The Wild Idea

In most Western states, wading a river through private land can get you arrested for trespassing. In Montana, it can't, and three guests join Bill and Anders to explain why. Jim Klug of Yellow Dog Flyfishing, journalist Hal Herring, and Alex Leone of the Public Land/Water Access Association trace Montana's 1985 Stream Access Law back to its roots in the state's 1972 Constitution and the landowner fights that tested it in court for decades, and explain what the law means for Montana's outdoor economy today. They also connect the dots to other current access fights, from corner crossing to last year's attempted sell-off of federal public land, and close with details on the Montana Stream Access Rally, a September 17 gathering in Bozeman meant to remind lawmakers that Montanans are still watching. Full show notes and links at our website, thewildidea.com. Support our show with a one-time or recurring gift through Buy Me a Coffee .

Parks and refuges were built to protect wildlife, but many function as islands, and the species that depend on them can't always survive within borders drawn decades before habitat connectivity was understood. Christian Hunt and Kelly Cox of Defenders of Wildlife join Bill and Anders to break down the Wildlife Corridors and Habitat Connectivity Conservation Act of 2026, a bipartisan bill that would create the first durable, legal framework for connecting fragmented wildlife habitat across federal lands, from national parks and refuges to BLM and Forest Service holdings. They dig into why the bill has drawn support across the political spectrum, from the economics of wildlife-vehicle collisions to a shared instinct that wildlife belongs to everyone, and what listeners can do to help it move in a shortened legislative calendar. The conversation also turns to Defenders' campaign at Cumberland Island National Seashore, where a National Park Service land exchange plan is raising questions about transparency and the island's mandate to remain undeveloped. Full show notes and links at thewildidea.com. Support our show with a one-time or recurring gift through Buy Me a Coffee.

Adam Cramer co-founded and now leads the Outdoor Alliance, a coalition of ten organizations, including American Whitewater, the Access Fund, and Winter Wildlands Alliance, that turns climbers, kayakers, mountain bikers, and backcountry skiers into public lands advocates. In this episode, Cramer traces his own path from corporate law to conservation, sparked by a pro bono legal case over a hydropower permit on a favorite whitewater river, and explains how Outdoor Alliance builds consensus among member groups who don't always agree. The conversation turns to what's at stake right now: the Roadless Rule, which protects 45 million acres of national forest, and a wilderness stewardship review with public comments due August 14, 2026. Cramer also makes the case for why showing up, filing a comment, or calling a lawmaker still matters, even when the odds look long, and why he thinks outdoor recreation might be one of the last public lands issues that doesn't split along party lines. Full show notes and links at our website, thewildidea.com .

Dan Puskar, executive director of the Rock Creek Conservancy, introduces listeners to Rock Creek Park, the 1,754-acre national park running through the heart of Washington, DC, created by Congress the same week as Sequoia and Yosemite in 1890. Puskar explains what it takes to steward an urban national park that draws more than two million visits a year but has seen no real increase in its federal budget in two decades, from a 4,000-volunteer stewardship program to a new DC Water tunnel project aimed at cleaning up the creek itself. He also talks about where the park is investing first as it works to make Rock Creek feel open to every neighborhood it touches, and previews this week's reopening of the Carter Barron Amphitheater, a historic stage dark for a decade, for three nights of live music. Full show notes and links at our website, thewildidea.com .

Ryan Johnston has spent 24 years as a fly fishing guide, working rivers in California and Idaho and now Montana's Flathead Valley. In this episode, he shares stories from his three books, including the now-legendary "Monster Brown Trout" tale from his first book, A Reel Job , and reflects on what two decades in a drift boat has taught him about people, patience, and the intimacy of sharing a day on the water with a stranger. Johnston also traces the origin of Cast Hope, the youth mentorship nonprofit he founded in 2009 after a church sermon on giving back to his community, which now takes roughly 1,200 kids fly fishing for free every year across five Western regions. The conversation turns to the outfitter permit systems that govern access to rivers like the South Fork of the Snake, the tension between protecting a fishery and guides making a living, and why moving fish between waters remains one of the biggest threats to Western fisheries today. Full show notes and links at our website, thewildidea.com .

Please take our listener survey ! We'd love to hear from you. Are America's public lands getting more public, or less? Two of the sharpest legal minds in the field join Bill and Anders to dig in. Andrew Mergen, faculty director of Harvard Law School's Emmett Environmental Law and Policy Clinic, spent decades litigating public lands cases for the Department of Justice. Justin Pidot teaches environmental law at the University of Arizona and served as general counsel of the White House Council on Environmental Quality. Together they cover the 1872 Mining Law, tribal co-management at national monuments, reacquiring land in the spirit of the century-old Weeks Act, and a proposal to charter a new Public Land Law Review Commission, the first since 1964. They close with a lightning round on the administration's rollback of Endangered Species Act habitat protections and a fresh round of cuts to Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante, both breaking as the episode was recorded. Full show notes and links at our website, thewildidea.com .

