The podcast explores the decline of public lands in the U.S., tracing its roots to the 1980s when cultural and political animosity toward federal land management agencies grew on both sides. This animosity, fueled by events like the Ruby Ridge and Waco conflicts, the Bundy occupation, and ideological movements such as anarchism and libertarianism, led to a deepening partisan divide. Environmentalists attacked agencies for permitting mining and logging, while conservatives criticized them for being too restrictive, creating a culture of distrust. The speaker highlights that public lands are not just recreational spaces but vital ecological assets—such as watersheds and flood control—whose value only emerges in aggregate. Historical examples, like the Bankhead-Jones Act restoring farmland in abandoned areas or the protection of the Bob Marshall Wilderness, show how public stewardship has long served national needs. Despite the rise of privatization claims, especially through think tanks like the Koch-funded Kato Institute, the speaker argues that such models fail in practice, as they prioritize profit over access, equity, and environmental stability. Private ownership often results in exclusion and neglect, particularly in remote areas. The episode concludes with a strong belief that public lands represent a cornerstone of American democracy—offering access to nature for all, and ensuring future generations inherit both freedom and environmental resilience. It calls for a return to dialogue based on shared goals, not ideological dogma.
This is an iHeart podcast, Guaranteed Human. The best part of a Whitetail sit is often the part you have to earn. The temperature drops, nothing's moving, and climbing down starts sounding pretty good. The difference between seeing it through and climbing down early is about heart, but it's also about heat. That's why first light built whispered down. With 900 fill power, muscovy down, box bathful construction, and quiet water resistant fabric, it delivers serious warmth without weighing you down. First light whispered down, pack light, stay longer. Check it out now at firstlight.com That's F-I-R-S-T-L-I-T-E. Thanks for coming on the show, man. Great beer, man. Dude, I've known you and read your stuff for so long. It's cool to have you in the room. Yeah. I think I ran across, you tell you, oh my god, long years ago. Yeah. It's been a long time. Yeah. It's good to be talking to you. For people that aren't familiar with how harring, he's a conservation writer. He's a journalist, covers the American West, contributing editor, field and stream, but he's straight far out, and he's written for places as kind of odd and unexpected as the Atlantic and the economist where folks like you are generally probably a little less welcome. How's life-long defender of public lands? We're going to pick his brain a little bit about state of public land, public lands management in the US. You know, I'm going to start right out of the doozy, though, man, as we did this thing recently. We did this deal recently. It was like kind of like a, we just fielded, did an episode, sitting here and just fielded questions from people out in the audience, you know, listeners. And one guy said, he said, "Hey, are we winning or losing the fight over public lands?" And my answer was, it's an either, it's not like a thing that ends, do you know what I mean? You bet. You know, let me put it to you, like, what's your take, man, winning or losing, just in the most general sense or take it wherever you want to take it. All right. So we have been losing slowly for about since the 1980s, and the true value of the asset, which we've been ignoring, is now front and center in people's, who care, minds. So I believe that the time of losing may be over. Okay. I have watched complacency and taken it for granted. Overwhelmed public lands discourse, since, you know, I mean, I came of age in the 80s, right? And since then, what did losing look like in that, when it started? So we've always been on the brink if you read Nate Schweber's book, This America of Ayers, about Bernard DeVoto, where he blew the lid off McCarran of Nevada's plan to get rid of them all, you know. We started losing when, when public lands became part of the culture wars. Okay. And you were a lib toured if you liked the forest service. And so, yeah. And I, so I, man, you can go the long way with this. I was sawing U-Bark in Idaho, and the Powell Ranger District of the Lolo, and I was for Tax Hall. They had a deal for, for a cancer drug then, and it only came from U-Bark. They synthesized it now. So I was the Sawyer on this U-Bark crew. Oh, I'm bad. Oh, man. You got to back up a little bit. Yeah. No, listen. Oh, there's a cancer drug, yeah, tamoxifen that came from U-Bark. Yeah. Okay. Like a Juniper type plant. Yeah. Yeah. That you make the bows out of, right? No. That's like the western bow wood. And so back then, this is 90s. They had a huge deal for GlaxoSmith Climb. Harvest in this bark. Yeah. And I was the Sawyer. So we'd have three or four Sawyers and a bunch of like these woods hippies, folks that got paid by the pound just stripped the bark. Okay. And then GlaxoSmith Climb would run her truck out there and load up these giant bales of U-Bark. And you were doing this for a living? Yeah. We were getting paid by the day, you know, camped out. And that was in the Lolo National Forest, but we went all over. Anywhere there was you, we were there chopping it down. Okay. All national forest stuff. And that was during the time of like Ruby Ridge and Waco and all that stuff, right? But Ruby Ridge in particular. And people were like, we hate the feds. We hate the government and literally going like, we're going to blow up the forest service office. And even back then, I was like, you know, dude, what does the forest service have to do with this, you know, but it was an anti-federal sentiment, right? And it was hot in Idaho and western Montana. And I think that people who fell into that were missing the connection between their freedom to go hunting or fishing or take the kids camping or berry picking or whatever. Yeah. And this hatred of this thing that was very abstract, you know, and that's where I think we started. It really started sliding right there. No kidding. Yeah. I never thought of that connection. Remember that anti-federalism and, you know, and then, you know, that was thrust front and center around Timothy McVey and all the issues like that. Yeah. Totally. And he was doing that on the way. Just a blanket, like a blanket anti-federal government thing. Right. And people lost sight of what the federal government, you know, good or bad, right? Right? You're going to have a government. I mean, I was on the, you know, like, like, I have been all over this as a young person. I didn't really like government either, you know? But you're going to have one. And then people get to decide in this country what it's going to do. And that seemed to me the better idea. And I wanted to have, like, public lands and a clean water act and a clean air act, you know, and hunting and fishing, which are, I keep saying, hunting and fishing are the interest on the principle of properly stewarded environment. Okay. Right? Like the main thing they never will be. You don't, you don't have any fishing if you don't have a clean water act. I'm old enough to remember that. So, anyway, I just, I remembered this anti-federal sentiment. I was in the bitter, it lived in the bitter, when they were having all the malicious stuff, you know? Sure. The sovereign citizens movement. And I was like, dude, this is the bitter, it national, we were climbing and hunting elk and unmieldier on the, on the bitter, it national forest, you know, sapphire side, big, big, bitter, it's side. I was just loving the public lands, loving everything about bitter, it national forest. And then people will be like, you know what? I hate the forest service. I hate the feds. I hate this. I hate that. And I, even back then, I was like 25. I was like, man, maybe you ought to find something you love. You know? Dude, I know a lot of people that are, not a lot. I know a handful of people that are, that their passion in life is what they disapprove of. Yeah. Yes. It's their, it's an automated principle. It's an automated principle. Yes. They're motivated and principled. They're passionate in life. I've seen good people slipping that direction, that their passion in life is what they don't like. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I've seen it, dude, I've lived it, actually, you know, I mean, I've been there too. Like if they don't stop that, um, but I, but even then I wrote about this after the, that Bundy occupation in Mal here, those people were so angry. Everybody was just angry. Do you mind filling people in on that story? What? Yeah. Um, that was when the, the Bundy family, Amon and Brown and some other folks, they took over the Mal here. Ivan was one. If a Clivenwood and that Mal here, he's, he was like back tinned in the ranch. Okay. Um, and to save Cliven Bundy, he actually lives in Bunkerville on a ranch, owned up little in holding and runs cows. He's pretty busy. Yeah. The rest of them seem to have plenty of time on their hands. Uh, but you can't help, but like, kind of have some respect for Cliven. He's like this old desert cowboy, got it, whatever his notions are. But they took over the Mal here, National Wildlife Refuge, you know, and it was a bitter cold middle, middle of the winter out there in Eastern Oregon.
outside of Burns and um, they made this big show, you know, about anti-government, right? Taken, taken the refuge and give it back to the people as if the people didn't, wildlife refuge is the most people, public, ownership thing I've ever heard of. It was, it was very contradictory. Yeah. And it was overgrazing right, cattle grazing rights. Well, it came out of a arson case against a rancher family called the Hammons. Yep. And that case kind of blew up. They got sentence under this, um, for burning some public land, whether whatever the reason that happened, that case blew up. And it was in a kind of a federal sentencing guideline thing that we're going to send them to jail for a long time. Okay. That actually had been passed by these conservative legislatures who were after the environmental uh, liberation front. Yeah. The elf, yeah. Remember they were like, we got to get rid of the elf, the elf is going to destroy America and they passed this like draconian legislation about, about burning buildings and because they were burning like, they were trying to like, torch like research lab, or torch to far as service station two. Yeah. So the hatred was coming in from both sides, right? That's that's another part of this story is, um, that the federal public agencies, BLM, far service, they were under fire from the environmentalist side as well. They kind of had no friends. Okay. And uh, and that was part of the, that's part of our decline story. Yeah. Cause that's funny. You mentioned that because if you go back, you remember like ed Abby, of course, you remember the right. I'm just for listeners like ed Abby wrote desert solitaire, um, monkey wrench gang. Yep. He's one of a handful of people. So ed Abby crazy horse, um, Graham that, uh, Graham Nash, maybe don't know. People don't know where their bodies are. Got you. No, no, no. Crazy horse was being added. Yep. In Nebraska. Yep. Oh, yeah. His family took him and hit him. Yep. He can't be far. Right. They took him and hit him in a crevice or cracked and never found crazy horse's body. Ed Abby's body was taken. Yep. I believe Graham Nash's body was taken by his friends. Yeah. Right. Right. Anyways, Ed Abby, his line, that was like left wing hatred to BLM. Yep. Cause at Abby, like dubbed them the Bureau of Livestock and mining, right. Not the Bureau of Land Management. Right. And so they're used. Yeah. There was like that that hatred from both sides. Yeah. And what happened there is Congress recognized that. And so they, you know, like you, you gotta, you give the money to, to people that people like. And they saw, uh, I think our congressional, all, all the Congress, they saw that these people were not particularly the agencies were not particularly well liked by either side. And then, then a huge amount of Americans didn't even have any idea what they did. Mm hmm. And so they, they kind of became disenfranchised, right? Yeah. You know what's funny, man? Is we, uh, years, years ago, I was interviewing Tucker Carlson. And he's big fisherman. Mm hmm. But I mentioned be a director of the BLM. And he says, I hate the BLM because I realize he's talking about black lives. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So when you get to know people's awareness of BLM, yeah. Yeah. Right. And yeah, I would, I love talking about Abby because he did his master's thesis on the anarchism and violence. And so he was kind of an anarchist, uh, in his life. And, and I love his work. Right. Um, but he never reconciled the existence of the public lands that he loved so much with the, the necessity of a government of the people by the people for the people that maintained that institution. Because if he, if he had what he wanted as an anarchist, and I don't want to get into a Kropotkin and Murray Rothbard and all that anarchist theory, right. But if he had what he wanted, yeah, some very wealthy entity would have bought the public lands and kicked him off. They're going to go like, we don't, we don't need any more hippies out here. Or you know, whatever it was. You can't really have a serious, this guy pissed people off, but you can't have a serious conversation about anarchism. No, because theory, it's just, it's like a, it's a mind game. Right. It's a mind game. Yeah. Because he'd be like, well, I'm assuming, if you're talking to an anarchist, he'd be like, man, I'm assuming you drove over here on some kind of highway. Yeah. And you bend it, you, but you fly on airplanes and you have an expectation that in Islamist, isn't going to blow that plane out of the sky. Yeah. Yeah. Or that. So I don't stop you on the road. Yeah. So be like, just, that's why it's always, it's just a fun game. Yep. It's a fun game. Totally agree. Yeah. Yeah. But it is fun. I mean, at Abby, like you think about at Abby in, in Monkey Ranch gang. Okay. It's a novel, but a monkey wrench gang. Hey, Duke, I think it makes a point of when he's driving down the road, he always throws his beer cans out the window. Right. As some sort of convoluted fuck you to something, right. He's like a desert. He's like a, he's like a, he's willing to protect the desert, to use violence to protect the desert. But he takes such, he's so offended by don't litter. Yeah. Because it obscures the broader issues. Yep. And so he's like, he's shitting up the side of the, you know what I'm saying? You tie yourself a knots with all the like hypocrisies and stuff. Yeah, you do. And that's remind me John valence book, The Golden Spruce. Yeah, that's a good book. Yeah, remember, he, he cut down the golden spruce and protestant of the Logan. But that's where you land, man, when you get crazy enough in knots, in knots. And I've been thinking a lot about that anarchism, communism, traditional conservatism, libertarianism, they don't work. They're all abstract theories. And some blend of them all is what people come up with. You know, and, and to take it back to public lands, I mean, there are no public lands in authoritarian governments. I've found this to be true. Like, like when, uh, when Pinochet took over Chile, he sold those water rights, like right away, like there are no environmental laws. There's never been like an eco-authoritarian in that fascinating. Yeah. And so, uh, that is interesting. Yeah. And I've spent a huge amount of time as I was, I'm just finishing this public lands book after multiple years, um, overdue. And it, it's deeply intersected. The idea of public lands and public lands management with a representative government of the people by the people, for the people, right? And, and, uh, it's really interesting because it coincided, how did we get to the environmental decade of the 70s, right? Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, toxic substances, control act, all that. It was a middle class deal, a super powerful middle class. And then my, in the book, in the book research I was doing, people were driving out. They had enough money to get a car after World War II. And they're driving out to Yellowstone with the kids. And they're going, wow, this is an interesting, nice, I don't know what is. You know, look at this. And then they come back to Ohio or Alabama. And they go like, well, how come we can't have some nice things around here? You know, why do I have to live on a super polluted river when we know that there's a way that you don't have to have that. And that was a middle class, man. And, and that seems to be the, the driving force between behind like active public lands management, people, people being engaged for better or worse, right? Like people getting engaged in there. The environmentalists want this and the lagers want that. Well, that's how, that's cool. You don't want everybody singing cum by y'all over the public lands management. That wouldn't work at all. You want an engaged citizenry. And for a long time, we had that. And that's why I date the decline back to somewhere in the 80s, where we started culture war in and separate now in the middle class was struggling harder to do all the way. And you just don't have time to do to debate over like spotted owl policy. If you're really worried about how paying for that tank of gas. Yeah. And that's true, you know, in Mexico and El Salvador, I started out as a young reporter, right? I was in El Salvador in the 80s. And I just, I didn't know how to be a reporter, but I was trying. And it was a place you could take up, you know, it was a war that you could take a bus to, you know, and I saw things there where I was only there a couple months, but I saw things there where I never was under the illusion that things couldn't go bad for you after that. I got it. You know, and like, you mean that changed your worldview. It changed my worldview. And I know
They made you feel like we're more on an edge of something always on the edge and and it's and um It's just like in your personal life like national policies and stuff. They're intentional If you just let the wind blow them around The in El Salvador. It was the lost cutore seed of 14 families. Mm-hmm. They owned 92% of the arable land or something like that And the population density hit 550 people's per square mile and it kind of blew up Right, they just there wasn't enough to go around Mm-hmm and the and the 14 families had it all and that's what happened. That's like the default sitting For for a society that's not engaging in their own politics Got it or they're disenfranchised in a way. Yeah Most lamos in the world get their meat at the grocery store But we prefer to pack ours out of the field That's why we made the meat eater grocery bags Ultra lightweight breathable nylon game bags that cool your meat fast and keep it clean from the field to the cooler With reflective print and features to help you find your game bags in the dark Meaning like reflective stuff so your flashlight shines off it even when you got to hang them way up in a tree We have two sets. Okay, we got sets for whether you're packing out a deer or whether you're packing out an elk or moose And they're reusable season after season. I've had some of mine for many years. I just I give them a good rinse Run them through my wash machine hang them up to dry These are your grocery bags these are thinking man's grocery bags head over to the meat eater store.com And get yourself a brand new set of excellent game bags for this coming season Talk me through We're going a long way man. Oh no, no, that's great, but Talk me through that that transition you think might be happening now do you mean like If you say there's a decline in the 80s and it was it was linked to a It was linked to in the West particularly like this vilification of land management agencies the feds big government Jamming it down your throat. Yep How do you how do you feel that that's kind of over because I feel that with you look at If you look at doge If you look at part of like part of Maga there's kind of a There's a bit of that hiding in there You know, yeah total there's a bit of that hiding in there that anything the government could do a private person could do better right or you got big real wealthy Land wealthy individuals That make a fortune in something besides running cattle yes They make a fortune tech Oftentimes it's people that make a fortune that would never have made a fortune outside of the US Correct. Oh, yeah, let me hit a side deal here because this is important Important like a like I should say important. This is important to the story America Right is an is an unbelievable like land of opportunity yep America creates phenomenal success stories America creates wealth America gives you the protections That you need to create Jobs Wealth employment right investment like we have this phenomenal machine yep Um like I've been part of building a company it just That relies hugely on free speech elements in media We have those protections here If you find success I find oftentimes people that really really find success in America Will in their rhetoric they'll turn against it yes And oftentimes you find people coming out of other industries Where they've built big successful businesses that they would have never built another country They were not have built that business in Iran Right or Somalia they wouldn't have built it there right and then they they buy a bunch of land and then they're like And then they take on this like anti-agency standpoint yep, they don't want environmental regulations. They don't want Government involvement or whatever it's kind of but you see you did really good in America. Yeah America's been great for you dude. Well, that was what Bill Burst said remember he said you made a trillion dollars. What's wrong with it? Um, no, I you're nailing something there that uh, I I think we we have to componder um and I think of it first as private property rights and and patents Right they had this thing um and I don't want to get the history wrong but the in the Ukraine war Where they were listening to the Russians own on their radios and they were like what kind of a nut doesn't have encrypted You know military radios. Yeah, well, they had not they don't have protection for patents in Russia Like if you invent this is what I understand. Yeah, if you invent something that's really good and marketable Somebody take up an oligarch takes it from you. Yeah Um and Thomas Jefferson and all the people in America like there were three thousand post offices In Montana like before the Dust Bowl 3000 And one of the reasons that from the founding of our country was that you could send if you patented something You didn't have to have a stamp You could send it to the patent office. That's how that that's how important they thought innovation was right yeah And and then you would be protected. So like Bill Gates wouldn't exist in Russia Right it would the patents to all of that would just have been taken from them. Yeah And and it doesn't matter if if you're and I mean if somebody's willing to hitch in the kneecaps with a ball peeing hammer Right it all the laws and justice and I invented this Mm-hmm. It's mine. They go yeah, it was yours. You know until the fog showed up It wouldn't happen in Guatemala even. Yeah, it's interesting if you become that Let's just say for instance you become the richest man in the world And you're incensed about the ways the government got in your way and you like vomit So if they hadn't gotten your way what would have right yeah right right Somebody else surely you'd be you'd be what? I always Have you ever seen the Anthony Bourdain episode where he goes to logos No, but I got friends worked it yeah My body's my body's filmed it. Yeah, and um they uh he he's really enamored with the libertarian nature of logos Like really really interested in it And and because it's a Anthony Bourdain episode with those guys who are really geniuses they let it evolve and then Bourdain meets the area boys And they're these little like militias of like 12 to 18 year old guys who just go shake Down all the store owners And if you don't want to have your store like torched then you pay up yeah And he he has it's a great episode because he then he falls into this he goes well what how free is it You can set up a stand and sell rat meat and call it chicken. That's cool But you can't really operate that business without paying the the area boys who work for A futile like like semi warlord. Yeah, and I've been told that logos is getting a lot better Like people got fed up with that right. Yeah, but that's what it was and that's that's power at horbs I have horrors of vacuum. Yeah, right? So you're gonna have a government of some sort. Yeah Somebody's gonna be governing we keep getting off a little bit. Yeah, so tell me where What if if the eighties brought about This animosity to land management agencies and it brought about where you had an an A sort of cultural animosity from the left from the environmental movement who viewed Federal land managers as the enemy because they were permitting mining they were permitting logging right right then all the sudden You have the right Political cultural right criticizing land management agencies Because they're not permissive enough right they're not permitting enough logging They're not permitting enough right grazing And that let it where they just didn't have they were friendless they were friendless right and so when did it when did we climb out of that or if you If you're feeling optimistic now, how do we start climbing out of that? Oh, well, we recognize the value of the asset We we have it reminds me to like we're to go back a little bit I remember people when the waters the US rule came up right and it was it was an extension Of the Clean Water Act into the hands of unelected bureaucrats which is actually true But it worked good to get clean water and people drink clean water out of their tap which you can't do in Mexico City or guat city Um, I'm referring to places. I've no, you know, uh, and they go federal overreach. It's a terrible problem You know I could like you got clean water because of the federal law like like the states don't have those laws yeah and
