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
Cam Brensinger sewed a prototype from a bicycle inner tube after a bivy bag failed him on Mount Washington: this conversation explores what a gear maker owes the ground its products are used on. Brensinger explains why NEMO only brings products to market that improve the outdoor experience, how a bicycle inner tube and an inflatable kite shaped the company's first designs, and how a REI buyer's blunt criticism taught him to put the customer in the room. He talks about fifteen years of lobbying through the Outdoor Industry Association, the industry's 2017 withdrawal of its trade show from…
Marshall Johnson, Chief Conservation Officer for the National Audubon Society, joins Bill Hodge and Anders Reynolds to discuss how the Conservation Ranching Program aligns rancher livelihoods with grassland health. Johnson explains why ranchers were the easiest sell for a national certification effort and how birds act as diplomats connecting urban and rural communities. The conversation traces the program’s evolution from a small pilot to a national framework, highlighting collaborations with brands like Thousand Hills and Lifetime Grazed that carry the Audubon Certified Bird-Friendly Land…
Amy Bowers Cordalis is a Yurok Tribe member, attorney, and executive director of Ridges to Riffles Indigenous Conservation Group. She helped lead the fight to remove four dams from the Klamath River, the largest dam removal and salmon restoration project in U.S. history. In this conversation, she traces that fight from the first covenant of the Yurok creation story through her great-uncle's arrests for fishing on the Klamath, the Supreme Court case that followed, and the grassroots and legal strategy that turned a hostile utility company into a negotiating partner. She also talks about the…
Some of the highest-output rural counties in the country are losing population, even as public lands get pitched as the answer to everything from housing to the national debt. Mark Haggerty of the Center for American Progress and Dr. Megan Lawson of Headwaters Economics, two economists who study what public lands do for the communities next door, join Bill and Anders to sort out what the numbers actually say. They cover why automation and stagnant wages have hollowed out extractive jobs, the "amenity trap" that can price teachers out of thriving outdoor towns, why selling public land is a…
Fitz Cahall has spent nearly twenty years telling other people's outdoor stories as the host of The Dirtbag Diaries. Now he's leading one himself: Save Public Lands, a coalition campaign racing to collect a million signatures against public land sell-offs, backroom deals, and giveaways before National Public Lands Day on September 26. Cahall talks with Bill Hodge about the throughline from The Dirtbag Diaries to organizing, including his and Becca Cahall's history with Bears Ears National Monument and the education center they helped build there after its boundaries were first rolled back.…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
The Three Forks of the Flathead River in northwest Montana didn't just earn Wild and Scenic designation — they inspired the law that made it possible. In the 1950s, a proposed dam at Spruce Park would have dewatered the Middle Fork entirely, routing its flow through a mountain tunnel into Hungry Horse Reservoir. Wildlife biologists John and Frank Craighead floated the river to document what would be lost, and their fight against the dam seeded the movement that became the National Wild and Scenic Rivers Act of 1968. The three forks themselves weren't formally designated until 1976 — 50 years…
This week on The Wild Line , we're tracking a lackluster oil and gas lease sale in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, a draft Forest Service memo that could open recommended wilderness to off-road vehicles, Senator Mike Lee's move to nullify the Roadless Rule, and a bipartisan bill to keep public land sales out of budget reconciliation. From Alaska to Appalachia, these stories come down to who decides the future of America's public lands. For more on these stories and the links mentioned, visit our website at thewildidea.com.
Kaitlin de Varona is the executive director of Southern Appalachian Wilderness Stewards (SAWS), the nonprofit that has spent more than a decade building a community of skilled, committed wilderness stewards across the Southeast. In this special episode, she joins Bill and Anders — both former SAWS leaders who helped shape the organization — for a wide-ranging conversation about what it takes to keep wild places healthy and accessible for generations to come. From the passage of the Tennessee Wilderness Act in 2018 to the harrowing weeks following Hurricane Helene in 2024, SAWS has repeatedly…
This week on The Wild Line , we're tracking the White House's repeal of decades-old off-road vehicle protections on public lands, House appropriations cuts to national parks and the EPA, the collapse of federal conservation program funding for farmers, and the withdrawal of NSF's deep-sea ocean monitoring network. From rolling back environmental safeguards to shrinking the public institutions that protect land and water, these stories trace a consistent direction in 2026. Find the links and resources mentioned today at our website, thewildidea.com .
Jaime Loucky is the CEO of the Washington Trails Association, one of the largest trail stewardship nonprofits in the United States. The organization now facilitates more than 160,000 hours of volunteer trail work each year, runs gear lending libraries that generated 5,000 outdoor experiences for youth last year alone, and serves one to two million website visitors monthly looking for reliable information about where and how to get outside. The sixtieth anniversary arrives at a moment when the public lands those trails cross are under serious pressure. A central concept in the conversation is…
About The Wild Idea
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
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