Latest / The Wild Idea / The Wild Line: A New Tracker for Public Land Comment Periods, Eastern States Invest in Wildlife Crossings, and Forest Service Retirees Join Suit to Stop Reorg

Transcript

The Wild Line: A New Tracker for Public Land Comment Periods, Eastern States Invest in Wildlife Crossings, and Forest Service Retirees Join Suit to Stop Reorg · The Wild Idea

• 0:00
  [upbeat music] Welcome to The Wild Line, where land stories are the lead stories. This is our report for July 10th, 2026. Another reminder about where you can find The Wild Line in the future. This is the last month that The Wild Line will appear in the Wild Idea podcast feed, as we are moving it to its own feed. You can and should subscribe to The Wild Line now on your podcast player of choice to continue to stay on top of all the land stories. Through July, we will publish to both feeds as we make this transition.
• 0:28
  Bill, let's start with some good news for wildlife. In Pennsylvania last week, Governor Josh Shapiro announced the establishment of the Pennsylvania Wildlife Connectivity Work Group, a first-of-its-kind statewide cross-agency partnership to reduce wildlife vehicle collisions, improve public safety, and reconnect fragmented habitat. Co-led by the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources and PennDOT, the group brings together 11 other agencies to identify priority corridors and create the state's first statewide wildlife connectivity plan, supported by an eight hundred and forty thousand dollar Federal Wildlife Crossings Pilot Program grant.
• 1:06
  Pennsylvania led the nation last year in wildlife-related vehicle crashes, with more than one hundred and forty thousand claims filed. Crossings under consideration range from overpasses and underpasses to culverts for amphibians and reptiles. And in North Carolina, National Parks Conservation Association and other members of the Safe Passage Coalition praised the state's new budget appropriation for wildlife crossings. The total comes to ten point two million dollars recurring every two years, building on a landmark two million dollar appropriation in 2023 that was the state's first dedicated wildlife crossing funding. This permanent funding source comes after two years without an enacted state budget.
• 1:47
  The Safe Passage Coalition originally formed around the Pigeon River Gorge, where I-40 bisects a key corridor between the Great Smoky Mountains and nearby national forests.
• 1:57
  These actions in Pennsylvania and North Carolina reflect growing recognition of the importance of wildlife crossings for both humans and other species. Nationally, roughly one million large animal vehicle collisions occur each year, causing about eight billion dollars in costs and hundreds of human deaths.
• 2:15
  In slightly more domesticated animal news, the Great Smoky Mountains National Park Mule Packing Program recently marked its fiftieth anniversary with a golden jubilee. Three human employees work alongside 12 mules and six horses to haul tens of thousands of pounds of materials through the park's eight hundred and sixteen square mile backcountry each year. And in 2025, the team removed nine hundred and ninety-seven trees, packed fifty-seven thousand pounds, and worked nearly six hundred and eighty-seven hours pulling logs as long as 18 feet over distances up to two miles. The Smoky Mountains is the only East Coast park with a mule team and the only national park that shoes its animals in-house. Its mules, at roughly twelve hundred pounds, are the largest of any NPS pack program, and park partner Friends of the Smokies has purchased mules and auctioned naming rights to raise money.
• 3:11
  Those stories are all focused in the East, and if it's Southeastern wildlife and habitat news you crave, then Bill and I have the platform for you. We recently caught up with Ramona McGee, senior attorney and wildlife program leader for the Southern Environmental Law Center-
• 3:23
  Yeah. So let's, let's start with the basics
• 3:25
  ... about a new project she started to help increase awareness-
• 3:26
  The name and what the new Substack is all about
• 3:28
  ... and education about Southern wildlife.
• 3:30
  Yeah. So we started this Substack called Wildlife Down South. And the whole purpose or premise here is really to spread the word of our world-class biodiversity here in the South and to bring the South and southern wildlife into the conversation about solutions when we're talking about how to protect wildlife and habitat. We'll be covering newsworthy updates. So in some of our early posts, we already are highlighting some great recent conservation wins as well as threats on the horizon. So we'll certainly be trying to keep our readers apprised of the latest and greatest. Uh, we also want to introduce readers to the people here working so hard to protect our biodiversity. So look forward to different partner conversations and highlights. And then really, again, thinking about looking forward to what are the solutions that we are advancing and how is that relevant on the national stage or in other states.
• 4:30
  We asked her, "So why this tool?"
• 4:32
  Communication is absolutely essential to inspiring action. And I'll tell you, I am still surprised at how often I'm talking with folks who live here in the South who are not aware of the amazing biodiversity in our proverbial backyards. And so I just think it's so important that we spread that word because you can't expect people to act to protect these incredible species if they don't know about them in the first instance. So that's, that's a role we're hoping to fill with this Substack, is again, getting the word out there, helping people know and appreciate what we have here in the South, and then hopefully inspiring them to take that next step to be part of the solution.
• 5:15
  You can subscribe to Wildlife Down South now on Substack.
