the rec.gov program currently has no manager. While legislative efforts like California Senator Alex Padilla's Reserve Act aim to study and reform the system, and alternatives like the Grand Canyon's weighted lottery show fairer models are possible, meaningful change has been slow, leaving many to feel that access to public lands is increasingly determined by computing power rather than the democratic ideal the lands represent. You can find a link to Heather's article in our show notes.
More of the week's headlines following this short break. And back to the Wild Line. Anders, this week I've been, well, doing what you've been doing for so many years, prowling around our nation's capital to support our public lands and waters. It was a full week of lobbying with the great outdoor gear and apparel companies that make up the Conservation Alliance, and I'm proud to say Wild Idea Media is a part of that community. Split into groups, close to sixty member organizations hit the streets for meetings with the administration and elected officials in both chambers of Congress. The asks were simple and specific. Let's protect the natural world and public lands that so many Americans cherish. We covered issues from the proposed rescission of the Roadless Rule to implementation of the Explore Act to clearly defining how much local communities depend on outdoor recreation to create jobs and healthy citizens. Near the end of the week, I caught up with Rebecca Gillis, Vice President of Government Affairs and Advocacy for the Conservation Alliance, on why this week is important to the Alliance.
This week is extremely important because we're one of the only groups working in the conservation space that can really bring an authentic business voice focused on not only sort of the importance of the outdoors, you know, by themselves, but also the economics and how big of a powerhouse we are. Nobody better than the businesses themselves to bring to DC and bring the message straight to our policymakers.
And here is her takeaway at the end of the week in DC.
I will say that people seem to sort of be seeing the human side of our friends and our allies and also the folks we don't necessarily always agree with on the Hill. It really seems to be humanizing politics for folks in a way that they might not experience if they stay in their bubbles and, and don't come pop the DC bubble. Um, so I think people are really connecting on a human-to-human level with staff and members of Congress, which is really, again, um, sort of vivifying and gets people excited about this. I think they're finding there's some wiggle room. I think they're finding there could be some cool opportunities to collaborate, if not, you know, in the next few months, hopefully over the coming years. And they're learning that their good ideas about the outdoors and conservation can come to life if we have the right partners on the Hill.
Advocacy days in DC aren't easy, so thanks to you and Rebecca and everyone else for participating.Green Latinos Colorado announced this week the launch of Westrax, a new free community shuttle that will connect riders from the RTD Jefferson County Government Center Station to parks, museums, trails, and cultural destinations in the Golden and Morrison area beginning on May 23rd. The shuttle will run on weekends and holidays from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. through Labor Day, with no tickets or reservations required.
Westrax is the result of years of collaboration among public and community partners working to create more equitable access to the outdoors and nearby destinations. Partners include RTD, the City and County of Denver, Jefferson County, the Town of Morrison, Friends of Dinosaur Ridge, and Green Latinos Colorado. In a statement, Green Latinos Colorado noted that Westrax represents more than a shuttle. Rather, it is an investment in community access, environmental justice, and the idea that enjoying Colorado's open spaces and cultural sites should not depend on owning a car, paying for parking, or navigating barriers that have historically excluded many communities from the outdoors.
Finally, Kash Patel. This week, reports emerged that while he was in Hawaii last year, the FBI director took time away from his schedule to enjoy a, quote, "VIP snorkel of Pearl Harbor National Memorial." The dive, which was coordinated by the military, included a trip around the USS Arizona, where the remains of 900 U.S. sailors and Marines still remain entombed.
Snorkeling and diving are generally off-limits around the USS Arizona, with exceptions for archaeologists and interior and defense employees, including at least one secretary, with jurisdiction over the site. Recovery teams retrieving the bodies of veterans whose families wish them to be interred in family plots have also been permitted to dive with park supervision. Is this news? I don't know. Is it unacceptable? Absolutely. You wouldn't play touch football in Arlington National Cemetery or croquet at Gettysburg National Military Park, and the FBI director has little business making a playground of one of the most hallowed sites on American public lands. The word ghoulish is overused these days, but I think it applies here. That is our report for May 22nd. We will be back next week with another edition of the Wild Line.
And on next Tuesday's Wild Idea podcast, we have a returning guest, Tracy Stone-Manning, the president of the Wilderness Society. Until then, act up and run wild.
The Wild Line is a production of Wild Idea Media. Production and editing by Bryn Russell at Podlad. Digital support by Holly Wilkoszewski at Daypack Digital. Our theme music, Spring Hill Jack, is from Railroad Earth and was composed by John Skehan. The executive producer is Lara Hodge. Learn more about us at thewildidea.com. [outro music]