Unleashed: Keep up the fight for nature as you know it
Big Beautiful public lands fight was just the tip of a giant, ignorant iceberg
"We have fallen heirs to the most glorious heritage a people ever received, and each one must do his part if we wish to show that the nation is worthy of its good fortune." - President Theodore Roosevelt on preserving public lands, July 1886
“I am proud to unveil this historic legislation that will power our country, unleash energy innovation, and help countless American families prosper.” - Utah Sen. Mike Lee on selling public lands through the Big Beautiful Bill, June 2025
“I am introducing a bill that prohibits the injection, release, or dispersion of chemicals or substances into the atmosphere for the express purpose of altering weather, temperature, climate, or sunlight intensity. It will be a felony offense.” - Georgia Sen. Marjorie Taylor Greene on the deadly Texas flood event, July 2025
“As a journalist who has devoted his life to educating the broader public about nature, outdoor pursuits, and the environment since 1985, just one day I’d like to turn to my newspapers and not have to think lunatics are in control of our natural resources.” - Outdoor writer Kelly Bostian, just now
If I haven't made it apparent from the quote above, this blog space is no longer holding back when it comes to political opinions on the environment.
Environmental issues and ignorance (and I intend that word in the most polite meaning) of our natural world have always been serious matters. Apathy is right up there as well.
But it’s gettin’ critical now. Straightforward reporting is no longer enough. Those explainer pieces are just too damned boring, I guess. Time to mouth off a bit.
Lessons we learned, realities we woke up to and corrected in our environmental approach in the 20th Century have slipped from low-and-slow gear forward to a cringeworthy, grinding attempt to slam itself into reverse.
We all need to grab hold of that lever and start pushing it forward again.
Don’t delay. Don’t leave it to people you think are supposed to be wiser, in charge, or know things that you don’t. Act now.
It was good to see the Instagram reel showing Steve Rinella and his crew calling members of Congress about public lands last week. That’s an excellent example for all of us to set for our friends, for both local and national issues.
Don’t give me that line about the outdoors being your escape, and that you don’t want to hear about it. You and I are the ones who are closest to the land and understand the importance of those impacts. Sure as you need to teach your kids gun safety and how to tie a solid knot, you need to teach them media literacy, politics, and what keeps their fishing and hunting traditions alive.
We’re not always going to agree, you and me, either. That’s fine. Just get involved, dammit. Don’t fret about being annoying to your less inclined friends. Tell them to get their ass in the game.
Connect with reliable information (not social media and not AI summaries), accredited experts, and join reputable conservation organizations that have withstood the test of time. Make yourself heard not just when emergency measures are called for, not just when it’s in your backyard, but consistently.
Beat.
The.
Drum.
When you feel you’re being drowned out, keep drumming.
Ignore the cowards who level threats, talk tough, and attempt to pigeonhole you with convenient labels. Stand proudly for the environment, sound science, proven ecological measures, sound policies, and the future of our children.
You can dive into it all by yourself; you really can. But don’t worry. Even if it feels like it sometimes, you won’t end up standing alone.
Read Project 2025 and tell your representatives if you catch them following that playbook on the environment, you’ll bounce their sorry asses to the curb.
And don’t do a goddamned Murkowski; the cause for the environment is for everyone, everywhere, worldwide. It’s not just about you and yours. (if this one escapes you, Google “Murkowski agonizing”)
Big Beautiful efforts
As people began to wonder if the primarily Trump-favoring hook-and-bullet crowd would remain silent on Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee’s Big Beautiful Bill measure to sell off public lands, conservation groups rallied in the last minutes to finally see Lee pull his measure. That wouldn’t have happened without conservation-minded Republicans standing up, and dollars-to-donuts, they’d have sat on their hands if people had not been loud about it.
Threats to open more public lands to development through sales or leasing are not going away. We have an established, public process for selling and leasing public lands. We need to stick to it, in moderation, with oversight and heavy consideration of sustainable management.
Lee continues to lean hard into examples of mismanagement as grounds for putting more land into private hands. He has not changed his mind. He is not going away, and he is not alone.