• 5:18
  Now for the hard stuff. For the first time since 1995, the Bureau of Land Management is rewriting its grazing regulations governing ranching across one hundred and fifty-five million acres of Western public lands, an overhaul that would expand grazing and heavily favor the livestock industry. The proposed rules would sharply limit public participation, restricting who counts as, quote, "interested public" and eliminating steps where people could observe and comment on permit decisions. Environmental journalists have noted some genuine benefits like broader ecological review of all land uses and informal handling of minor violations. But critics warn the changes tilt heavily toward ranchers and include automatic pauses in management when ranchers file appeals, enshrined subsidized fees, and threats to tribal bison grazing.
• 6:08
  Interior official Karen Budd-Falen, a longtime grazing advocate from a ranching family who had to be issued an ethics waiver in order to work on the policy, has championed a return to the Ronald Reagan years regulations. Yikes. Meanwhile, in Park City, U.S. Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz defended the agency's largest restructuring in a century, a move that aims to dissolve the regional offices envisioned by the agency's first chief, Gifford Pinchot, over a century ago, in favor of 15 new state offices. While the chief has said he'll open none of the new state offices envisioned by the reorg until fire season winds down, critics, including retirees, have called the process hasty, opaque, and lacking public review, and worry it will politicize the agency along the lines of the BLM state director model. Schultz frames the shift to a state-based model and the headquarters moving to Salt Lake City as bringing decision-making closer to the ground and eventually boosting staff and funding at individual forests, when in reality these moves are most likely to result in the hollowing out of professional and scientific staff as the reconsolidation eliminates research stations and oversight staff, and Trump's proposed FY 2027 budget aims to cut the National Forest System by roughly 24%. Career scientists and long-tenured regional staff function as a check on politically expedient decisions because they generate the data and analysis that make it harder to justify, say, a timber sale that the science just doesn't support. And because those current offices operate at the regional level, the power of any one state's political establishment is diluted, an advantage that would disappear using the state office model.
• 7:49
  In response, a coalition of unions, environmental and civic groups, and local governments have sued to challenge the Forest Service restructuring, seeking a preliminary injunction. Plaintiffs allege the reorganization would impair the agency's ability to manage national forests and call the restructuring illegal under a 2026 budget bill provision barring funds for relocating or reorganizing offices. Western Watersheds Project Director Eric Molvar argued the move puts industrial interests in charge of public land management and is designed to strip science and accountability from national forest management. We spoke with Bill Avey, National Chairperson of the National Association of Forest Service Retirees, about setting the context of this reorganization.
• 8:30
  I think you have to look at the totality of everything that this administration is proposing.
• 8:37
  The President Trump's 2026 and 2027 budgets both
• 8:44
  did a couple of things that are very concerning. Cut the Forest Service budget by over 44%, totally zeroed out research and development in state and private tribal forestry, and also
• 8:57
  moves fire out of the Forest Service into the Department of Interior's Wildland Fire Service.
• 9:05
  That's probably the biggest concern we have. I mean, all of those things. The congressional budget passed in 2026 didn't do that.
• 9:16
  It kept R&D funded, state and private funded, said that they had to do a study before that fire transfer happens. It also had language in there that the reorganization couldn't occur without the approval of the Appropriations Committee. It's very clear. So this lawsuit is interesting, but I won't go too far into that
• 9:38
  because language to us is very clear on the Appropriations Committee.
• 9:42
  We believe the fire transfer is the greatest threat to the Forest Service and land management in general because fire is part of the land. These lands evolved with fire.
• 9:53
  We
• 9:55
  so much don't have a wildfire crisis problem as we have a land management crisis problem. Our society is building homes. We're increasingly in a lot of land-urban interface. We're not treating the vegetation the way we need to treat with more prescribed fire,
• 10:13
  taking advantage of natural ignitions on good years
• 10:17
  to do some more fuels work.
• 10:20
  So we feel that the transfer of fire out of the agency and moving to a suppression force is exactly the wrong thing to do.
• 10:30
  It flies in the face of what history and science tells us.
• 10:35
  So we're very concerned about that.
• 10:38
  We're very concerned about issues of the other aspects of this reorganization. Again, particularly in light of when you look at Mr. Schultz's comments to the Western Governors Association where he talks about
• 10:53
  states should be managing federal land like
• 10:58
  the primacy, the
• 11:02
  acts of clean water and clean air, which gave primacy from EPA to states to manage those laws. Well, that concept doesn't apply to management of federal lands. It's very clear. So obviously, Mr. Schultz really doesn't understand
• 11:20
  how federal lands are to be managed by the federal government, not the states. We're very concerned with the establishment of state directors that they are just going to become political patsies for the governors of the states. And these are national forests. These aren't state forests. We have to take into account the states and the states' role and the states and the people of the states'
• 11:49
  concerns about the national forests. But these are managed for the people of the nation, not just the people of the state that they're in.
• 11:56
  So those comments, the 20-year stewardship agreements that he's promoting and signing
• 12:04
  are also going to turn management of projects in certain areas of the national forest over to the states are very concerning to us.
