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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.
Bill Hodge 0:00
Bren Welcome to the wild line where land stories are the lead stories. This is our report for March 20, 2026
Anders Reynolds 0:08
bill on Wednesday, the US House of Representatives passed hr 556, the Protecting Access for hunters and anglers act of 2025 this bill prohibits the secretaries of interior and agriculture from regulating the use of lead ammunition or tackle on certain federal lands or waters under their jurisdiction. Lead ammunition and tackle have been shown to harm a variety of wildlife for species like California condor, bald and golden eagles, mountain lions, black bears, common loons and dozens of others. Lead is a persistent threat that hampers conservation and recovery efforts. Ingestion of spent lead ammunition is the leading cause of death for the critically endangered California condor. In fact, a 2022 paper demonstrated population level effects in both bald and golden eagles stemming from ingestion of spent lead ammunition. Aquatic species like loons succumb to lead toxicosis via ingesting loose tackle, or fish which have consumed lead tackle by constraining federal management of federal land, HR 556, may also conflict with conservation statutes, including the Endangered Species Act. The establishment of narrow conditions under which lead may be regulated could prevent federal agencies from ensuring that their actions are not likely to jeopardize the continued existence of listed species. Also, there's no reason to assume that the regulation of lead on federal lands would harm sports people, for example, non toxic steel copper and alloy ammunition and non lead fishing tackle are affordable and available in all 50 states. Over a dozen manufacturers now market non lead bullets and shot with satisfactory to superior ballistic characteristics. Hunters and anglers in states or other areas that have already restricted or banned lead have made successful transitions to non toxic alternatives sports people who use non lead ammunition also carry on the proud tradition of wildlife conservation by helping to keep animals free of the toxic effects of lead. We talked to Hardy Kern, Director of Government Relations for the American bird Conservancy, and ask him if he thinks Americans connect the dots on the detrimental effects of lead.
Speaker 1 2:07
I think people know that lead is dangerous. I think people know that it's no longer in paint, and we've gotten it out of gasoline, and there's a lot of issues with water lines that provide public drinking water having lead in them and needing to be replaced. I think that's pretty salient for people. I don't know that most people make the direct connection between lead ammo, spent, lead ammo, the lead fishing tackle, and potential harms to wildlife. You know, there's a good amount of Americans that are fishing and hunting, but it's not the majority of Americans. And on top of that, you know, these are things that we do because that's how our fathers and grandfathers and grandmothers and aunts taught us how to do them. And unless people are making a an active choice, not to use these products on their own, the default is just to use the lead based stuff, because it's available right now. It seems like it's a little bit cheaper, but it is way, way worse for wildlife. And the great part is there's a ton of alternatives out there already,
Bill Hodge 3:11
speaking of the endangered species, act Interior Secretary Doug Burgum has scheduled a meeting for later this month for the so called God Squad, a high level federal panel empowered to override protections granted under the Endangered Species Act. The first time such a gathering has been called in over three decades. The shocking call for a meeting scheduled for March 31 will be held near the Gulf of Mexico, or as this administration calls it, the Gulf of America, and is designed to consider quote, exemptions under the Endangered Species Act with respect to oil and gas exploration. While this may not be the first time the panel has been convened, it is still unprecedented in how the process is being short circuited. Here's senior attorney for Defenders of Wildlife, Jane Davenport. The God Squad is
Speaker 2 3:59