In 2021, as Oklahoma’s legislature approved a Public Lands Resolution recognizing the value of public lands for the state, a representative told me he believed public lands were a “socialist concept.”
The comment took me by surprise. My only reaction was to ask if he thought Teddy Roosevelt would agree. He didn’t address that directly, but went on to speak about the sacrifices he’d made to own his land. If others wanted a piece of the pie, he said, they should work for it as well.
Roosevelt was a Republican, and I don’t think he’d agree with that sentiment. Roosevelt was a progressive Republican, to be fair, and that is a thing of the past. To counter that allowance, however, Roosevelt’s progressivism recognized the return on investment for the federal government to preserve wildlands for the public at large. Our courts have repeatedly upheld the concept of the public domain, including clean waters, clean air, wildlife, parks, refuges, and preserves. Teddy had it right.
Oklahoma’s public lands measure passed with unanimous Senate approval. Still, on the day it hit the House floor, 13 Republicans voted against it, and 51 members—both Democrats and Republicans—didn’t bother to show up and put their stamp on it. That statistic remains telling, and a little worrisome.
Public doesn’t mean perfect
Granted, the number of what seem like unforced errors that taint the records of state and federal public lands bureaucracies is multifold. But carrying out “the will of the people” on lands and wildlife, often with under-funded science as a guide, is an imperfect job description at best. When multiplied by human nature in management and business, it doesn’t always look good. They’re not always going to get it right, and impacts on wildlands and public perceptions take years to repair.
That’s not a reason to give it away to private interests. Our public lands are a treasure in many ways, and their monetary and social values are high.
Having lived in Alaska for 23 years and written for a largely conservative-leaning newspaper in a state that was 98 percent publicly owned, I can relate to Lee’s frustrations. I sat in many rooms with folks bemoaning the attitudes of assholes living Outside between the endless Interstates and cheap gas. That’s Outside with a capital O (the Lower 48). Where did they get off telling us we can’t develop our state to support our economy and build our future? Some campaigned to secede from the nation, and they were serious about it.
So, yeah, I get it.
This fight doesn’t stop with public land use rights, however. Anything related to climate change or involving conservation subsidies is under attack. Anything that requires a special investment of public dollars is on the chopping block, including clean water, clean air, and endangered species.
The Interior Department's fiscal 2025 budget totaled roughly $18 billion, representing a 3 percent increase over the 2024 budget for all its agencies, including Parks, Wildlife, Forestry, BLM; the whole lot.
Interior’s 2026 budget is decreased to around $14 billion, a 23 percent cut.
The priorities of the new administration are clear: public lands, wildlife, and the environment are not among them.
This is evidenced by the budget of one other single agency, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which increased from $10 billion in 2025 to nearly $30 billion in 2026, a 200 percent increase.
Cutting Interior was never about saving money or rooting out waste and fraud.
Too many things to track
With much less fanfare, a month before we became Bigly and Beautifully preoccupied, farmers and conservationists rallied—by filing a lawsuit—to force the new powers in charge of the U.S. Department of Agriculture to reverse course and restore climate-focused pages purged from its websites.
I didn’t hear about this one until just recently, and I keep a fairly close watch on things.
Shortly after Trump’s inauguration, the new admins illegally and immediately started purging information on climate-smart farming, forest conservation measures, and rural clean energy projects. The agency erased entire climate sections from the Forest Service and Natural Resources Conservation Service websites, including information that helps farmers and foresters access billions of dollars for critical conservation practices.
It also disabled the Forest Service’s Climate Risk Viewer, which the Forest Service describes as a “one-stop shop for climate-related geospatial data” with over 140 data layers.
Even for a layperson like me, it was easy to see how that tool can help in agriculture and forestry planning. However, the new Trumpian approach fears such tools legitimize climate change and make it too easy for farmers to tap into that public dole to save soil and water.
More giveaways, something to be rid of, another money pit ready for a re-route of cash to other priorities.
The concept of return on investment in conservation is not a component of the Project 2025 playbook.
I encourage you to read that document or, at the very least, review and read the parts that interest you most. I also encourage you to utilize any or all of the following links. Get involved, stay involved, and encourage your friends to do the same.
Excellent column.
Love the TR quote!