So to look at this decline, it became, so I would go one further on the right is they actually, the right said that there are no, but the federal government can't have public lands. We don't want public lands. And they did that up and down. I mean, I had to listen to that forever. And I would go like, well, what's the alternative, you know? And it's just this economic, free for all, where you descend, I consider it a descent into a feudalist society like, like, um, oligarchy is the default setting for all societies that don't, that don't try to keep it at bay without an empowered citizenry. Yeah. And the ownership of vast expanses of land is, is a hallmark of oligarchy in, in, in few hands. Mm-hmm. But do you, I mean, I know people say this, I think that, that public lands defenders will kind of do what, what I feel is a little bit of a red herring and talk about a very fringe perspective. And I think to be fair, the idea that, that when people make this legal argument, harkening back to things that the founding father said or things that are in the US Constitution, and they make this legal argument where they say, aha, it's illegal for the federal government to own land. Right. I mean, I'm not saying that there aren't people that say that, but that's not a really serious. Like, no, that's not a serious thing. No, it's been, that's not like a serious threat. It's, I feel like it's a red herring meant to show, it's a red herring from guys who might be more like you and me, you know, who are public lands advocates. And when we're, and when we're playing a rhetorical game, we will point to these extremes. Right. Right. But just to be totally fair, like that, no one's taking that seriously. I'm not sure. Do you deny that? I think they might, they took it seriously. I mean, the, when I was at the Mal here refuge, they said that over and over. And they had the little Clean Scalzen version of the American Constitution, US Constitution, that it was, all that was edited out the, what section three, whatever the, the constitutional article that allowed the federal government to own land. Okay. Let me clarify my point. I didn't do a good job saying that when I say no one's taken it seriously, what I mean is certainly there are individuals who take it seriously, but what I mean is I don't view it as a threat that all of a sudden there's going to be a series of lawsuits and they make it to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court says, you're right. All land must be sold now. Right. And then all of a sudden, all of our national forest, all of our national parks are bland, privatized because of some constitutional argument. Like, come on. I don't think so. I mean, there's a hundred things that would prevent that, but I think that it's, it's good to explore it intellectually as a viewpoint that's held, but I just don't want to sort of obfuscate actual threats with like extreme conversations. Right. No, I agree with that. I would say, I would say though that it would be taken too much for granted to say that that couldn't happen because I mean, what would happen was they would, people would buy the good parts. Right. What happened in the first place? Yeah. There's a reason all the valleys are private. Exactly. Or, or when you go to Nevada, I've been working in Nevada and my son's working there and you take your own ex, you know, every green spot that you can see on the horizon is private. Yeah. Every piece of the Oahi that's just a piece of cheatgrass is BLM and it's prepped public. So we have already done that. Yeah. There's the, I mean, there's the old joke that wilderness areas, it was basically the rock and the ice rock and ice. I mean, the wilderness areas were like, I'm like, explain this, you know, just kind of like for listeners, land that was deemed of value in the late 1800s, early 1900s, that it was arable at the time, good grazing land, whatever, land, it was deemed of value. There were many pathways to ownership and at a point, it was, at a point, it was just that public lands in the West, public land, to some degree in the East as well. Public lands were the things that people hadn't gobbled up. No, the lands that nobody wanted. That's the title. They want to pay taxes on it. Didn't want to go through the hassle of proving it up and our most protected lands. The wilderness areas are the areas that are sort of least likely, yeah, to get gobbled up. Totally. And like the Oahi, for instance, you can't put enough pounds on cows to pay a property tax on that, right? Yeah. And that's why it stayed in the public. I just did a piece on Lewis and Clark National Forest and Bob Marshall Wilderness, you know. And they tried to give that away under the Forest Homestead Act, like after 1909. And they, but in order to prove up on your homestead claim inside the National Forest, you had to stay there five years. So nobody could win her over in what's now the Bob Marshall wilderness for five years. So they could it back to three. No kid. Yeah. Dan or her meadows. If you have been there. No, I have. So that's like the yoke hunting, you know, mecca back on the, on that side, do I hate to say it? I've been all around the edges. I've never. I mean, I might be wrong. I don't think I've ever stepped on that one. Yeah. I've ever been Bob Marshall Wilderness. Well, it's not a rock and ice. It has a bunch of grass and and Gates Park, which is a beautiful forest service headquarters. That was Kate's Park. That was a homestead. And the guy just couldn't, I mean, it snows seven foot deep, you know, and they just couldn't prove up. And so those reverted to federal ownership. Yeah. Over time, Dan or her meadows as well and Tom Dan or her was the guy. And it's pretty late. Like, like there's people alive today that remember pretty trying to prove it up, pre wilderness act. Yeah. And the wilderness actually only kicked in there in, you know, after 64 and they had tried to give even that away. And one of the things that happened in there was the, they had tie hacked that. They had cut it for railroad ties because they're a lot of lodgepole, right? And their uniform may make a, and they, they cut like 425,000 railroad ties out of that country. Are you serious? Yeah. And they were jamming them, jamming them into the rivers like Sun River, Dearborn River, Teton River, but those rivers don't have enough water to carry them. That's what kind of brought the, brought it to an end. Yeah. And people at 1907, they started making this irrigation project, Sun River project out to bring, make the desert bloom, right? Yeah. East to the, East to the Rocky sun river that now that big game reserve. Yes. Yes. And they said, wow. If we keep tie hacking and keep putting all these sheep and cattle in there, it's going to mess up the watershed for this huge federal investment in this irrigation project. And so they started saying, well, maybe it's better as a primitive area. And they started, they started the, the, the mechanics of what became the Bob Marshall wilderness was based on, they had tried everything to make it, you know, produce and give it away. And then they realized that it was most valuable as a watershed. Yeah. Got it. And to supply the water to, to make the desert bloom out east. And so then that actually happened like, if you look at the Monanga Halo forest out East, that was a result of the Pittsburgh flood 1909, 1913. Okay. And they said, somebody's got to do something about the deforested headlines here, because they're dumping. They, all the sediment came down, filled up the river, the river flooded out and it stopped the steel mills, right? It flooded Pittsburgh. And they said, we've got to do something. Well, that was the week's act of 1911 was what they bought Eastern forest under, right? Yeah. But they said, well, we got to do something and, and nobody had the money to replant it. Nobody had the money to fix it after it had been deforested. Yeah. And the federal government did though, because it could draw on taxpayers from all over the country, right? And make this treasure chest where they could put trees back on there and stop the flooding in Pittsburgh and the, I mean, they weren't thinking they were trying to create great hunt and fishing spots. They were not. The hunting and fishing were the interest on the principle. Yeah. And all over in the week's act specifically said it's watershed based. If you, it's, I would, I would recommend that people listen to this, read the week's act like at Wiccapedia. Oh, it's fascinating. It's fascinating. And, and, and maybe you can talk more about like, like where I grew up, those big, you know, big national forests in Michigan. Yeah. And the, and the, if you remember how something about the West where you had these places that didn't get, like there, there's kind of came a mark and you probably know the date better than me. But they kind of became a mark where if someone hadn't gotten it by that point, it wasn't going to get got. Yep. Right. And, and those became these public lands areas. The National Force that I grew up on.
And I've been down like, you know, other places too, Tuskegee National Forest. I mean, if you're out in Tuskegee National Forest, now Alabama, you'll come in and you'll see, you'll be looking at the trees in the woods, man. - Yep. - And you're like, this used to be a driveway. - Yeah, you used to be a driveway. - You could see two rows of trees. You're like, this ran, these rows of trees ran down either side of a mile long driveway in the forest. Like, this, it's like, when you go to those Mayan, when you go to those Mayan ruins, and they always have a picture of what it would look like. 'Cause you're sitting out there in the jungle. And there's this crazy stone here, you know. And it's all just jungle. And then there always be some artists rendering of what you would have been looking at. And then you, what you would have been looking at is egg, like agriculture as far as the eye can see. - As far as you can say, to support the people at that built that pyramid. But you think that they snuck out in the jungle and built that pyramid on the jungle. But it's like, it's like, the stuff that was gonna happen there isn't happening there now. - Yep. - You know, if you're like, when you read, there's stuff where you read areas like up in North Central, Montana, you read accounts or there being a thousand black feet camped in some valley. - Yep. - And if you added up all the people that passed to that valley in the year day in the thousand. - Right. - Now. - Yep. - And like, some of those big national forests and Michigan, that was all people trying to farm that shitty, sandy soil that abandoned it 'cause they couldn't pay the taxes. - Right. - And it reverted to. - Yeah. - The feds. - It reverted to national forests. - Yeah, it was. And it was. - Yeah. - Like, when you, these stories that you're telling though, it points to this thing that, that I think people lose sight of why these things became what they are. - They did. - But then the, but then values change. Like, when they made the wilderness areas, there was no conversation about rare earth minerals. - Right. - So now there's a sense of look people looking around and they're being like, we did what? - Yeah. - Right. - But we did what? - Right, right. - Are you kidding me? - Yeah. - We protected that. - Yeah, we'll have to fight over that one. You know, as a people, right? - As a, as a, the American people. And who knows how that'll come out? I don't know. I can't predict the 64-wilderness act would have been, like people would have laughed up rariously in 1867. - They'd laugh up rariously now. - Yeah. - You would never in a million years, dude. You would never in a million years pass that now. - Why is that? - Because it became partisan. - Yeah. - Gotcha. - Why did you do that? - I mean, the wilderness act didn't just pass. - I'm interested in somebody else's act. It didn't just pass. It passed overwhelmingly. But people lose sight of like the Clean Water Act. This was a Republican president. - Right. - The Endangered Species Act. - Yep. - 1972. - 1972. - Dick Nixon. - Yep. - It's just different now, man. - Right. - And if you go back in time, man, like, what Republicans meant and Democrats meant, switches all the time. - Right. - That's right. You know. - Well, I grew up in Alabama, right? Southern Democrats. - Yeah. - I mean, there's a totally different thing. - Yeah, like, yeah. - The guy that emancipated the slaves, you know, like Abraham Lincoln was a Republican. - Right. - People, like, people resisting reconstruction in the American South were Democrats. And then you go a few decades forward in the civil rights movement. Totally switches. - Yep. - Democratic. - Totally switches what side is pushing most aggressively - Right. - For civil rights. You go back a little while ago. And, I mean, when a little while ago, meaning like, and during my 11 year old's lifetime, Republicans were free trade. - Right. - Republicans gave up on free trade. Republicans were interventionist, right? willing to be like a global police officer. Republicans liked allegiances. - Yeah. - They liked NATO. - Yep. - Right. And to share the burden. - Yeah. - And then all of a sudden it's like, go home and I must have missed something because we're not, like, we're not free trade anymore. - Right. - So where people sat on these public lands issues, switches, but it would be like purely, purely partisan now. - Right. - So I think that it's kind of like a, we don't want to descend into factional violence or factional, like anger on public lands. But what we want to do is agree on goals and disagree on the methods used, like you can free marketer, you can do all this kind of stuff. But you want to agree on the goals of trying to keep the public estate. - Yeah. - Because the partisanship ends up being the dog that tail wagging the dog against the wall, right? It ends up killing the dog. It doesn't work. It becomes so stupid, right? Like where you just have these opinions based on your ideological perspective, which is very abstract, right? And then one of the things I was talking the other day was hunters and fishermen do share one thing and with every, with, they own one thing. And it's kind of a reality-based decision-making. Like if it's 23 degrees below zero and you're gonna go trapping or whatever, you gotta put all the different gear on and make sure you don't fall on the water head first. It's reality-based. Modern society insulates people from reality and allows them to entertain these like consequence-free kind of BS notions of, wouldn't it be nice if? - Give me an example. - Well, the public lands privatization movement. Like when Mike Lee's attempt to sell off all that land in Utah, right? They don't have the water for that. It was an ideological like God. It was an attack on the idea that we share something in common and that this is beautiful. In an American, and what I consider a cornerstone of American like democratic republic. I really do. I see the public lands as equal, like it's the constitution, the American public lands. I'm a diehard. Like I believe those two things are, our freedom as Americans to experience our own dirt, our own water, our own mountains, our own bank head national forest. I think that is absolutely crucial to any future that we want for our kids or grandkids. Most labels in the world get their meat at the grocery store, we prefer to pack ours out of the field. That's why we made the meat eater grocery bags. Ultra lightweight breathable nylon game bags that cool your meat fast and keep it clean from the field to the cooler. With reflective print and features to help you find your game bags in the dark, meaning like reflective stuff, so your flashlight shines off it, even when you gotta hang it way up in a tree. We have two sets, okay? We got sets for whether you're packing out a deer or whether you're packing out an elk or moose. And they're reusable season after season. I just, I give them a good rinse, run 'em through my wash machine, hang 'em up to dry. These are your grocery bags. These are thinking man's grocery bags. Head over to the meateaterstore.com and get yourself a brand new set of excellent game bags for this common season. You know, a minute ago we were talking about that what it means to be a Republican switches a lot. And it switched a lot on a Trump. - Right. - Like Trump took, you know, it's funny 'cause he'll, he's, he's, will frequently say someone's a Republican in name only. - Right. - But that person could be someone that would have been die hard Republican. - Right. - Pre-Trump. - Sure. - Because he changed, like, he just by fiat said we're no longer free trade. - Right. - And they followed. - Sure. - You know, it was just bizarre to see it happen. - Agreed. - But I have very, like, as a, as a hunter and angler, I have very deep frustrations with Democrats because from them we get so many anti-hunting, anti-wild life management stuff, method of take, prohibitions, cultural attacks on hunters. Right, it comes from them. - Right. - And you just don't see it come from Republicans. - Right. - And part of this, part of me, like part of my mind is I like to put positive attention on Democrats who come from a hunting and angling background. - Totally. - Because I'm like, we're gonna have them around. Like, I want these voices in that room. - Right. - You know? And so when I find those, I like them. Like when I find a Republican who has the audacity to be outspokenly pro-public lands, I want to shine a light on them because I want that voice in the room. But why is it that, like, if you look at it just totally ideologically, why is it that in,