• 12:13
  Um, if you look at the BLM model, which has had state directors for a number of years, what you see is the state directors generally change with every administration.
• 12:24
  Um, and so, you know, we feel like this reorganization, when you look at the, the, the impacts on research and development, the closure of facilities, the moving of, of people, the moving of, uh, development of state directors, we feel like this is increasing, drastically increasing the politicization of the Forest Service.
• 12:45
  Um, and, uh, we have grave concerns about that.
• 12:49
  More of the week's headlines following this short break. Back to our public land news. Anders, the Gold Mountain fire, burning about two miles north of Ouray, Colorado, grew to 26,405 acres and remained uncontained, with a large portion burning east into the Uncompahgre Wilderness, a remote area that hasn't seen wildfire in more than 50 years and has conifer stands with no fire mitigation history. Steep, rugged terrain toward Baldy Peak made it hard to set fire lines, while crews built a perimeter along Highway 550 with more than 820 personnel assigned. Conditions including dry and dead fuel, steep slopes, hot and windy weather, poor snowpack, and ongoing drought have primed the landscape for large fire growth, and the Grand Mesa, Uncompahgre, and Gunnison National Forests have been closed to visitors.
• 13:43
  More than just parks has announced a new and free advocacy tool, the Public Lands Action Network, or PLAN. PLAN is a continuously updated tracker of open federal public comment windows on public land decisions. Because agencies are constantly deciding the fate of public lands through comment periods that most people never even notice, PLAN centers the ones that matter, explains what's at stake in plain English, and will even walk you through submitting a comment in less than two minutes. At the moment, it lists 45 open decisions, with nine closing this week, and more than 107,000 comments logged across them. PLAN is making a clever argument, in my opinion, and that is a comment period isn't a vote, so a single specific personal comment can outweigh thousands of identical form letters, because the law requires agency to read and respond to substantive comments, and courts have overturned decisions when agencies ignore that.
• 14:39
  Beyond commenting, PLAN offers a few other free tools. A congressional public lands scorecard grading members of Congress on their votes, a threatened public lands map of sites under active threat, an email alert system filtered by state and by issue, and a crowdsourced, quote, submit a fight form for local comment windows that never hit the federal register. Its data is drawn from the federal register, BLM's NEPA register, and verified reader reports, refreshed daily.
• 15:06
  If you're curious as to whether or not there's a comment period open about a landscape near you, the answer is yes. Current actions that visitors to PLAN can take include chiming in on logging projects in the Willamette, Osceola, Ouachita, Black Hills, and Blue Mountains forests, mining and drilling projects like the Stillwater Platinum Mine, the Bald Mountain Gold Mine, the Nevada Geothermal Leases, offshore seafloor mining, and oil and gas royalty rollbacks, not to mention the aforementioned grazing rule rollbacks, wild horse removals, ski resort and OHV snowmobile expansion, a Big Bend border barrier plan, an LNG land giveaway in Louisiana, and a cluster of wilderness rule rewrites across BLM, NPS, and the Fish and Wildlife Service. Notably, the lead action is opposing a Forest Service move to cut public comment rights itself, reducing the legal right to weigh in on National Forest management. To me, this looks to be an incredibly valuable tool. Uh, Bill and I will link to the PLAN website in our show notes.
• 16:05
  Anders, I wanted to share this interesting glimmer of hope, and that is seeing a profile of former Tennessee Republican Senator Bill Frist, who also happens to be an accomplished surgeon, in The New York Times this week, where he pushes a notion that Republicans will, quote, come around on issues related to the environment, including climate change and protecting the natural world. Frist leans on the human health concerns he sees coming from a degraded natural world as part of his transformation, where his track record is less than stellar when it comes to actually putting words into action. One can hope that Senator Frist is right, and we will see members of both parties stand up for our natural world required for our human health. We'll put a link to that story in our show notes.
• 16:49
  Finally, we want to mark the sudden and unexpected passing of David Page, Executive Director of the Winter Wildlands Alliance. David passed away on July 7th following a car accident on Wyoming's Teton Pass. A release by the Winter Wildlands Alliance remembered David for, quote, "his boundless energy, his uncanny wit, and his love of adventure.
• 17:10
  David was a zealous backcountry skier, a passionate advocate for wild places, and someone who believed deeply that meaningful progress begins with open dialogue, curiosity, and collaboration. He was also a fearless leader and a gifted writer whose words invited people to see winter landscapes with great wonder and purpose." David Page was 57.
• 17:32
  That is our report for July 10th, 2026. We will be back next week with another edition of The Wild Line. And next Tuesday on The Wild Idea, we talk with author and journalist Heather Hansman. Until then, act up and run wild.
• 17:48
  [outro music] The Wild Line is a production of Wild Idea Media. Production and editing by Bryn Russell at Podlad. Digital support by Holly Wilcheski at Daypack Digital. Our theme music, Spring Hill Jack, is from Railroad Earth and was composed by John Skihan. The executive producer is Lara Hodge. Learn more about us at thewildidea.com.