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

What would it take to rewrite the rules of American conservation? Lynn Scarlett, former Deputy Secretary of the Interior, and Matt Lee-Ashley, Executive Director of Ground Shift, join Bill and Anders to talk about a new initiative asking that exact question, crowdsourcing ideas for what public lands and waters should look like in ten, twenty, and fifty years. The conversation covers essays on the Ground Shift platform that challenge conservation orthodoxy, from private land tools to a class and sovereignty critique of the movement itself, along with the case for and against a modern Public Land Law Review Commission. Scarlett and Lee-Ashley also dig into what makes place-based collaboration succeed or fail, why implementation, not just the law itself, often determines whether the Endangered Species Act and NEPA actually work, and how public pressure, not just a good white paper, is what moves policy. Full show notes and links at our website, thewildidea.com .

This week, proposed federal rules would gut tribal consultation and historic-preservation protections under the National Historic Preservation Act, and the Trump Administration opens a comment period on drilling near Chaco Canyon, a UNESCO World Heritage site. We also cover a nearly one-third cut to Canada lynx critical habitat, a Montana Land Board grazing policy widely read as targeting American Prairie's bison herd, and a busy week for the House Natural Resources Committee. Plus: two Forest Service employees kidnapped at gunpoint in Northern California, a flash flood that killed five members of one family in Utah, a Mother Jones investigation into wildfire betting markets, criticism of a Blue Ridge Parkway logging plan, wildfires closing the entire Boundary Waters, and Okefenokee's bid for UNESCO World Heritage status. Full show notes and links at our website, thewildidea.com .

Brooks Lamb has spent his career trying to answer a hard question: who will own rural America? As Special Advisor for Strategic Communications at American Farmland Trust, Lamb works on one of agriculture's most urgent and least-discussed problems, the more than 300 million acres of U.S. farmland set to change hands over the next two decades as current owners retire or pass away. Recorded live at the Old Salt Festival on the Mannix Ranch in Montana, this conversation covers why succession planning gets avoided until it's too late, the three fates that often befall transitioning farmland, and the creative leasing and policy tools, from Tennessee's Greenbelt law to a Kitsap Peninsula land-share arrangement, helping some families keep their land in agriculture. Lamb also talks about Love for the Land , his book on why farmers keep farming against the odds, and Landed, AFT's new podcast on farm transition stories from across the country. Full show notes and links at our website, thewildidea.com.

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

For decades, the story of American conservation has been told almost entirely through male protagonists: Thoreau, Muir, Abbey. Journalist and author Heather Hansman joins The Wild Idea to make the case for three women who belong in that story too. Her new book, Fierce Country: The Untold Story of Three Women Who Ignited America's Love for the Wild , profiles Georgie White, one of the first commercial Grand Canyon river guides; Anne LaBastille, an off-grid Adirondack biologist whose research helped support the Clean Air Act; and Dolores La Chapelle, a backcountry ski pioneer who became a founding voice of the deep ecology movement. Hansman talks with Bill and Anders about why she refused to smooth over each woman's flaws and rivalries, what it means to write "a girl book" without being boxed in by it, and how the same nostalgia that keeps people attached to old maps and decommissioned lighthouses shapes public land policy today. The conversation also touches on the shrinking landscape of environmental journalism and Hansman's own reporting on inequities in the federal Recreation.gov permitting system. Full show notes and links at our website, thewildidea.com .

This week, the Bureau of Land Management proposes its first grazing rule overhaul since 1995, covering 155 million acres of Western public land and sharply limiting public participation in permit decisions. A coalition sues to block the Forest Service's largest restructuring in a century, and we track new wildlife crossing funding in Pennsylvania and North Carolina, a wildfire burning into a 50-year-untouched Colorado wilderness, and a new free tool for tracking public lands comment periods. We also remember David Page of the Winter Wildlands Alliance. Full show notes and links at our website, thewildidea.com .

Congress has taken 65 separate actions against U.S. public lands this year, and three outdoor industry leaders are done staying quiet about it. Recorded live on a panel at Switchback Spring 2026 in New Orleans, this conversation brings together Paul Hendricks of The Conservation Alliance, Jen McLaren of Altra, and Dawn Mancini Moyer of Fjällräven to talk through the real risk-reward calculus behind corporate advocacy: what it costs a brand to speak up, what it costs to stay silent, and how they're each building tools, coalitions, and community partnerships to do something about it. They cover The Conservation Alliance's 170-company Brands for Public Lands coalition, a new economic study on national monuments, Altra's trail-running access work, and Fjällräven's fire-mitigation partnership in Boulder, Colorado, plus a candid take on Interior Secretary Doug Burgum's framing of public lands as a financial asset. Find the links and resources mentioned today at our website, thewildidea.com .