I don't know. Why is it then in the last 20 years that animosity to public lands has become a right thing, has become a Republican thing? Like, why is that Roosevelt was a Republican? Right. I think that um, he's a moose party guy too. Yeah, right. He was an anomaly in that. I mean, McKinley, when McKinley was shot, you know, he wasn't, oh, how Hannah, he said, that now that wild man is in charge of the, it's charge of the presidency. Yeah. Because I told you, Mark Hannah, I told you not to put him in there. Yeah. So, uh, yeah, now that I know that wild man. Yeah, wild man is in charge of the presidency. You know, um, so it's I don't know. I think that you, it's hard to get past the ideology, which is very convenient for, um, in a, in kind of an, in a growing oligarchy. I think it's hard to get rid of the, I, not get rid of. It's hard to dismiss the ideology of privatization overall. Right. And he goes back to, um, like I was reading about the, the, just the beginnings of all this, right? And, um, the Koch brothers, you know, what did they believe, really? Right. We always talk about Charles and David Koch and their, their impact on our politics. And all, but what did they really believe? Well, they believed in deregulating all the stuff that they wanted to socialize their costs and privatize their profits. They didn't like paying big judgments when people got blown up by a pipeline, for instance. Okay. They didn't like, uh, people saying they couldn't pour stuff in the river, you know, or the clean air acts of like that. They thought that was an infringement own, um, capitalist ideals. Okay. And, um, it's funny because when they started the Kato Institute, they partnered with a guy named Murray Rothbard, who was an anarcho capitalist and a very interesting guy. If you applied Murray Rothbard's like, I have, you know, theories to your life, it would be a disaster. Okay. But, uh, anarcho capitalism, but he's a think tank guy. He's like a think tank. Yeah. For sure. And the Kato Institute is a think tank. Right. Yeah. And it doesn't think about things really that don't, that contradict. Like what it wants, the outcome, it won't. Yeah. Right. I used to want to work at a think tank, man. I think that was the job of jobs come up with a crazy shit, dude. Yeah. The problem is is the funders of think tanks kind of delegate what you can think about. Yeah. And so it takes some of the fun out of, you know, but, um, yeah, that's not what you're supposed to be thinking about. Right. Yeah. I told you, if you want to get paid, you're going to think about this. But no, I think that ideology of privatization overall is, is they can't, the Republican Party can't shake it. And you and I would, we could come up with a million ideas where privatization of things is good. Right. And private, private enterprise does a better job. Right. But you can't, it doesn't always. I, I noticed in, like in land management, in public land management, all the people get a say. And in private land management, which is right, we don't. And so if, if, uh, I won't say who this was, but a county commissioner in Montana one time told me, they said, we, we revere. This is a very conservative person. They said, we revere private property rights in, in this county. But what do private property rights mean when somebody owns over a third of the county? Like, like, what, what do you do with the roads? What do you do with, with access to, you know, like, like, that's the problem with the privatization overall. Yeah. You know, what happens to Gibson reservoir west of my house? I don't think doge doge to the bureau of reclamation, by the way. Do you, do you know what they did? Oh, they didn't tap into the BLM? No, no, no, no, BLR, but, or B. Oh, sorry. I'm sorry. I don't know. They definitely, they definitely doge the BLM. I don't know. But the Bureau of Reclamation is basically a federal giveaway of water. Yeah. And, um, I've often thought that if you wanted to privatize things and somebody privatized some of the fact activities of the Bureau of Reclamation, it would change our country. It would change the west once and for all, right? If you privatize water allocation, holy smokes. Yeah. We talked to someone the other day when we were pondering what happens in the future when you think of water, like, you think of fuel. Yeah. And you, you, water scarcity gets to a point where you're like, Hey, man, that stuff's a bucket gallon. Yep. Right. I think that you would accelerate our timeline to that outcome. Yep. For sure. Yep. If it was privatized. Yeah. And, you know, I mean, you could cut off, you could cut off the USGS canal up north where I live. And 93, 8,000 acres would now become dry land farm at best. Um, so I just think people, people who are in in this Republican ideology have really, really been insulated from the consequences of what they, their claim they won't. And, and it's kind of like the guy drinking water out of his tap and saying that this federal overreach is terrible. And, you know, he doesn't know what the Clean Water Act did for him or his, his property rights and values. You know, you know, this made me think of, it seems like a lifetime ago that when RFK Jr. was campaigning. Yep. Right. Um, he, he made the ballot here in Montana. Mm-hmm. When he was campaigning, he came out of the show. And he, he brought up, like, like an interesting plan never thought about what he'd be like. He was, he was talking about ways in which industry as much as they might talk about fair value. And, and, and, and, and like, and dislike handouts. Right. Like, why are they not asked to pay? Why is industry not asked to pay fair market value? Right. If GE, you know, decades ago, but if GE destroys a fishery in a river. Yep. They'd be like, okay, you, you're doing your business and your business cost. Yes. This fishery in this river and it costs untold billions and clean up. Yep. Um, the, the bill will never be submitted. Right. No one will ever say, like, huh, let me, I don't even remember if you saw my gene is case, but the Hudson River. Right. That's where you start. No one will ever be able to say, yeah, what was that worth? Right. Right. Right. What was the Hudson River worth? Yeah. And who do we invoice? Yeah. For having lost the Hudson River? Right. And, and to be like, to be totally fair about it, if we didn't give industry latitude and we didn't give industry access to natural resources, we wouldn't have, we wouldn't have been able to develop into the nation that we are. Correct. Like, I want to do some crazy revisionist history and act like, and act like, if that we would have landed in the place of our power, our wealth, our privilege, our access to jobs, our access to education, all of our liberties. Like, yes, we had, we had we choked off industry. We, we might be in a, in a worse position with less wildlife. Also, people wouldn't do that. They don't do that. Um, uh, I had a guy one time, I was bemoaning something about the Berkeley pit, you know, a mute. Yeah. Sure. And he was old guy and he said, well, yeah, say that in English instead of German. Yeah. Sure. And because that copper helped to win World War II, you know, and he, he nailed me on it. Like, I was like, yeah, I get, I get it, man. No, there's a lot of bottle neck arguments, man. It's like, um, you know, people like to do that. If blank had to happen, we would have lost World War II. Right. Butterfly fact type. Yeah. So there's, I'm not, I'm not, I haven't read it in a long time, but there's that, that we, we beat the Nazis, because we could out produce aircraft. We all produced them. Yep. What was the limiting factor on aircraft, aluminum, aluminum, right? What was the limiting factor on aluminum? Electricity. Yep. Where do we get the electricity? We dammed the Columbia. Correct. Right. And so all that loss of Sam and he'd be like, man, what kind of idiot would build these dams? Yeah. And I've said that. You gotta go say that in German. Yeah. I've said that very thing. You know, German. Yeah. I was, um, yeah. I mean, but you do have to learn, you under any.
- What does they say, extreme cases make bad law? - Okay. - Right, that was an old like second amendment thing. - Right. - And which I agree with. And extreme cases make bad law. So when you're under fire-- - Tell me back up, what do you mean by that? - Well, like you don't wanna take the most extreme cases and ban everything. - Oh, I see, yeah. - Right, like you say, well, he got poisoned by you know, he ate like 20 boxes of raisin brand and it made him six. - And we're gonna make a law, it says you can only buy one box of raisin brand. - Yeah, there was just a tragedy we'd cover just spring in Wisconsin where a three year old was involved in a shooting incident and a hunting accident. - Yep. - Sort of. - Yep. - It seems very clear, like very clearly, this was on that three year old's father. But it brings, so then there are people being like, why are we letting, right? And it's like a freak occurrence. - Right. - We'll likely, possibly drive a thing where like kids shouldn't be able to be doing that. - Yep, legislation. - You know, yeah. - And I mean, law is a dangerous thing 'cause it's backed by the power of the state, right? To actually come to your house, knock on the door. And I mean, you gotta be careful, right? So extreme cases made bad law. And I think that after we won World War II with the copper and the aluminum and the diamond that we could have taken a little different look at things and said maybe how do we do fish passages? We can now, we now have the luxury to figure out how to do this less destructively. And super fun, super fun, which came under attack in the 80s was created to do that, right? To fix the abuses of the past. - Yeah. - I think about the Bankhead Jones Act of farm tenant act, in 1937, right? It allowed the federal government to buy and use money to take over those abandoned farmsteds we're talking about. - Yep. - In all that pink you see, I know, on extend to it, but if you have an old paper map, all that pink you see in eastern Montana, that's Bankhead Jones, right? Managed by the Bureau of Land Management. And it was acquired after the homesteaders ran for their lives and when it quit raining in 1917. - Yeah, you know, 70,000 people left Montana during those years. - Is that right? - Yeah. And that Bankhead Jones Farm tenant act of 1937 allowed the federal government to use all the taxpayers in America to put what they ended up with Christy wheatgrass. I mean, I had to do something, right? It wasn't great, but it was better than nothing. Just like Kudju down south, right? Tuskegee National Forest, they planted thousands of Kudju crowns. - Oh, did they really? - Yeah, under that Bankhead Jones Act. - Okay. - They got money. They said there was no dirt left, dude. There was no soil. It was called the most destroyed land in Alabama. That Talladegan National Forest and what became the Tuskegee, competed for the title of the most destroyed land in Alabama. - Is that right? - Yeah. - Man, I would have guessed you to tell me that it was like somewhere in Western Oklahoma. - Yeah, nope. It was, we did it quicker down south because of sharecropping. We pushed the sharecroppers up into the forest lands, uplands, and they had to do whatever they could do. So all the dirt like ran off. And yeah, we had the most destroyed. That's the Talladegan National Forest. That was the one that, and that was abandoned, right? The feds didn't, they didn't have to buy that so much. People were, they left. They walked off, Talladegan, the Tuskegee too. They couldn't find anybody to take the Tuskegee until 1959. - What do you mean? - It was, well, it passed around. It was just abandoned land, and it passed around Auburn University. It was offered to Auburn University, but they didn't have the money to really manage it. It was offered to the state for a game range. The state said, "Well, there's not any game there right now." You know, and so, they had to go to federal. And what I wish people understood about public lands was that um, when you're, when you have, they're only really valuable in their aggregate. - Okay. - Like an acre of though why he's not gonna do you any good. - I see. - Or an acre of the Missouri breaks. But in aggregate, you know, 800,000 acres of that is watershed, right? And it's Elkun. But if you were to have a modern homestead act and give all that away, you would just come up with the Dust Bowl Redux. - Got it. - It doesn't work. You know, you might have people in the O.Y. He could tow it out, tough it out until the water ran out until there was a dry year and they're gone. - Yeah. - And you've got the Medusa head and the cheat grass that they left behind when they grazed their last horse. - Yeah. - It's really powerful in aggregate. - You know, there's a point I made, and I made a thousand times here and elsewhere that I get nervous. Like, even though I do it, I get nervous when people start justifying