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Transcript

The Wild Line: DOGE Cuts Exacerbate Wildfire, Interior Cancels Endangered Species Protections, and Alaska Judge Dismisses Dalton Highway Suit · The Wild Idea

• 0:00
  [intro music] Welcome to The Wild Line, where land stories are the lead stories. This is our report for July 31st, 2026. Another reminder about where you can find The Wild Line in the future. This is the last episode of The Wild Line that will appear in the Wild Idea podcast feed, as it is being moved to its own feed. It is time to subscribe now to The Wild Line on your podcast player of choice to continue to stay on top of all the land stories. Starting next week, The Wild Line will only be available in the new feed.
• 0:30
  Bill, before I hop into this week's news, I have to endorse the Brooks Falls live cam, a video stream showing brown bears catching spawning salmon at Brooks Falls in Katmai National Park and Preserve, Alaska. The video stream is operated by explore.org in partnership with the National Park Service, and this week is prime viewing as the salmon run is peaking right as the most dominant bears have shown up at the falls. It's been playing pretty much non-stop at my house, and I'm not embarrassed to say that I have entered into more than one, uh, parasocial relationship with the-these bears. Now, uh, onto the news.
• 1:09
  On Wednesday, the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources was slated to hear dozens of bills related to energy development, outdoor access, and land designation, including bills that would have added wilderness acres, national park acres, or wild and scenic river miles in California, Arizona, Colorado, Oregon, Washington, and New Mexico. Unfortunately, Chairman Mike Lee of Utah dropped most of the bills on the docket, drawing criticism from ranking member Martin Heinrich of New Mexico, as well as several other committee members, each of whom noted the chairman's apparent aversion to marking up any conservation bills at all. Instead, the committee passed a number of bills that would ease permitting for geothermal energy, amend the Mineral Leasing Act to allow for more permitting opportunities, allow expanded payment plans for mining companies, and to reauthorize the Cooperative Watershed Management Program.
• 1:58
  Last Friday, a federal judge in Anchorage declined to block the Department of Interior's transfer of more than 2 1000000 acres along the Dalton Highway corridor to the state of Alaska. US District Judge Aaron Peterson cited state constitutional language that bars private parties from suing the state in dismissing a challenge to 1.3 1000000 acres of that transfer, and argued that when the Interior Department lifted protections on this corridor earlier in the year, it essentially automatically transferred the acres to the state in accordance with federal statutes that were created when Alaska joined the Union in 1959. Those statutes were designed to allow the state to top-file acres for selection as state lands, even if they were under federal control at the time. For the remaining 700000 acres, Judge Peterson allowed the case to proceed, but denied a preliminary injunction, saying the suit, brought by the Northern Alaska Environmental Center and 9 other advocacy groups, was too speculative.
• 2:57
  Interior Secretary Burgum revoked 54-year-old public land orders protecting this acreage back in February, carrying out Trump's 2025 executive order titled Unleashing Alaska's Extraordinary Resource Potential.
• 3:10
  Bill, how about some wildlife news? Last Friday, the Department of Interior canceled a rule known as the Blanket 4D Rule meant to protect plants and animals that are determined to be threatened with extinction, the latest step by President Trump's administration to dismantle key provisions of the landmark Endangered Species Act at the behest of industry. Instead of receiving automatic protections, imperiled species will need individualized protection plans once they are added to the threatened species list. That's a potentially lengthy process in which companies could seek exemptions for oil and gas drilling, mining, and other development where those species live. While Secretary Burgum argued that the ESA has too often been used to block projects and it raises costs for families, conservation and wildlife groups countered that exempting habitat-destroying industries often means exempting the main threat to the species. Also last week, NOAA Fisheries turned down a petition to designate East Coast waters as a, quote, "primary historic migration corridor," end quote, for the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale. The petition, filed in March 2025 by Save Long Beach Island, a New Jersey community group, sought a critical habitat status designation that would have connected the 2 existing critical habitat areas for the whale, feeding grounds off Maine and New England and calving grounds off Georgia and South Carolina, with a space where no habitat protections currently exist. The proposal would have excluded waters around offshore wind projects.