This week, the Forest Service opens a comment period on a proposed rule that would narrow public input into how national forests are managed, and the window closes July 31. The Interior Department signs a partnership with "de-extinction" company Colossal Biosciences on species genomics, raising the question of whether the tools complement or replace habitat-based recovery. A new lawsuit tests how far Congress can stretch the Congressional Review Act against land management plans. We also cover a volunteer-built replacement for the shuttered Climate.gov, the opening of the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library in Medora, and hard news from the fire line in Colorado alongside the closing of National Parks Traveler. Find the full show notes and links at our website, thewildidea.com .

Wilderness visitation surged 75% during the pandemic and hasn't come back down. Federal staffing hasn't kept pace. Meryl Harrell of Friends of the Forest Service and Lisa Ronald of American Rivers joined The Wild Idea at the National Wilderness Skills Institute to talk honestly about what that gap looks like on the ground, and where the stewardship community is actually filling it. They cover the federal capacity crunch, American Rivers' 2025 National Protected Rivers Assessment (which found that over 80% of U.S. rivers lack adequate protection), the management pressure building on the Flathead Wild and Scenic River, and the technology reshaping how visitors move through wild places. They also bring specific examples of partnership models working right now: a single advocate driving a Wild and Scenic designation for Florida's Myakka River, and the Flathead Rivers Alliance building community river patrols in Montana. And they're direct about what "showing up" actually requires, beyond the trail. Before diving into that conversation, we kick off the episode with host Ashley Arnold previewing Raising Wild , Wild Idea Media's new podcast about raising kids in nature. Full show notes and links at our website, thewildidea.com .

This week on The Wild Line, we're tracking Farm Bill wilderness designations for Virginia, Arkansas, and Illinois; Kevin Lilly's confirmation hearing before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee; Interior's proposed rollback of oil and gas drilling safeguards; a leaked Flathead National Forest memo that would open recommended wilderness to off-road vehicles; an emergency Forest Service salvage timber declaration covering up to 11 million acres with a one-week comment period; NPS restrictions on fatality reporting; and the death of environmental journalist James Bruggers. Find the links and resources mentioned today at our website, thewildidea.com .

For nearly 30 years, whether fixed anchors belong in wilderness was answered differently by every park superintendent who had to decide. In 2023, the National Park Service proposed prohibiting them outright, nationwide. Congress stepped in. The Protecting America's Rock Climbing Act, signed in January 2025, established that climbing and fixed anchors are appropriate in wilderness and required federal agencies to issue public guidance within 18 months. That guidance is now out, and the public comment window is open. Erik Murdock, Deputy Director of Programs, Policy & Government Affairs at the Access Fund, has worked this issue for nearly three decades, from doctoral research at Joshua Tree National Park to the policy fight that produced the PARC Act. In the first episode of our Fault Lines bonus series, he traces the full history, explains what the draft guidelines actually say, and makes the case for why this comment period will shape wilderness climbing management for a generation. Learn more about Erik and how you can take part in the public comment period at our website, thewildidea.com .

Dillon Osleger is a geologist, conservationist, and trail builder whose debut book, Trail Work: Restoring the Paths and Stories of America's Public Lands , reads as both a love letter and a reckoning. Named after Dillon, Montana, and raised by field geologists who hauled him on their excursions through the Canadian Rockies and the rangelands of southwestern Montana, Osleger grew up learning that the land itself is a kind of map, one that records what came before and what we choose to preserve. This episode continues The Wild Idea's month of stewardship with a wide-ranging conversation about trails, history, and what the act of maintenance actually means. The conversation moves through the Appalachian Trail and Pacific Crest Trail as case studies in how long-distance trails have drifted from their original purposes, which were economically and socially rooted in rural communities, toward a culture of speed and personal achievement that has little relationship to the land itself. It returns, finally, to the people who maintain the trails: the campground hosts, trail crews, and seasonal rangers who rarely receive the recognition the work deserves. Osleger's argument is not nostalgic. It is a civic one. Stewardship, he says, is one of the few remaining spaces where people from genuinely different backgrounds can work side by side, swinging tools for the same reasons. The question the episode leaves open is how long that common ground can hold if we stop funding the people who tend it. Learn more about Dillon and today's conversation at our website, thewildidea.com .

This week on The Wild Line , we're tracking new federal directives reshaping wilderness management for climbing anchors and livestock grazing, a bipartisan bill that would restore nearly $2 billion annually for national park maintenance, and a legal battle over a proposed oil road through Utah's most culturally significant canyon corridor. From the Senate's quiet protection of Grand Staircase-Escalante to a federal court's order restoring park displays, this week brought a complicated mix of setbacks and hard-won wins for public lands. Find the links and resources mentioned today at our website, thewildidea.com.