public lands or justifying wildlife because of its economic. - Yeah, me too. - It's very tempting to do it. There are organizations that that's what they do. There are organizations, trade associations, other there are organizations that exist, where they try to put a dollar value on public lands. They put a dollar value on American wildlife. They then go to DC, they go to state capitals and they say, hey, you know, I know we're talking about the value of oil. We're talking about the value of minerals. We're talking about the value of timber. Let's talk about the value of outdoor recreation. Let's talk about the value of wildlife because deer hunting and Iowa drives blank millions of dollars of economic activity. - Wolf watching. - Yeah, that's where I saw it first, yeah. - Oh, yeah, the value of wolf watching. And I'm like, I get what you're trying to do in cool, fine. - Yep. - But what makes me nervous is that if you came and told me, it cost us money, my opinion wouldn't change at all. I wouldn't then be like, oh, I wasn't aware that public lands cost us money. We better sell them all off right now. So I don't want to act like I'm motivated by a thing that I don't want to point out this thing to change people's mind about something. One, if they were to demonstrate the opposite, it wouldn't change anything, I think. - Right. - You know, the same way that if someone demonstrated to me, my kids cost me money. - Yep. - I wouldn't be like, oh, I hadn't thought about it like that. - I've seen that one too. - You know how much I'll cost to raise a baby in 2026? And I'm like, I don't know, I don't care. - Yeah. - Okay. - Sure. - Yeah. - Doesn't make me love my children less. So, I'm just making that point that that happens, right? - Agreed. - But, and I bring this up because you've brought up some points about, you brought up some very emotional, spiritual things about public lands, right? And things that you love about the American experience tied to public lands. - Right. - Right. But what, do you ever play the game? Do you ever play the game of stepping outside of matters of emotion, matters of spirituality? - Oh yeah. - And go like, okay, let's play the game. Let me talk about what we lose if we lose public lands. - Yes, and I do. And I also would say that if you wanted to do intrinsic values versus extrinsic or quantifiable values, I believe the proponderance of the evidence still maintains that you hold on to 640 million acres of American public land. - Yeah, let's play with it for men. You've got to make me uncomfortable. Let's play with it for men. - All right. So, and I go back to, let's go back to the Tuskegee, or not the Tuskegee, it's 11,500 acres, right? Let's go to say the National Forest, San Bernardino or whatever that they set aside early outside of LA, because they realize that's where the water comes from. - Okay. - There's a really cool story in that one too, where John Brown's last remaining surviving sons have a homestead there. - Really? - Yeah. - And that's where they ended up. - You kidding? - Yeah. So there's all this incredible. - Because some of his sons were involved in his insurrection, right? - Oh yeah, they got so many of them got wiped out, right? - Yeah. And two of them ended up there, but they set that aside for its ecosystem services, first and foremost. And the original case that gave the forest service, and I'm gonna get the date wrong, but it's called Gremald versus the US Forest Service, that gave them the right to regulate grazing on the new National Forest, which was like post 1907. It was watershed protection. And they had these baskets, sheep herders in the searas, and they were just pouring the sheep on, and then they would set fire to it to get new growth, you know? - Okay. - And it was falling apart, the watershed was. When the snow came, there was nothing to hold it, and it just ran off, and then it filled up the irrigation stuff with sediment, right? - Got it. - So they were going, "We gotta do something about this." And public ownership was the answer. - Yeah. and so.
- To save the wealth downriver. - Yeah, and a great one, it came out of, John Weeks came from New Hampshire, right? He was a businessman in Boston. He was really successful and he was an attorney, but he did a lot of stuff, but he's from New Hampshire. And one of the things happened in the White Mountains was after they slipped it off. So this was unclaimed federal land at the time or you could buy it for pennies, right? So they slipped off the timber, all of it. And everybody relied on a mill wheel down then to grind corn and wheat, right? So the mill ponds filled with sediment. And you didn't have a steam shovel, right? This is like, this is like back. You gotta get out there, drain it. You gotta dig the mud out of it. And here next time it rains, here comes another slug of mud. Run takes care of your mill pond. You can't run your wheel, you can't run your business. So the logger, the logging industry had externalized the cost of their operation, own all these people down, look, yeah. This is the, this is the point I was trying to make earlier around, yeah, like RFK junior was describing some of the work he did when he used to work with river keepers. Yes, is you're right. It's like, those loggers, the mill people never had a place to send the invoice. No, they never had a place to send the end for the destroyed mill pond. The Hudson is particularly relevant to this because it's full of what's called legacy settlement. And that's from that log in boom after a civil war mostly. And it had so much settlement that they couldn't navigate it, right, they had to, they had to use whatever they had for dredging back then to keep it open. And they're like, where is all this dirt coming from? French broad river in Asheville, same thing. It was coming off of what's now the Piscan National Forest and just the mud was just pouring down, right? And they'd slicked it off and left, right? And that's true of Connection National Forest and Alabama. They took the long after they ran out of white pines in your country. Yeah. They figured out that the long leaf was the next big deal, right? And they took the long leaf out really fast because they had more mechanization. And they were paying like, I think what's 65 cents a day had a big labor force in the South, right? That was waiting, hungry to work. And that land was literally like, if you go to the Connection National Forest now, they're restoring the long leaf. It's an incredible success story, right? It's National Forest and they have a, I don't know, getting the weeds here. Clark Greenery Act, which came after the Weeks Act. It expanded the scope of the federal government to acquire lands that had been slicked off and abandoned. Okay. So it wasn't just for watershed protection anymore. It was for sustainable timber. And that's called the Clark Greenery Act. I think it was 1927. And that Kineco was acquired under that. Go back to that Weeks, deal your time, Mo. So John Weeks, the Weeks Act of 1911 was passed by Congress to address the deforested watersheds and the sediment coming down. That allowed the federal government to acquire these slicked off logged out landscapes and reforest them to address flooding and water quality issues down low. - Yeah. - That's the Weeks Act of 1911 gave us the Eastern National Forest. And there were other people in that debate. One of my favorites was the Mississippi Women's Garden Club. They were like all for the Weeks Act because they said, man, this is just ugly. Like, why did you do this? We love Mississippi and we don't think it should look like this. They were aesthetics, right? The Garden Clubs. And that's true in Northern California too. These Garden Clubs were really big proponents of federal ownership. - Was there a head? - Yeah. And early ally. - Yeah, early ally. And so under the Clark Greenery Act, they acquired like the Appalachia Colonational Forest, and Kineca, all that long leaf country. - Yeah. - And that's because it was slicked off and abandoned. And the Appalachia Colonies got more stuff to it where they tried to drain it and it affected the fishery in the Appalachia Colonial Bay. You know, like, so these are ecosystem services. - Yeah. - I still believe, I don't, not still. I book them down here right in the viscera and combine it with the brain. That the preponderance of the evidence says to keep these lands in public hands and do not open this Pandora's box. And we can then also enjoy, and that's a, that's a, I don't like experience. We can also have what you're talking about. That this is intrinsic value as well, aesthetic. - Yeah. - Political. 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No doubt you've noticed that most of your-- you mentioned Mike Lee earlier, Jason Chaffetz-- most of your people that are philosophically opposed to the federal estate, as I'll often say, come from states where the majority of the land is federally owned. Right. What's your under, from their perspective, walk through what that frustration looks like, from their perspective? They don't rule the roost in their own backyard. And there's a shift in Utah, by the way, that I spend a long time interviewing-- not a long time-- I interviewed quite a few people that are running cows on the grand staircase out in the desert. And the state land agency of Utah has been selling land. OK. Big time. I didn't know that. And yes. I mean, I didn't know it was more than normal or whatever. And there's some kind of exhibit A cases where these guys have a grazing lease for sense back to the Mormon settlement days, right? And all of a sudden, those sections of state land have gone to this guy who's a sculptor. He's also pretty cool, dude, right? He even wants it because it's so beautiful and so interesting. And that grazing lease is terminated right now. And you got, like, a 40-acre inholding that you pay taxes on. And you got cows. You got no place to put them, right? So they have kind of gone against what's called settler, which is their state land agency. And see it as run out of Salt Lake City by people who are interested in real estate and not cows, you know? So that shows you the-- and you know this as well as anybody, like in Colorado, you can't really access state land at will, right? So, like, the idea of transferring these public lands to the state is going to be a terrible route away for them for us hunters. Because you know what the state's going to do with them. They're going to divest them, right? And sometimes, by the state constitution, they almost have to, they can be sued for not doing it. They can be sued for not doing it. Because they're not doing maximum value. That's right. And another thing that Utah tried to do is say, well, these aren't school trust lands when we get them. We don't have to sell them. But there aren't enough people in Utah to distribute the tax base to manage lands that don't have any-- there aren't producing pounds-owned cows or oil and gas. Or just-- I mean, you've been in the Utah desert. You know, it's incredibly beautiful. But it's monetarily. It's not making any sense. That's why it's never been claimed. Yeah. I mean, they homestead acted. How many homestead acts do we have? Real rude act. Give it away. Give it away. General Land Office was made for divesting the federal government of the land that we took from the Native Americans. I always put this back. Rome had what's called the Azure publicus for about 400 years. And it was land that they took from the barbarian tribes, right? OK. And it lasted until like the politicians and the legionnaires divided it all up. And Romans of every kind of ilk, grazed. They were pastoralists. They were free kind of free rangers for a long time until that. And I think about England and the enclosure acts, which drove so much
the migration over here. The, the feudal lords in England were like, well, we don't want the surfs on there anymore. We're going to run sheep. We don't need them there. And poof, you're gone. Yeah. Yeah. I, I see this, I see this privatization of American public lands movement in a direct, direct course from Rome through the, from Azure public us loss to the enclosure acts to what we have now. Mm-hmm. And as public lands fights have come, I feel, I think it's fair to say that some of these big public lands fights have become national news stories. Yes. With the, the, the, the, the shape its proposal became a national news story. Right. The lead proposal became national news stories. People were opining on it all over place. Yes. Editorials and Wall Street Journal, New York Times. People are reading about this that never stepped foot on public lands. They don't use public lands. Right. They, they became a thing. Out of that, there's been some interesting results. Like, coming out of a, coming out of a, of a, of a, how, like, here in the state, we're sitting in, coming out of a house race in a Senate race. Like, we have a house race. The, the, the, the, the, the Democrat nominee and the Republican nominee clarified both clarified that they will not stand for large public lands selloffs. Right. They have, they have policy differences about public lands management, but they've both said, right. Said slash need to say, right to get elected, that you oppose large public lands selloffs. Right. Both sides of the aisle. Um, are we unusual? Like, is this state unusual in the West? Or do you see that, or are you seeing more examples where a politician will need to lay out? Here's what I think about this. Here's what I, here's what I think about, you know, the, the, the war in Iran. Here's what I think about tariffs. Here's what I think about whatever they think about. Um, and, and then they got to go and here's what I think about public lands. Right. Are you seeing that elsewhere? Or is it is, is Montana and anomaly right now? You're seated in Utah. Okay. But the, with the latter day, saints kind of dominating the political structure. Yeah. The people's voices, um, probably don't matter as much yet, right? Like, like, like that, like governor Cox and Utah had that huge, um, take our lands back, movement or whatever you had the billboards all paid for with public money, by the way. Okay. Um, and it didn't really work because so many people moved to Utah that love public lands and that