• 4:35
  In its finding, NOAA concluded the petition did not present substantial scientific information indicating that a revision to the existing critical habitat may be warranted. That's right. The same administration that's ignored science for going on 6 years now had the audacity to use that argument to defend their ignoring public input and scientific review.
• 4:54
  There's more to come. We'll be right back. And back to The Wild Line. Now for some updates to stories we've shared here on The Wild Line over the past few weeks. Last week's edition covered the wildfires currently burning in Northern Minnesota. Over the weekend, reporting from The Washington Post connected DOGE spending pauses to those destructive wildfires.
• 5:15
  Last year, the Trump administration delayed a 10 million dollar grant designed to help thin about 4,000 acres of dense, dry, high-risk forest. Most of that work never began, and you guessed it, some of those areas are now on fire.
• 5:30
  The grant was part of a 100 million dollar Biden-era wildfire initiative awarded in 2024 to Superior National Forest, where roughly 2 dozen lightning-sparked fires have burned since early July. It would have removed dead trees and undergrowth to create fuel breaks around corridors and remote homes and funded prevention along the 36-mile Echo Trail gravel road months before the Sioux Fire jumped it and threatened residences. In The Washington Post article, officials described the wildfire's cause as cumulative. DOGE reviews affected nearly all of the region's Forest Service grants. The agency lost about a 3rd of its employees, and the setback amounted to roughly a year to 18 months.
• 6:15
  On Capitol Hill, Minnesota Representative Angie Craig pressed Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz at a hearing last week on whether or not staffing and resource losses has hurt wildland firefighting. Schultz said they had not, which Craig disputed. In other news, the dismantling of the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments seems to have begun in earnest. As we covered here on The Wildline on July 17th, President Trump signed an executive order shrinking the 2 monuments by over 90 percent in a deal cut with the Utah Congressional Delegation. Now, less than 3 weeks after signing that order, which also disbanded the Inter-Tribal Working Group for Bears Ears, the administration has removed tribal logos from signage for the monuments and has removed monument signs altogether from the original established boundaries.
• 7:05
  Finally, as we covered on the July 3rd edition of The Wildline, the Forest Service opened a short comment period related to the complete review and possible revision of the Forest Service Directive System, which is a series of manuals and handbooks used by the Forest Service personnel to guide the agency and manage national forests and grasslands. Forest Service Directives are also important tools for tribes, other federal agencies, state and local governments, and the public to understand how the Forest Service works. This potential rollback of clear guidance informed by law may open the door to line officers ignoring or discarding feedback from the communities they serve or the states in which they work. The laughably short comment period closes today. We will have a link for where you can comment in our show notes.
• 7:52
  And for those in our audience that love wilderness and have decided to make it their career, the University of Montana is relaunching their Wilderness Management Graduate Certificate Program, and registration is open for both the traditional flexible asynchronous path as well as a fall semester virtual instructor-led offering of American Wilderness Philosophy and Policy. That begins on October 1st. This course features weekly online discussions and opportunities to learn directly from leading wilderness scholars and practitioners.
• 8:19
  Before we sign off this week, we have a small favor to ask. You have been listening to us for some time now, some of you maybe a few weeks, some of you a few months, and some of you diehards over a year. Well, we wanna hear from you and have a survey asking for your feedback on all we do here at Wild Idea Media. Please take a few minutes and visit thewildidea.com and complete the survey to help us set the future because it is you we do this for. Once you complete the survey, we'll be happy to send you some cool Wild Idea podcast stickers, and thanks for listening. [instrumental music] That is our report for July 31st, 2026. We will be back next week with another edition of The Wildline, but only in the new Wildline feed. And next Tuesday on The Wild Idea, we'll talk with public land legal scholars Andy Mergen and Justin Padeaux. Until then, act up and run wild.
• 9:08
  [instrumental music] The Wildline is a production of Wild Idea Media. Production and editing by Bryn Russell at Podlad. Digital support by Holly Wilkoszewski at Daypak Digital. Our theme music, Spring Hill Jack, is from Railroad Earth and was composed by John Skehan. The executive producer is Laura Hodge. Learn more about us at thewildidea.com. [instrumental music]