designed by nature to be invoked extremely rarely. In the last 48 years since the God Squad provisions were added to the Endangered Species Act in 1978 it's literally only been convened three times. And in order to even convene the God Squad, the Secretary of the Interior has to go through a detailed process, an administrative process that is meant to build a complete record that is public for the committee to determine whether a species lives or dies. So that is one of the reasons why this convening of the God Squad on March 31 is so unprecedented because there has been none of that process. There's been no application, there's been no formal hearing, there's been no secretarial report, and the public isn't even able to tell from the Federal Register Notice announcing. This meeting, what is the committee planning to examine? We know it's related to offshore oil and gas development in the Gulf of Mexico, but we don't know any more than that. So you know, turning to the Gulf of Mexico, obviously this administration under the guise of a fictitious National Energy emergency in air quotes, is pushing forward its offshore drilling agenda with alacrity, and this is going to have tremendous implications for endangered and threatened wildlife in the Gulf of Mexico, not only the Rice's whale, of which only 51 whales survive, but also endangered and threatened, sea turtles, sea birds, fish and just generally, the ecosystem which has truly never recovered from the absolute catastrophe that was deep water horizon. So it's likely going to be whatever action the committee takes is, if any, if they actually try to exempt oil and gas drilling activities in the Gulf From the ESA that will be flatly unlawful. But our concern as well, given the haste with which this administration is trying to develop oil and gas, both onshore and offshore, around the country, including off the coast of California, including in Alaska. We worry that this is the thin end of the wedge, and that we're going to see this administration continue to abuse and violate the Endangered Species Act, putting, you know, big oil profits over our National
Bill Hodge 6:44
Wildlife heritage, more public land stories right after this, back to our public land news
Anders Reynolds 6:51
bill next Tuesday evening at seven o'clock Eastern Sierra Club, frontline advocates and legal experts are convening for a conversation about what's happening from Big Bend National Park and Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument to Big Cypress National Preserve and Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge, where some of America's most treasured landscapes are under threat from proposals for border wall expansion, militarization and detention facilities. This webinar, entitled parks, not prisons, is designed for advocates to learn what's at stake, hear from the people working to protect these landscapes and find out how they can help defend our parks, refuges and border lands for generations to come. If you'd like to attend, you can find details about how to RSVP and our show notes
Bill Hodge 7:35
in Salt Lake City. This week, the University of Utah's Wallace Stegner center for land resources and the environment is holding their 31st annual symposium, this one titled America's public lands at a crossroads. Yes, the title was posed as a question. I think we know the answer. I showed up to see what I could glean from the thought leaders in attendance and on the podium. We will bring more headlines from the symposium next week, but here are a few highlights from day one, staggering final numbers on how much the public land workforce has been decimated. NPS down 32% Forest Service down 16% and overall, the four agencies are down 25% in their staff capacity. There was a great panel on critical minerals and how access to minerals does not even come close to solving the deficit with China when it comes to mining and refining those minerals. One conversation I wanted to bring everyone this week was with Mark Haggerty from the Center for American Progress about the prevailing reasons we often see rural counties in the West having a less than favorable view of the economy, and if it's working for them with GDP going out, but jobs not coming in.
Speaker 3 8:44
I mean, the rural West is providing energy, materials, resources to the national economy, but the way that we've restructured, the way the economy works for people, through industry consolidation, through tax cuts, through financialization, means that that value is largely being extracted from those communities, and there are fewer jobs, wages are stagnant, and there's less revenue staying in those places where that those resources are being produced. So communities are no longer prospering from the economic value that they're creating,
Bill Hodge 9:18
and therefore services to the public are decreasing. Yeah, local
Speaker 3 9:22
governments are broke. They can't sustain basic public education, public safety, public health. And when the government can't take care of its citizens, it erodes trust, and it traps these communities in poverty.
Bill Hodge 9:37
So when I asked you about a specific new development, relatively new development. Where I live in Montana. Now it's and this is not just a Montana thing. Data centers are going to be a new way of extracting that wealth, right, while not contributing to the local economy.