used the canyon lands, you know, but in Montana, they're, they recognize that we had a Democrat governor not long ago, Bullock, you know, and he was a strong champion of public lands and public lands management. Uh, and, and they recognize here that that the game is still in play. And so I have a hard time trusting anybody telling me how much they love public lands now. If they're in the same party as Mike Lee in the Republican party, which has in its 2016 platform to privatize public land. Yeah. That's a, that's a thing I pointed out often at that time is that when they got together that year, that, that, that was on their mind. Yep. And it made it across. But in all fairness, they're not a monolith. They're not a monolith. Just like Democrat. I mean, you know, the idea I had a conversation. She's in a lot of, you know, became in a lot of hot water very soon after that around this, this ballot confusion around the Dan Sullivan controversy. But in Alaska, we, yeah, we interviewed Mary Peltola. Mary Peltola would be really seems to not really care about what she's supposed to think. Right. As a Democrat. Right. You're not going to be getting, she's not going to be bringing gun control legislation to Alaska. She's not going to be like spearheading a bill, a piece of gun, she's not going to be part of like a hunt ban, a method of take ban conversation. Right. And that traffic legislation. Yeah. Right. So it's like, they're not a monolith. No, parties are monolith. They aren't, but I, they, the Republicans, uh, concerned, I'm not afraid when we're another, I'm an American, right? Like we'll fix this thing or not. You know, uh, letter book. But uh, they concerned me greatly when nobody stood up other than like Tom Tillis or, um, to say anything while all this was happening. And I kind of blew my mind. No, I can't get over it. I kind of blew my mind. But you know, the same thing, man, and this is a point I've made. And at that same time, like this, the thing, this is the thing that always sticks my mind. And it's like, it's irrelevant now because so much has happened but it's irrelevant now. But in, so when Trump was campaigning in 2015, he, he, he did a appearance at shot show. Yep. And I went down to watch. And it has to have been that seconds before he got on stage, someone whispered into his ear, a thing that would not be top of mind for him. Someone whispered in his ear, say, this is my theory. I don't know where this came from. Yeah. Say, I'm not going to sell off your public lands. Right. I remember when he did that because it, it, like, and I'm not picking on him when I say that someone whispered in his ear every time a politician gets up in front of anybody, somebody's whispering in the ear, what say, but he got up and said it. And I'm ever thinking, I was like, man, the Republican party just made it a plant, a plank in the platform. Right. And here was this guy saying, I'm not going to. Right. And as much as a lot of, as much as a lot of Democrats and liberals hate to admit it, he didn't. Right. Not in the first term. No. Yeah. Well, he does. He hasn't yet. Right. He did. He's been executive ordering stuff like mad. He could easily, executive ordered that one, too. Yeah. But he, but he, but like, like, so do you think that's a third rail was third rail mean like, like when you touch the subway third rail and it electric heat you that it's a nobody wants to touch the third rail. Do you think he thinks that it costs too much trouble? Or do you think he didn't care? Well, we got to define what we're talking about. Um, I think my feeling is again, I don't think this is a personal issue for him. Right. I don't think this is a personal issue for him. I think that like, you know, I think that the work he's doing around DC with, with cleanups and restorations and adding buildings, I think that that that is clearly of a personal passion to him. And he even said, like, it's what I do to relax. Yeah. Right. He's a developer, a builder, fixer offer, like he likes that stuff. Yeah. I don't think. I mean, here's a guy like he, he raises children in the penthouse. Right. He plate stuff and gold. I don't think this guy is thinking about public lands in the American West. Right. I think there are people around him that do. Yeah. And I think that under this administration, I don't think had that big proposal, had at least proposal to sell off three million acres of public land in Utah, Nevada, primarily Utah, Nevada. I think had that moved along. I have reason to believe from people I've had conversations with the have awareness and access. I think that had that moved along, they would have interfered. Now, that is not to say that they wouldn't want to just go build data centers all over on public land. Right. That they wouldn't want to industrialize the South slope of the Brooks range. Yep. That they wouldn't want to drill and war. Right. That's not to say any that they would. But I don't think they would have allowed or will allow this up to years to go. I don't think they would have allowed or will allow some number like in the millions of flat out privatized public lands. Right. Because they'd lose too many allies. Yeah. Politicians like they everything sits at 50% in this country. They already know like every politician knows that 50% of the people hate them. And so guarding percentages. They have to guard percentages. Right. And if they looked and they're like that one, that one is going to cost us a percentage or a 1.5% right. And that's really a problem because those are people that are otherwise going to have our back. Yep. And I think that that kind of thing, that like millions of acres, right. Isn't a thing they were going to let slide. They'll let slide all kinds as they have. Right. They'll let slide all kinds of other stuff. I mean, they'll they'll attempt to neuter the for it. Like as we saw, like attempt to neuter the forest service from a lot of the responsibilities, but no.
- No, I don't think it. - Yeah, well, I don't think you're wrong. I think that's right. It's just, my name with the Mike Lee bill was, we need, well, I do wanna talk about this. Like, I want people who are listening to this to start like delving into history of public lands, right? And I'm working on another, I've got another book I'm working on right now with that focus. - But where they all came from? - Where they all came from and the drudgery of Congress in creating this, it's a public estate that solved, and I'm telling you, that address, let's say I didn't solve it. It addressed the natural resource crisis that have dropped lesser nations since Rome, you know, when the English were looking around, they were going over to Central Europe to try to get you would to make longbows so they could go back to war. They had gotten rid of all their uteres except the ones in the cemeteries, right? - Yeah. - Like, it was a natural resource crisis. - You remember some of them going to Mayan ruin? - Yeah. - Yes. - Yes. - They developed and grew themselves to death. - And crashed themselves out. - Crash themselves out. Had someone come in and said, "Hey, let's do some watersheds protection." - It creates some national forests. - Right. - They might have showed up and the Europeans might have honored a lot more resistance from the Maya. - That's right. - Right, exactly. So that's why I want people to prize themselves. During the Mike Lee bill, I kept asking, we have Snippla, 1998, the Southern Nevada Land Policy Act. It allows you to sell BLM lands with great transparency and accountability for the American people who've paid to manage these things and own them, right? So why weren't they referring to Snippla 1998? Congress passed that. - I don't know why. - I don't know either. It's because they didn't want transparency. There was a bad game afoot in that proposed sell-off. And I just kept saying, well, if St. George Utah needs infrastructure land, you'd go to Snippla. It passed by Congress. We get the fair market value, the American people that own the lands, that paid to manage them all the way since the Treaty of Guadalupe had Algo, right? They paid blood and treasure to get them to take them from the Mexican government, right? I mean, that's no small thing. That the Mexican war wasn't like it didn't just appear and everybody, nobody had to pay for it. The lands are not free, you know? - Oh, go ahead. But I just wanted to know where is Snippla and all this and the thing was, is most people didn't know about it. And so they couldn't ask Mike Lee, what is it that you have planned that you cannot do under the existing legislation? - What would have been the answer? - I don't know. When they started looking for an off ramp on that three million acre sell-off. - Yeah. - Do you remember what the off ramp was? - No. - No, it was that the off ramp, when it got too hot, you know? And like I said, and there were rumors that the administration would have stepped in. The off ramp was someone pointed out, how would you prevent China or Chinese proxy, China proxies, or Blackstone? - Yep. - How would you prevent them from buying land? - Right. - If it really is, if it's like, as part of the plan has to be, oh no, it's the highest bidder kind of thing. - Yeah. - And they were pointing out too at the time, because you always have to point to something it's expedient. And at the time of housing, right? Housing was a thing that was top of mind for people. - Yeah. - You know? And so you attach it to a thing that's, there's public awareness around housing shortage, housing crisis, housing expense, cost of living. So like, okay, we're gonna take this thing we wanna do ideologically, dispose of a bunch of public lands, reduce the federal state, helping us sell to people, affordable housing. That's the thing people care about right now. - You bet. - Or you'd be like, or China's gonna crush us with rare earth minerals, and we'll sell it with that. There's some thing, you take what you've always wanted to do, you put a costume on it, you put a costume on it that makes it appropriate for the moment. So it's affordable housing. But then you lay out the plan, and you'd be like, but where in the plan does it dictate that the buyer makes affordable housing? And is the federal government really gonna get in the business of dictating to these buyers what they do with it? And how do you prevent Chinese proxies? - Sure. - From buying it. And the off ramp want it being one of like national security. - Gotcha. - Another thing we can all agree on. - Yes. - The off ramp wasn't like, man, this is really pissing off a lot of people. - Right. - And a lot of hunters are in a lot of hunters are incensed. - Right. - Yeah, that's fascinating. I just know in the water resources down there, I'm not sure what the affordable housing inhabitants, like that's gonna restress that same George country. It's raining down there now. But I just looked at all that land, and I'm just, you know, it's not really human in habitable. - Yeah, but what is change is so much. - What's that? - I said, "What is. " - Yeah, that's right. - Yeah, if you bring a big pipe from somewhere, or D-cell, and shoot it across the coast range. - Yeah. - You know, yeah, all true. As we, that would be externalizing the cost, extraordinary to an extraordinary degree. - Yes. - I think, you know, with the national debt, what it is, like I don't know that we really want to pipe a more water, a new beer over-eclamation project. - Yeah. - Water. - To make more of the desert water. - Yeah. - Yeah, blooming to houses. - Yeah. - Whether your season's already open, or you're still counting down the days, the meat-eater store has what you need to get ready. They got reflective trim on them, so you can keep working after dark and find your bags. And if you got them hanging way up in the tree in the middle of the night. Seasonings, cookbooks and knives to cook up everything you bring home to check it all out, head to themeaterstore.com. - What do you imagine being up next? - I remember someone pointing out that a big sell-off, a big public land sell-off, there's a cadence to it. And I remember when, I wish I remember the details of, someone back to the sagebrush rebellion, maybe they went back more than that. And they're like, there's a cadence to this. - Totally. - You know, I came out, maybe it's a 10. You know, like, snowshoe hairs have a 10-year cycle? - You bet. - Someone's like, there's a cadence to public themselves. It might have been 10 years separated, chaff, it's 3 million acre proposal. - Right. - From Lee's 3 million acre proposal. And both of those went up in flames in the same way. Right? Do you think that that's dead now? Do you think just the attacks will just be different now? Like that strategy isn't working. - No, that'll come up again. - That'd be so. - Well, we're just too much in debt. We have to get, we have to divest the lands. The Forest Service calls X and the lands are calls to an X. We have to divest 'cause we're in debt. - You're anticipating that, that's the only way. - I anticipate that. But here's what happens first. And so I was working for like Bugle Magazine and the economist and all these people. I was freelance and like, you know, like pulling from wherever I could. And I was reporting on the Pondale Anticline, right? Down in Pondale, Wyoming. And they were running that Mule Deer study in Pronghorn study there. And the Herd just kept going down, right? And the Jonah field, they had an experiment there where they were gonna directionally drill every section. And all the well pads had to be in the same place. So they would lessen their imprint. - Yeah, lessens the surface impact. - On that critical right? - There'll be blood where he's like, my straw. - Yes, yes. And these guys were-- - Reached across the room and drank your milk check. - Yeah, I'm drinking your milk check. And then in this case, it was great, right? Because you had the less surface imprint impact and imprint. And they quit doing that because there was no, they were operating under a categorical exclusion and the BLM rules. And so they could put the wells wherever they wanted, you know, it's dense as they wanted. And that impacted the Mule Deer herd. That was the externalization of the cost of that production. At the time we were still reeling from 9/11 and energy independent.
right was a huge thing. I was all I also I wrote about this and say and you know we have to we there are going to be trade offs to drill baby drill America first energy independence. Mm-hmm. And that place was one of the trade offs right and it didn't have to be done that high impact but the BLM and the federal government did not impose those rules that would make it less impactful. Okay. So what I see I'm going a long way around I see the 1872 mining law has not been repealed or rewritten. It gives away assets rare earths copper whatever the 1872 mining law is a disaster for American treasury. Okay. And so if we are going to what I see is you could mine this externalize the calls privatize the profits leave the hole in the amber road leave the hole it and the bitter roots let it drain out to the rivers and have the taxpayers try to fix it right and then people will say well you still have the public lands but it looks like the pine del anacline. Yeah. Are you going to go out there and pronghorn hunt. You can I had people go why still pronghorn hunt out there did you're just driving this like matrix of roads you know. Mm-hmm. So the intrinsic value is kind of gone. Yeah. But I see a I do go ahead. No, no, go on but this is while I was trying to say earlier that I think that this is where this is the new play. Yes. And it's to and it's to to take the value from the public lands and let us keep them. Mm-hmm. And and that goes right back to the like the white like Peshtigo fire in is that was that Wisconsin or Michigan that Peshtigo fire well went up into the Michigan's upper peninsula. Yeah. But it was it was it was it was northern Wisconsin on the eastern side along Lake Michigan. But yeah big fire boiled people in their wells. Yeah. And that and that was a huge impetus to federal ownership of land. Yeah. Right. Because they said well holy smokes they they not only took all the timber they left the slash piled up high as a house right. Yeah. And then it burned people alive and destroyed all the land. Yeah. Like some by some arguments like our biggest wildfire disaster. Yes. And that was a huge. Talk about an externalized cost. Talk about it. Yes. Exactly. Yeah. And that's just funny like that same point like after the Peshtigo fire, where did all those people that lost their children and their mothers and fathers and their homes? Did they send a bill? No. Were they able to send a bill to whatever logging company had right. And left them left them to burn. They're like, Hey, I think you owe us. Yeah. And it burned so hot it you know it ruined that top soul. So yeah. So that's what I see. I think we could face that. And here's what I want. I think we should talk about this. I won't there to be a sort of kumbaya moment. And I want us to fight hard over over management. I think conflict is a good right. And I can I have an example why this is a thing. But I want us to hold on to those 640 million acres. If we sell any small parcels here and there under something like Snippla Snippla was not didn't work out very well by the way. Okay. Affordable housing was not that was part of it. It's like you kick this stuff plays over and over like a record. You know. I want us to as an as an American like we I think we agree on the Constitution. You know in the bill of rights mostly. And I know that and and I want us to agree on the system of public lands. And then argue over management. And people really apprised themselves of about that externalizing the costs and stuff. And re-empower federal agencies to do the hard work of citizenry and guard these assets for us so that people can't socialize their costs and then leave us with a mess. They can still take the things that we need. You got to repeal the you got to rewrite their 1872 mining law. That has to be done like right now. Tell me just well I'll take them too much time. It just gives you it just gives the person who makes that claim ownership over the resource. Okay. And it there are bonds and all that stuff that the federal agencies impose. But you could literally like Randy Newberg has said if you paid a $50 interest fee to a national park you paid more into the US treasury than all the mining industry in history. It was it was written in 1872 for a guy with a burrow and a pick to go out into the mountains of Nevada and find something that we needed as a country. And that's what it was for. It is a it is a motivating law. And it is now used by the largest corporations in the world to take those assets. And so again, like things have to even people have to keep a prize of what's happened so that we understand that the 1872, which was a there's many well intentioned laws that that end up look at agriculture policy in hour, right? Like we need some changes, right? And and many well intentioned laws that that outlive their usefulness and have to be re-addressed. Yeah. I mean you necessarily get rid of it all throw babies out with bathwater. But you got to look at the ass the the the intention versus the outcome. Yeah. So 1872 mining law let's let's let's rewrite that. And then the roadless rule thing that you spent so much time y'all are championed. You are heroes to me over the coverage of the roadless rule. Thank you. And I found out that many people commenting have it confused with the Northwest Forest Plan in the spotted Alsta. Yeah. And I was like, dude, like, like, this is your asset. This is your national forest like like learn the difference between the forest plan, which was highly controversial. And the roadless rule. I had a guy. I don't know if it was on one of y'all's. The Maverick Mountain down in down in the pioneers. Like, you know, that thing had caught fire burned the Maverick Mountain ski area recently. Sorry. Anyway, it just blazed through there. It was a large poll fire, you know. And one of the comments was billions of dollars a timber just went up in flames because of this management of the forest service. We got to get repeal the roadless rule. And I was I've done a lot of timber related stuff thin and solid and 20 so I think 28 years, you know, working as a sub or contractor in the forest service or be on them. And I just I rode on that couldn't stop myself. I wish that I knew where you were selling your timber, dude, because because this is literally sub alpine fir and 70 year old lodge poles in a place that was cut for railroad ties in the 1900s. Like, like, if it was billions of dollars, they'd have a road in there tomorrow cutting that stuff down and milling it right in the mills that don't exist anymore. Yeah. So I was just like these that the level. And I'm not putting people down because people are busy, man. This is another reason why y'all's y'all's channels are so valuable, right? People are busy. You run in a roof in company. You can't know what the details of the roadless rule are. Somebody has to care about that and and and drop it off. That's why I love being a journalist. Yeah. I try to point that out when I'm I try to point that out as much as I can that like I have the luxury yes of being able to justify from a professional standpoint spending time on these issues. That's right. And and you come to that from a passion and an understanding that of what's important to you personally. Yeah. That's that's that's you're right. Most people raise the kids trying to make a living like they don't have time to be reading all kind of books about the weeks act. Nope. They do not they do not and yet they live every day with taking the kids to the to the 64 in the bank head national forest. They are they are profound beneficiaries. Yeah. Of something that they don't have time to know. So thank God. Yeah. You know. Yeah. It's I don't begrudge anybody, man. Not a bit. That kind of stuff. And and I'm too busy to know. I don't even really know how the Wi-Fi works. You know. So yeah. You're guilty in your own way. Yeah. Totally complicit. You know, I'm part of it. But I really have I've gotten just like you. This was my passion. And I've been hunting in fish since I've been hunting since I've been nine. And then I got into this, you know, I I managed that little ranch in front of the bitter root national forest. And I killed a bull like the first year I was legal in Montana. And I never got never looked back, man. I was like, this is this is awesome. You know, spend two weeks walking across the cell way bitter root. And then come back and you're all fit and stuff. And you got to go back to work for a while. And then you go hunting to say, you know, me what could be what's
What could be more powerful than that? What could be more powerful than being in those weird canyons in the bank head national forest in Alabama to take a break from being in Huntsville traffic? Yeah. You know? I don't want to see it. I don't want to see it going on my watch. So you were saying that next steps would be positioning the dialogue that there's six hundred and forty million acres of public lands, yes, federally managed public lands and there should be agreed I think that's true. The ponderance of the affinates says that these lands are best held in public hands. Yeah. So that's the thing. Yeah. You had a detailed proposal, not a proposal, but that you feel the mining act has not kept pace with technology, correct or or like corporate global capitalism. Okay. And let me throw one more in there because I have been a contractor for 20 I look going on 30 years now subcontractor. I want to reconnect communities with employment on public land. Okay. I want there to be a high school shop teacher in superior Montana that's teaching chain salt stuff and people, if there's a thinning job in mineral county Montana on that national forest, I want local people to get it. There's a big tree planting gig going on. I don't want to see desperate people on visas from some other country planting those trees. I want people from the Darby Montana plant in the bitter root. Yeah. National forest. How we're going to do that? That's that we can work those details out. I want I want to reconnect communities. I want to see the BLM have more employees. I think the privatization of the labor on public lands has gone too far got it. And I want to see I want I want there to be in Crawfordville, Florida. I want a bunch of kids coming out of the high school going to like my Florida conservation core and learning about black water swamps and how you grow timber and how you thin and burn long leaf and and maybe 20 of those people aren't interested at all. I want to go home and play on their phones, right? But maybe four of them are and those are our those are our foresters in the future. And when those four kids come home with a paycheck to that house in Crawfordville, their dad is going to say, you know what? I like that Appalachian College National Forest. This stuff about the feds seems pretty good to me. Junior's got a new truck. Yeah. But we got to reconnect a bunch of trucks rolling in from some other state for a couple months. I sat there in my house in a bitter root one time waiting on a tree planting job in St. Mary's Idaho. And the trucks were coming with Oregon tags to plant the butterfly timber sale right up above my house. I just I was like, I was like, this is nuts. I knew every tree plunder, you know, we're on the bitter root. We were all like, this is crazy, man. We can't do this. This is the same working at all. But when something not working, you fix it. Yeah. So reconnected communities with with the public lands through employment. Yeah. I mean, like like build an ecosystem resilience watersheds. I mean, we could nurseries full of native plants to re far some of these burns. I mean, there's your there's your public private partnerships. I mean, we're we're going to do this or else. I'm going to be I'll be I think we're going to do it. But but it's going to take all of us because we all own the asset. Yeah. When you you've alluded to your book, we got you kind of talking to you and you're mentioning your book, but your book's not people can't go buy it. No, it's coming out October. They I think they're still cutting parts of it because I guess I'm more long winded even in the. But when I went year for now, yeah, year for now. That crazy. How long it takes to print book? I don't know how you've done it. You've done it so many times and done it well. And I had I've done a book a gun book like in 2008 and it wasn't nothing compared to this, you know, what you book going to be called. So right now, the title is carry in the fire journey through the past and present of America's public lands. Okay. It's about nine different forest or BLM or national monuments, you got to go beat down them. Nevada. It starts out in the Shoshone, which is the first national forest in Wyoming. And all of these are based around like some some of them are big trips like like the Shoshone National Forest is like a 40 mile above timber backpack with like, it's the wildlife forest. That's what the name of that chapter is because that's that was kind of the genesis of our wildlife restorations with the Elston, Timberland Reserve. And it goes through Appalachicola, which has the most interesting history. I think of all of them with the war of 1812 stuff that happened there. Yeah. And that's goes through Bradwell, that's a hike through Bradlet, well bay wilderness, which is like this big swamp, like you can't, it's just like it's it's cool, it's wild. So there's a trip in each one of them, right? So that people don't have to eat all the vegetables of history. Yeah. I look forward to reading it, man. Well, I'm looking, I'm looking forward to having it behind me actually at this point. I know you. I know you worked on it. I've signed the contract in 2020. Oh. And I was supposed to deliver in about three and a half. And then that just didn't work at all. But what's funny about being in that position is, what can they do? Not much. Right? Because you're like, well, you could lean on me in, in, in publish it, but they ain't nothing to publish. She's not there. Right. It's not there. And um, it's kind of like, it's, it's in a weird, you got, but I mean, that's why I also, have you ever gone over? What's that? Have you ever gone over? I've never gone not over. Right. Okay. Okay. I think that they know. I think they know. Yeah. I think it's baked into the whole thing. I got friends that, man, they deliver on time. I'm right. I'm right. I'm ready for that. I'm ready for that. Well, you know, our, our meat eaters, American history stuff. Yeah. We, we, we, I shouldn't say never gone out over. We, we, we hit, we hit a lot of dead, I hit some deadlines. I've, I've had some stuff go along. I got a thing running along right now. I'm doing a history book. You know, it's a history book from, stuff from late 1500s, early 1600s, and it's just you can't write a sentence of it. You can't write a sentence of it without needing to go check on something. No, and so with, with like the new internet resources, you can check on stuff that nobody's ever been able to find before. Yeah. And I talked to Peter Stark about this. He wrote the Coronado book. Yeah. Um, he, he said, you know, there's a point where you just have to make that, that you have done it. You have done the research. You, you are there. But, um, a lot of this stuff I was doing, man, you hit J store. Yeah. And you can get stuff. I got, I, there's a manuscript of a guy who took a trip from Charleston to New Orleans through the Longleaf in like 1815 and it's only there. You can read it. It's searchable. Yeah. Those dudes used to crank it out, sitting down there like visiting archives and stuff like that, you know, yeah, um, sure, but it's still, it's painstaking and it's painstaking and then. Doesn't it give you a respect for them? Yeah. But you know, but you want it, but you want a huge respect, man, you go like guys like, you know, you think of those historians like Shelby foot and stuff, man, like, yeah, the day had to, you know, you had to go spend, you had to like, leave your family and go spend a month down to some archive, yeah, blowing dust off books and now you got like searchable online documents was still, like I said, you can't do a sentence without needing to check on something. And then when you finish that sentence, you're like, man, I better go check on that. Yeah. I don't want to be the guy that gets it wrong. No, and it kind of wakes you to that's it wake you up at 4 a.m. And it's going boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, yeah, that's, yeah, that's cool though. I'm glad you're doing that. I just, I read that Peter Stark book and I was most fascinated by the, the stuff we're out on the prairie. It's just like so while, man, yeah, the best detail out of the Coronado X, not the best, but one of the greatest details out of the Coronado expedition is they get out to the Texas Panhandle and they're blown away that there's these people that just live off Buffalo. And he mentions one of them, one of the, you know, there's multiple people chronically the whole thing. I can't remember who chronicled this, but he mentions that they're, that they're pressure flaking flint tools with their IT far out, yeah, sharpened in their blade with their pressure flake and flint with your IT Wow, you are talking about something that seems like an uncomfortable endeavor. No doubt, man, yeah. And no horses, man, just dogs dogs, yes dogs, yeah, that's, that's good stuff, man. Well, I hope I'm, I'll look forward to that too. And being over deadline like that is, well, you know, you know, what's the difference between hunger and, and, and, and predation, right? Like, like hunger is a motivator. Mm-hmm. Anger is a motivator. Mm-hmm.
uh, but it's, it's hard to say, I, for an outdoor person like myself or yourself, sitting in the, in their writing, it's pretty difficult. It's, I think it's more, I don't know, but more, that's not a good thing to say, more difficult than, but for me, I, I felt like, uh, man, there were some hunting seasons where I just was like, ah, man, I can't do this. I just got to get going. I got to go hunting and I got to stay out long enough to get that. Feeling of reconnection, yeah, like one day, doesn't do it. No, three days, doesn't do it. My, my wife warned me years ago, be very careful who you complain to. Yeah. And so I try to, I keep that in mind. I try to, yeah, I keep that in mind because, um, I've had jobs, you know, that I didn't feel particularly, it wasn't meaningful. And so, uh, and I have a hard time with that. And this does seem meaningful to me. It's, you know, but the minutiae eyes is, like you said, the research is, you know, it's, it, it's, it can be excruciating. I had a job one year chipping, hand chipping paint off handrails in a sewage treatment plant because you couldn't run a sand blaster or soda blaster and getting all that, all that blast, yeah, under the sewage treatment plant. So it all had to be hand chipped, no solvents on it, just watching condoms float by blowing all day. So when I say writing's no fun, yeah, beats paint chipping at a sewage plant, it does. Yeah, I did, I did rotor rotor for a little while and I got the shirt with my name on it. And I, it did press me profoundly. I did eventually get fired, but, uh, yeah, I wrote a rotor for a while and I've had it. But, you know, a lot of that work, there's nothing about reconnecting communities. Man, controlling control burns on public lands. That was like some of the best times I ever had my life. Oh, yeah, I haven't had the pleasure. No, and we had this, uh, we had this job in the swan front, you know, a condom, Montana. And these helicopter units were all logged out. You couldn't see them from the, from highway 93, which I think that is. And not 93, whatever the swan highway is, you couldn't see them there. So you had to park your truck, take your camp, build your camp. And then hike in following a soldier's trail to these units. And then we slashed them, fire lined them. So it's like a 12 foot cut and got them ready for control burn and later, which we didn't do. But, uh, that job was just, it was like a huge adventure every day. You know, and, and you get paid. And I won't, I don't, I won't be, uh, my kids are, they're, you know, they have adventures. But I want kids in Derby, Montana or big fork, Montana, like maybe you're the, the lone poor family in big fork. You know, and you get this job, man, working right down there. You know, I used to, I had a thin end contract one time where you could walk to the swan bar at the end. You could put your saw in your truck and walk and get a beer at the swan bar. You know, like, I just want people to have, I want Americans to have those experiences. Because they make it strong, they develop all these weird skills that are reality based. Yeah. And, you know, how many calories do you need to plant a thousand trees? Well, yeah, you gotta work that out, right? And that's good. That's just, that's just part of my deal here. My older boys in speech and debate and they do this thing where they get, you give them a quote. And they got to use it as a prompt. And he was practicing the R&I and I gave him, uh, he said, I need a quote. And I gave him that elderly a quote, um, I'm glad I will not be a young man in a future without wild places. Yeah. And that's struck him. Yeah. You know, because he feels he won't be either. Mm hmm. He feels he won't be. He feels he won't have the wild spaces. No, no, he thinks that that's another person's problem. Gotcha. He doesn't think that'll be his problem. Right. Right. But I've taken to some cool last place. Yeah, man. Yeah, right. He probably has an abundance of experiences that you're all. He's been to some cool last place so far. Yeah. Oh, one last thing now that you've been educated by Hal Haring and, uh, and the election is, is behind you. Starting on November, what date name? Starting on November 3rd, you can go watch new me eater episodes on YouTube. We got some great stuff coming up including the big, stay tuned. This is a big four pack all up and none of it that involves seal hunting, polar bear hunting with the Inuit. Check it out. It's going to be awesome. Well, Hal Haring, man, is so good to have you on. Good times, man. Thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you so much. Great. I love what y'all do. Thank you. You Blood Trails is a true crime podcast born in the outdoors. Hunting trips, remote cabins, quiet mornings in the woods. Places, people go to get away. But instead, get more than they bargained for. And then all of a sudden, my buddy is radioing back and saying, you know, we're hit on bring guns. I believe someone at the cabin knew something happened to know. Who throws their dead family member in a suburban and drives him straight to the funeral home. The husband of this, uh, dead wife immediately calling his mistress from the funeral home. When Brian finally gave up the body, his body was found on my turkey lease. So for four or five or six years, I sat probably within 100 yards of my body. Murder, disappearance, betrayal, and questions that refuse to stay buried. I'm Jordan Sillers, and this is Blood Trails. Get season three now wherever you listen to podcasts. Plus, check out the brand new Blood Trails TV YouTube channel. There, you can find video versions of every episode that feature images from each story, recorded interviews, maps, and much more. We'll also be dropping bonus content between seasons, so make sure you're subscribed. That's @BloodTrailsTV on YouTube.
Podcast Summary
Key Points:
The decline of public lands in the U.S. began in the 1980s due to cultural polarization and the rise of anti-government sentiment, especially in the West.
Both environmentalists and conservatives turned against federal land management agencies, creating a partisan divide that undermined public trust.
Historical shifts in political ideology, such as free trade being a Republican ideal and now a Democratic one, show that public lands issues have become increasingly partisan over time.
The privatization of public lands, driven by figures like the Koch brothers and think tanks, is rooted in deregulation and a belief that private enterprise is more efficient than government stewardship.
Public lands are valuable not just for recreation but as critical ecological assets—like watersheds and flood control—that benefit society as a whole.
Private land ownership often leads to exclusionary practices, such as lack of access to roads or water, undermining the democratic principle of shared public access.
Extreme cases, like the Hudson River or the Berkeley Pit, illustrate how industries have historically relied on public resources, and their absence would have hurt national development.
The true value of public lands lies in their aggregate function—protecting watersheds, supporting biodiversity, and sustaining communities—making large-scale privatization economically and ecologically unsustainable.
Summary:
, tracing its roots to the 1980s when cultural and political animosity toward federal land management agencies grew on both sides. This animosity, fueled by events like the Ruby Ridge and Waco conflicts, the Bundy occupation, and ideological movements such as anarchism and libertarianism, led to a deepening partisan divide. Environmentalists attacked agencies for permitting mining and logging, while conservatives criticized them for being too restrictive, creating a culture of distrust.
The speaker highlights that public lands are not just recreational spaces but vital ecological assets—such as watersheds and flood control—whose value only emerges in aggregate. Historical examples, like the Bankhead-Jones Act restoring farmland in abandoned areas or the protection of the Bob Marshall Wilderness, show how public stewardship has long served national needs. Despite the rise of privatization claims, especially through think tanks like the Koch-funded Kato Institute, the speaker argues that such models fail in practice, as they prioritize profit over access, equity, and environmental stability.
Private ownership often results in exclusion and neglect, particularly in remote areas. The episode concludes with a strong belief that public lands represent a cornerstone of American democracy—offering access to nature for all, and ensuring future generations inherit both freedom and environmental resilience. It calls for a return to dialogue based on shared goals, not ideological dogma.
FAQs
Yes, there are ongoing efforts to privatize public lands, especially in the West, driven by ideological beliefs in free-market solutions. However, these efforts face practical and environmental limits, as large tracts of land remain protected due to their value as watersheds and ecological resources.
Opposition began when public lands became entangled in culture wars. Anti-government sentiment, fueled by events like Ruby Ridge and Waco, led people to view federal agencies like the Forest Service as enemies, despite their role in managing public resources for recreation and conservation.
Environmental groups criticized federal agencies for permitting mining and logging, often labeling them as tyrannical. This created a polarized view where both sides saw land management as an enemy, weakening public trust and leading to a decline in bipartisan support.
Many conservatives oppose public lands management due to ideological beliefs in private property rights and minimal government intervention. However, this stance often overlooks the practical realities of large-scale land use, such as water rights and watershed protection.
Public lands were preserved when homesteading failed due to poor soil or drought, such as in the 1910s in Montana and Alabama. The federal government acquired abandoned lands, like under the Bankhead-Jones Act, and protected them as critical watersheds and ecological areas.
While some individuals argue that the Constitution prohibits federal land ownership, this is not a serious legal threat. It remains a fringe viewpoint, and the U.S. government continues to own and manage public lands through established legal frameworks.
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