Speaker 3 9:54
So Montana has a special tax carve out for data centers. They pay the lowest property tax rate of. Any property in the state. So it literally is an extractive economy, where they're using energy and water and land in Montana to produce services that some Montanans use, but they're really servicing, you know, larger metro populations somewhere else, and there's very few jobs other than construction, and then there's no revenue in it for the long term. And in fact, the history of data centers in Montana and Hardin, where there's an old coal fired power plant that a data center located next to the city, annexed the site and bonded, using local money to pay for the infrastructure to allow that data center to get up and going, and then the data center just up and left after two years, and the city defaulted on its bonds. And so you know, our credit, our revenue and our resources are being extracted without very much coming
Bill Hodge 10:54
back to us. More from Salt Lake next week and on future episodes of the wild idea as well, on Tuesday
Anders Reynolds 11:01
night, the Board of Commissioners for Camden County, Georgia opposed by a vote of three to two, a request to endorse the National Park Service's plan to make land swaps with some private landowners on Cumberland Island National Seashore. Last month, Cumberland Island National Seashore superintendent Melissa tren check requested a support letter from the county, as required by the Department of Interior before it could move forward in the process of forward in the process of a land exchange, which she said was necessary to quote, acquire a relatively contiguous corridor of privately owned land within core areas of the seashore, to improve manageability of these areas, preserve important resources and prevent further development on these end holdings. End quote. The public was made aware of this request just last week when Tuesday night's agenda was posted and more than 500 people wrote to the Commission urging the body to either deny the proposal or at least postpone their decision until more information could be gathered. Here is some of the testimony that preceded the vote to not endorse the land swap. My name is Dr
Speaker 4 11:59
Katherine Saylor from Defenders of Wildlife, and I appreciate the time to address the chair commissioners. We are asking respectfully and kindly that you table the proposed vote on this letter supporting the NPS land exchange for a few reasons. There's three primary reasons. First, the action is premature, as mentioned, we don't have a full environmental review. The completed environmental review will be required for the exchanges, but you simply don't have enough information here tonight. The public, doesn't you, as commissioners, simply don't have that information available to you. Second, there's incomplete information about the exchange. We don't know a the ecological value of the park lands proposed for conveyance. We don't know the terms of conservation easements. So it was mentioned, and I agree that the service is trying to do the right thing, but we don't know how and when variances will be granted for the conservation easements. You know that's what gets us here, is those variants are asked to be granted next how the exchanges would affect future developments and land use on the island and the homely, cumulative, excuse me, impacts of development on the parcel. So cumulatively, what precisely does that look like? We really don't have any of that information available to us here this evening. So in conclusion, I asked to please table the vote. It'll simply allow the Park Service, members of the public and others to come to be able to engage transparently in the process. I understand there was some public engagement a few years ago, back in 2024 but we still have a lot of unanswered questions, and tabling the vote would allow the service to complete its environmental review and completely provide the necessary information for you kind folks here this evening. So with that, I conclude my remarks.
Anders Reynolds 13:50
Conservation groups also oppose the letter. With the southern Environmental Law Center, Defenders of Wildlife, the Center for a Sustainable coast, the Center for Biological Diversity, the coalition to protect America's national parks, the national parks, the National Parks Conservation Association and wild Cumberland all providing written or oral testimony. SCLC comments focused on the fact that many basic factual details of the proposed exchanges, like how many acres of publicly owned land the Park Service intends to convey to private landowners, and whether or not the proposal is consistent with Congress's legislative mandate to preserve the island in its primitive state. Similarly, Defenders of Wildlife noted that the parcels being consolidated are in a place that looks suspiciously like the Park Service is considering them for future commercial use, and that the park itself only recently told defenders that staff were too busy with its visitor use management plan to move forward with the land swaps.
Bill Hodge 14:41
That is our report for March 20, 2026, we'll be back next Friday with another wild line on Tuesday's new episode of the wild idea, we talk about just how critical access to nature is for children and adults with the leadership team from the Trust for Public Land until then act up and run
Announcer 14:58
wild the. Wild line is a production of wild idea media production and editing by Bren Russell at podlad Digital, support by Holly wilkeshevsky at daypack digital. Our theme music Spring Hill Jack is from railroad Earth and was composed by John skihan. The executive producer is Laura Hodge. Learn more about us at the wild idea.com Bren.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai