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John Leshy: The Hollowing Out of America’s Public Lands · The Wild Idea

• 0:00
  [upbeat music] Welcome to our ongoing conversation we've been having at the intersection of wild nature and our own human nature. If you are new here, my name is Bill Hodge, and I am compelled to mention that I'm on this journey with my co-host, Anders Reynolds, and by compelled, I mean court-ordered. So hello, Anders.
• 0:17
  Oh, hi, Bill. Thanks for completing your public service with me.
• 0:22
  Tell me we've got a good guest today. Do we?
• 0:25
  Oh, man, do we have a good guest today. We are having a conversation about looking back and looking around, that how as a nation we've held onto this idea of public lands, to these commons that belong to all of us, with a true oracle on the topic, the legal scholar and author of Our Common Ground, John Leshy. John is, is, uh, as you know, Anders, is [chuckles] pretty important person in our space for just somebody that you can look to for what we can learn from the past, but also how to look at the frameworks today, right? I know you've depended on John in your career.
• 0:59
  It's so true. I have really benefited from John's expertise and research over the years, and you're right. This is a great guest. Having a great guest is super important to me right now because I, Bill, I've been doing a lot of soul-searching. I know you're content to cruise, but I'm constantly thinking of ways we can improve this podcast. And because of that, I've been listening to a lot of other podcasts, not to steal any material, not because I think what they do can be repeated, but because I wanted to know w- what these folks were doing wrong and how we could avoid it. And I gotta tell you, there's one thing that sticks out more than any other to me, and it is when they have a commercial break in the middle of the show and they use the phrase, "We need to take a break." Now, you and I know, 'cause we're behind the scenes, a lot of work goes into this, but as a listener, I think, "A break? You've only been listening for, like, 15 minutes. You've been, like, yapping in my ear for 20 minutes. Why do you need to take a break? Like, just chill. Just keep going." Is there anything, uh, about other podcasts that, that bothers you? Do you have any pet peeves?
• 2:05
  Yeah. I have one in particular. Um, it, it's, like, the start of a podcast that begins with, "Here's all the ways that you need to support our work," and it goes on, and it goes on, and it goes on. You know, I mean, I get it. There's a lot of different ways that a podcast can make it a go in this world. Uh, we obviously are looking at a number of ways to make it go, but when you just drone on and on and on about how you could support a podcast. You know, that being said, there's [chuckles] this thing called Buy Me a Coffee, and it's on our website. And if you wanna buy us a coffee, which is a way in which you can support our work, you can do that. You can click on Buy Me a Coffee. You can give us a one-time gift. You can give us a recurring gift. And that's what annoys me about podcasts, is when people ask you to give money. So give us some money, you know? Come on. We need your support. No, seriously, folks, we, we love what we're doing. We love doing it with you, our community, and that's probably gonna be the one time you hear me get preachy about we could use your support. But if you wanna give us some support, buy me a coffee. Ironically, for me and Anders, you won't be buying us a coffee because guess what? Neither one of us drink coffee, right?
• 3:16
  Neither of us drink coffee, so if you wanna right price this,
• 3:20
  why don't you buy us a lobster martini, 'cause we're both into those.
• 3:25
  Oh, no. Come on. Do you really drink a lobster martini?
• 3:28
  Every night.
• 3:29
  Ugh. Be a tequila sunrise for me.
• 3:32
  [laughs]
• 3:32
  And I'm being serious. I think, I think you're joking, but I'm being serious. It would be a tequila sunrise for me.
• 3:36
  But you know that.
• 3:37
  Well, that being said, we know what we're having for our cocktails this evening. How about if we get on with our conversation with the legal scholar, the historian, all around oracle, John Leshy. John, first, welcome to the Wild Idea Podcast. It was great to get to hear you speak a few weeks ago at the Wallace Stegner Center's annual symposium. There's just so much we wanna impact from your deep knowledge of public land history, but also a lot to explore with the here and now of public land policy. So thanks for taking the time to join us today.
• 4:12
  Thank you for inviting me. Uh, uh, I've admired your podcast, and I love the subject matter and the people you've had on, so it's a privilege to be here. Thank you.
• 4:20
  Oh, my gosh. That's so generous. I've, I have benefited from your work for so long, so it's like a real thrill for me to have you on. That said, I can't decide [chuckles] if my opening question is, is an easy one or not. Um, but I'm just gonna ask, uh, if you could, for our listeners, define public lands. What are public lands?
• 4:39
  Well, [chuckles] you know, there's no standard, uh, definition. I'm a lawyer, and I can tell you there's no legal, you know, widely accepted definition. It, in general, refers to lands that are held by some public entity, which could be state or local government or federal. Most people understand it as referring to federal lands, and some people understand it as referring only to lands managed by one particular federal agency, the Bureau of Land Management, uh, to distinguish them from national forest lands, national park lands, national wildlife refuge lands, et cetera. So it's kind of a mess. But I refer to them generally, uh, and I think probably the most widely accepted definition, is federal lands that are held by federal government, and generally being open to all.
• 5:29
  And the fact that there's no single fixed legal definition of public lands is, you know, in my opinion, serve conservationists pretty well historically. But I wonder if that ambiguity could ever be weaponized in the other direction, you know, used to argue that if it isn't defined, it isn't protected.
• 5:47
  Well, I suppose. I mean, these days, as you know, everything gets weaponized, and, uh, so that's certainly a possibility. But, but I don't see the debate about that much. Uh, and I kinda keep an eye on what's happening in the public lands area, and have for the last 60 years or so. So-So far, I'd say that's not happened, and there's not been a lot of debate.
• 6:10
  John, your book, Our Common Ground: A History of America's Public Lands, you break the narrative out into eras. And with us in our sort of anniversary stance these days with America 250, I would love for you to unpack what happened in that founding era of our nation that set us on a path to holding these public lands in common, whatever we define those public lands as.
• 6:34
  Well, so it's an interesting story, like a lot of things [laughs] connected with public lands. But, you know, when the, you know, uh, uh, when the Declaration of Independence was declared, uh, uh, 250 years ago, uh, there were 13 colonies or former colonies now independent of Great Britain. Uh, and that was it. They had no national government. And so very quickly, they, the 13 former colonies started talking to each other about, "Okay, now we need a national government if we're gonna be independent of Great Britain. W- what do we do? How do we set this up?" Uh, and so there was intense discussions, uh, to create a national government, and one of the issues about creating the national government was, well, what about all these lands that are kind of outside the traditional boundaries of the 13 colonies, mainly in the Appalachians and further west? And here there was a problem, because each of these 13 colonies had a charter from Great Britain established independently. Uh, and the 13 charters were not identical with respect to lands. Some of them, these colonies had undefined or, uh, w- w- western boundaries. So Virginia is the classic example because its boundary as a colony extended to the far western sea or something like that. So it just was kinda open-ended. But six of the 13 had fixed western boundaries. The- their colonial charters drew a line on the map and said, "You, your lands go this far, no farther." Particularly, Maryland was the leader of those six, and Maryland said, "Geez, you know, if we don't gr- wrestle with this land question and nail this down, uh, we're gonna have seven former colonies who kinda own everything to the west, and we six are gonna be confined here in the East, and that's gonna be unfair. We're gonna be outgunned. We're gonna be, you know, overwhelmed. Uh, so we want an indep- you know, we wanna establish our right to be, and you guys with the sev- you guys in the seven colonies need to give those up, give up those western land claims."
• 8:54
  "Well, give them up to who?" "Well, give them up to the national government." Uh, and so eventually, after a lot of back and forth, that was what happened. Uh, and so those were the original public lands created by the seven colonies who relinquished their claims to western lands to the national government, and the national government held those lands, and those were the original public lands, and then the rest all flowed from that.
• 9:20
  As I'm sort of following the, the arc of your book here, as we began to rise and expand as a nation and went through manifest destiny and the displacement of entire civilizations, public commons arrived. We acquired public lands. As you said, we had a now a mechanism in place in which the nation grew from a geographic perspective. And then we funded the growth of that nation by divesting those lands into private ownership. We established reservations for those dispossessed of their homelands, but then promptly violated those reservations to create public commons. But besides all of that darkness [laughs] I seem to just outline to me, the next set of eras really began to form what we hold today, what we maybe think of today as our public lands. So let's start with the backlash to the plundering of our natural resources by the few, something that honestly echoes loudly today. Uh, would you explain that era of the late 1800s and what followed with what your book calls The Great Transition?
• 10:21
  Yeah. So the, uh... I'm gonna go back and, and, uh, put a gloss on something you said earlier, which is that the original era was using the, the national government, using the lands to fund the national government. That was part of it, but only a, a part of it, because the national government used those lands really to keep the nation together, to stitch the nation together as the settlers advanced across the West. And it did that in by various means. It, it used the public lands to demand that the local government, state and local governments create public school system funded by revenues from the lands. Uh, and so the national government played, and the public lands played an important role in the system of public education we have. The national government used those lands to, to build infrastructure as the settlement advanced across the West. Canals, railroads, uh, very much the result of public land divestiture. So it wasn't just money. It was also using those lands to direct a particular result, namely, keep the nation together. Uh, and that's an important point, I think, because when we look today, I think the public lands can and should play the same role. They are, they are commons that help keep the nation together. And at a time when the nation is so badly divided, I think that's a really important lesson to keep hammering home, you know, that public lands are, are for all, all the citizens of the country, not just residents of a particular area. Uh, okay, so fast-forward to post-Civil War, uh,
• 12:05
  as the settlement, particularly with the Gold Rush, you had this huge unleashing of a vast amounts of population, immigration into the western states. They threw all the Native Americans, mo- most of them, off their lands, uh, and were just developing, industrializing, mining, et cetera.And the federal government allowed all that to happen, in fact, encouraged all that to happen without retaining any real control over the public lands. And there was a lot of corruption. There was a lot of excess environmental degradation. There was intense logging and a lot of water pollution and threats to water supplies that resulted. So it was really the first kind of environmental backlash where people said, "My God, we're, we're actually really plundering. We're doing bad things here, uh, with bad effects, and we need to get a control of that. Uh, and we're also doing it basically to benefit, you know, the, the wealthy speculator investors, uh, and that's a bad thing because we're a democracy." Uh, and so all that combined to create a reaction to what was happening, and the, uh, political movement developed, which gained strength quite quickly. This is in the 1870s, 1880s, gained strength quite quickly. We gotta hold on to some of that land. We can't just let it all be, uh, plundered and lost, uh, with all these, the degradation that results. We gotta hold on to some of that land and preserve it for a longer term, for, for future generations as well as the present generation. Uh, and that resulted in both national parks and national forests being established kind of in a parallel way. 1890 is the date I put on it to mark that transition, that turnaround, where-- because in 1890, Congress gave the president the authority to reserve lands for forest protection and ownership and, and protection. And around the same time, Congress was establishing individual national parks to protect scenic wonders and historic characteristics and that sort of thing. So those happened pretty much simultaneously starting in the 1890s, and that movement took off, and it, and it has continued for the next really a hundred and thirty years. I mean, it's, uh, it's been in, in play and working in that same direction ever since.
• 14:35
  Public lands are for all is how you answered Bill's question, and one thing I've noticed about your book is that it, it makes the case that public lands have been a unifying institution across two hundred and fifty years of American politics de-despite this monkey business that you're describing. Does what's happening now, the hollowing out of agency budgets, the aggressive oil and gas leasing, the litigation strategies, does all that feel qualitatively different to you, or is this just, you know, a sagebrush rebellion with a more favorable court? You know, what I mean is, is the increased pace and scope of the attacks on public land by this administration something novel, or is it a cyclical thing?
• 15:21
  Uh, it's a excellent question. It's really the challenge of our time. It's really the challenge, and, and I don't have a clear answer because I think the answer is unclear. As you point out, there are things-- there were things like the sagebrush rebellion. As, as this, as this movement, this powerful movement to hold and protect more and more lands, uh, continued from 1890 to really practically the present, um, there were occasional sort of hiccups. There were occasional reactions. "Oh, no, that's too far. No, no, we don't like that." You know, there were, there were kind of protests which would be mounted, but none of them had any staying power, and none of them were powerful enough to really change the trajectory. They were just little blips along the way. Uh, so when the Trump, first Trump administration came in, uh, I asked the question, "Well, is this just another blip?" And one could say, well, the first Trump administration, uh, at the end of it, you could say, yeah, that was just a blip because they were, you know, protesting and trying to change things, but they didn't-- it didn't really have any lasting power, what the first Trump administration did. And then Biden came in and kinda restored all the things that Trump had, uh, tried to undo on regarding public lands, and then life went on. But then Trump two comes, and Trump two
• 16:40
  tries the same thing Trump one did, but with a much greater intensity and focus and frankly much greater effectiveness in trying to change that trajectory and say, "No, no, we wanna undo stuff. We don't wanna just stop holding and protecting more and more lands. We wanna reverse the trend, and we wanna, you know, start divesting and start, uh, plundering again," and just like was happening in the 1870s and 1880s. And, and frankly, if you read the Trump administration's pronouncements, they don't disguise that. They basically said, "Well, the 1880s were the, was the, you know, the greatest era in, in, in American history for all the wealth it created, et cetera, et cetera, uh, and we wanna go back to that." So they are clearly trying to reverse the trend, to undo that long trajectory. Now, will they succeed? That's your question. Will they succeed in doing that? I, I can't answer that. It's too early to say. What they are doing has cr- clearly given rise to a reaction or a set of reactions in different parts of the country, but, you know, there are a lot of people out there now saying, "No, no, no, this is going too far. No, no, we don't like that. No, no, stop that." Um, will it combine into-- Will all those different protests combine into a kind of a national movement that will restore that trajectory? Uh, I can't answer that. I think right now, uh, the, the most accurate answer is maybe they can. Uh, and, and you put your, put your finger on one thing that is, I think, maybe the most troubling of all, which is the Trump two administration's effort, focus sustained to hollow out the agencies that manage these lands.Uh, to fire, you know, their senior employees, to undo their expertise, to destroy their scientific capacity and all of that. The problem with that, I mean, um, among the problems with doing that is that what you
• 18:49
  can do and what might happen is that that hollowing out will make the lands management so bad that the American public will say, "Well, it turns out these feds can't manage those lands, just like we've been-- some of us have been saying all this time, and therefore we need to turn them over to the states or the private sector."
• 19:11
  I think without question, that is the Trump administration's strategy, and, and the, the evil genius, I would put it, behind this is the Secretary of OMB, is Russ Vought. He's the guy who's engineering this hollowing out strategy, and he frankly is a, you know, kind of libertarian who hates everything government does and says government can do nothing right, et cetera, et cetera. And he is pressing very hard and very effectively to hollow out the agencies to make the land so unpopular that it will create a public movement to divest them. And it could succeed. I, I think it's too early to say whether it's gonna succeed or not, but, but that's the strategy.
• 19:55
  You've anticipated my next question perfectly. I was gonna mention that the strategy you're attributing to the current administration, and it's one I, I would attribute to them too, that making federal land management so visibly, so obviously bad that the public can't come to any other conclusion that the government can't do this. So why don't we let private interests give it a try? I mean, that is terrifying. I guess my question for you is, is that a new playbook? Have you seen versions of this before? And if you have, like, who perfected it and how was it beaten back? Because I think that could be helpful to know in this moment.
• 20:28
  Well, nothing-- I would say nothing has in history rivals what's happening now in terms of the hollowing out. There have been, like I said, sort of hiccups in the past. The Sagebrush Rebellion. You know, the Sagebrush Rebellion was an effort to have the federal government, uh, divest title of, of so-called surplus lands or turn them over to the states. But the Sagebrush Rebellion did not attack the management, did not do the hollowing out. That was not part of their strategy. This is new. Uh, and that's why I say, you know, uh, the outcome is unclear because we don't have experience with this, with this idea of let's tear the agencies down. Uh, frankly, it's very scary. And, and a big reason it's scary is that this is not an effort you can undo with, like, turning a light switch off or on. So if you had a favorable administration, one of the things that
• 21:30
  the hollowing out strategy is doing is it's very hard to undo. Uh, so that if you have a favorable administration, a, a more receptive to public lands administration take office to succeed Trump, can they rebuild the agencies and overcome this problem? Well, the answer is yes, but, um, that's not something you do overnight. It may take years. It takes, you know, six months or a year to undo,
• 22:06
  to hollow out, but it may take five or ten years to build back up. And that is a really scary prospect.
• 22:14
  The question about how we build back is a really, really scary one that, that keeps me up at night that I think about a lot. We're talking a lot about the politicians here, but, um, I just wanna touch real quick on the polity, uh, on the people who vote. Uh, one thing that's historically protected public lands, uh, is their sheer popularity across the political spectrum. Do you see any evidence that that popularity is eroding or even being successfully reframed? We, we mentioned this argument that, you know, the government can't manage these lands. Is that argument actually gaining traction with people who used to be reliable defenders of public lands?
• 22:52
  Great question. My answer to that is fairly clear. So far, no, it has not changed the popularity. Uh, there are many, many opinion polls being taken kind of all the time. One of my favorites, by the way, for your listeners is, if you don't know, is the so-called Colorado and the West, uh, polls that are taken by Colorado College. And they've done this every year for the last twenty or so, polling voters across the political spectrum in about ten western states and asking them a series of identical questions about public lands and how they feel about them and protecting them and that sort of thing. And these polls show consistently over the last twenty years, including the latest one through early of this year, twenty twenty-six,
• 23:42
  show a not only maintaining support, but growing support for public lands and protecting more and more public lands across the political spectrum. And so that leads me to believe quite clearly that no, this campaign to make the public lands unpopular is not working so far, but the hollowing out continues, and the management is going to get worse as a result. And so will at some point that public opinion start changing? Uh, I don't know. I'm worried, and we should all be worried.
• 24:15
  We step aside for a word from our sponsor, and we'll be right back with more of the conversation.
• 24:19
  I'm Peter Metcalf from Columbia Falls, Montana, and you're listening to The Wild Idea.
• 24:26
  So John, you know, I, I, [sighs] I appreciate you bringing up the, the Colorado College poll. I mean, it, it's, uh, something I paid attention to for years. The numbers d- obviously illustrate that, like, the public is not going along with this, uh, idea that public lands are, are to the point where we can no longer trust the, the federal government to manage them. I, I'm wondering also about this disconnect, you know, I don't know. I, I'm gonna put it away. You can correct me, Anders can correct me, but it seems more l- possible for a, an administration to ignore public opinion, particularly one that, you know, we have a, an extreme example, right? We have a lame duck president who already has displayed an inability to really care what people think. Um, but, but I don't think the, the legislative branch can ignore it for long. You know, the numbers, like you, you talked about the poll, the 76% support keeping protection for public lands, and only 21%, you know, see public lands as a resource for energy generation. But, like, w- how do we look at the ebb and flow of how the public has engaged on these issues, made it so critical that, you know, we pass something like the Wilderness Act of 1964, clean air, clean water, that sort of thing? How do we stay engaged when right now it feels like you're shouting into a void that's not being heard?
• 25:43
  Well, that's a $64 question in a way. I mean, uh, obviously from the time when the public land conservation movement, if you wanna call it that, was, you know, gaining power and, and, and really exercising a lot of power, the Congress was very different. I mean, it, we responded, uh, to kind of national grassroots campaigns in a way that, uh, now doesn't seem to work. I mean, that's before social media and, and, you know, podcasting and all kinds of stuff came along that changed the way people got basic information and acted on it. And so I think we're in a very different period from a cultural political standpoint than we were then, and whether, um, [clears throat] whether the strength of that movement, as shown in pu- the opinion polls, can be translated into political action or effect on Congress is, that's a big, gigantic question mark, uh, uh, right now. And, uh, Trump has been very effective, gotta give him credit, in, uh, controlling his movement, if you wanna call the MAGA, uh, movement a movement, and I think you have to. Uh, he's been very effective in controlling it, um, and, uh, and, uh, giving it messages, even though what he's doing on the ground is very different from what they believe, at least if you believe the opinion polls, about public land. So, uh, where we go from here, I think, is a really important but unanswerable question.
• 27:14
  Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, one of those questions, uh, one of those, uh, Colorado College opinion poll things that you put up on the screen when we were together in Salt Lake at the Stegner thing illustrated that even MAGA, folks who identified as MAGA, don't wanna see any changes to the national monuments, for example. So it's, it's just gonna be, yeah, time will tell how people will respond. And again, we're talking to John Leshy. He's written a great book on the history of public lands called Our Common Ground: The History of America's Public Lands. I highly encourage our audience to go pick up that book
• 27:47
  and get into all of this. Like, we're gonna barely scratch the surface in the less than an hour that we have here, but we're gonna move on to some current themes real quick, John. Um, during the tail end of the Obama administration and through the four years of the Biden administration, there was a pivot to engaging in co-stewardship or co-management with NGOs, but also very specifically with tribal governments. Does that effort run the risk of co-stewardship being co-opted to mean privatization? Obviously, it doesn't mean that when literally government to government negotiations and conversations with tribal governments, but, like, does the overuse of the term co-stewardship at all open the door for something like privatization of management of our public lands?
• 28:30
  Interesting question. Uh, personally, I'm not too worried about that. I think co-stewardship, co-management are terms that have been, uh, [clears throat] if not totally appropriated by Indigenous interests, has been substantially. I mean, it's, uh, I think most people understand it to mean, uh, giving Indigenous interests a greater voice and, and not a greater voice to everybody else. I mean, there, there are, there are various mechanisms and always have been for, for, uh, non-Indigenous groups, local governments, and, um, and different kinds of interest groups to en- engage and have a lot of influence and a, and a lot of control, if you will, over public lands. Uh, but the Indigenous interests, their, their rise in influence is really marked, um, just in the last 20 years or so. Um, but they've become very powerful, I mean, way beyond their numbers because, you know, Native Americans are, I don't know, two, 3% of the population, but I would say they have a lot of sympathizers. And so when they talk about the need for Indigenous influence, a lot of people respond to that and, uh, have responded to it, and they've become quite, quite influential, quite powerful. But, but I don't, I'm not too worried about the idea that that's gonna be appropriated and used in other contexts. I really do think it has a pretty special meaning.
• 29:57
  John, despite what everyone might understand co-management or co-stewardship to mean, it doesn't have a strict legal definition, which is a fact you've noted. Um, I'm curious if you think that's a feature or a bug. You know, does formalization through statute help or hurt the flexi- flexibility that's made those arrangements work, in my opinion?
• 30:17
  Uh, you know, it, it, it's one of my pet peeves actually, and I've worked on Native American, uh, issues in relation to public lands really for a long, long time. And I can tell you that it is an incredibly, I'm sure you know, incredibly complex field. Uh, there just isn't anything simple about it, uh, because there are different Native American groups, there are different types, there are different, uh, uh, they come in different, uh, textures and, and, uh, um, and the same thing with respect to-- So there are, for example, formally recognized tribes, but you go to Alaska, there are native corporations that are chartered under state law that have a good deal of power. And then there are unrecognized tribes that, uh, you know, exist but don't have any formal federal rec-recognition. So there's just a, a, a very complex universe, and when you take that and then say, "Okay, what does co-stewardship and co-management mean?" It gets even more complex. I mean, it just, uh... So there is just no simple definition, and, uh, you know, it, it's, uh, I think most people understand it as a, as a co-management or, or co-stewardship means that tribal or indigenous voices have a special place in the management. And, and I think that's, that's very general, but I think that's generally accurate. But what does that mean exactly? You know, uh, does it mean, for example, a role in law enforcement and in developing rules and regulations and then enforcing those rules and regulations?
• 31:59
  Not really. I don't think most people understand that to be that. It's something more abstract than that, and it varies from context to context, from issue to issue. So, uh, you know, I, I don't discourage the use of co-stewardship. I just, uh, would put a big warning flag on it that it's not simple, and it, it doesn't have a simple, constant meaning.
• 32:21
  So I wanna zoom in on Utah for a second, um, and ask you about, uh, Bears Ears National Monument. Bears Ears is often held up as a model of tribal involvement and monument designation, and rightfully so. But the political reversals it went through, legal or not, Trump reducing it, Biden restoring it, I, I think those kind of exposed maybe how fragile executive-only protections are. Um, and I'm curious, I, I would bet a million dollars you've done thinking on this, but I'm curious about your thinking on, on what would a more durable legal architecture around national monuments look like?
• 33:03
  With respect to indigenous influence or more generally?
• 33:07
  Uh, maybe both. I, I guess I actually mean the question more generally. Um, Bears Ears is kinda where it popped up, and so it's always played a role. But yeah, may-maybe, uh, under both structures.
• 33:16
  Uh, well, more generally, it, it's a really interesting question, and, you know, I'm a lawyer, or used to be, and, uh, I've thought about this from the standpoint of, of legal, uh, standards as well. Uh, and there's just a fair amount of ambiguity about how permanent, uh, uh, a national monument is. And for example, the--
• 33:39
  Trump shrinking the size of those monuments, uh, that was never tested in court. I mean, it was challenged in court, but, uh, but Biden reversed it before the courts had a chance to rule on it. Uh, we may get a court ruling at some point, but the, the long and short of it is, there have been, um, uh, uh, you know, many dozen national monuments established, uh, and none of them have ever been, uh, abolished by the executive. Um, a handful have been abolished by the, the Congress, and of course, what Congress creates, Congress can abolish. But does the executive have unilateral power to abolish a monument or to significantly shrink a monument or to significantly reduce the protections in a monument that a previous president has established? That's actually a big unknown legally, and, uh, uh, there are good arguments on both sides. I mean, if I were looking at this objectively, I'd say it could go either way, and we may have some answers to that in the near future, or we may not. Now, Bears Ears is an interesting example, uh, of a lot of things we've been talking about because, uh, you know, Trump shrank, significantly shrank Bears Ears, uh, and there was a very large public reaction. There was a huge amount of public criticism. Um, not so much in Utah, but everywhere else, uh, people thought that was a, a bad move. Now, I've, I've heard consistently, uh, I don't have any insider information, but I've heard that Trump himself was quite shocked at the level of reaction, uh, adverse reaction to what he did. And significantly, you know, his Secretary of the Interior at the time, Zinke, recommended shrinking or abolishing Bears Ears and Grand Staircase, and also several other monuments. Trump only did those two initially. He did nothing more, uh, and he completely backed away from it. I think that confirms that Trump really was surprised, uh, and underestimated the, uh, amount of opposition there would be. Now, when Trump two came in, came in for a second term, uh, uh, many of my, uh, associates or former colleagues in the environmental conservation movement said, "Well, he's gonna shrink them again." Well, he hasn't. He's done nothing with respect to those two monuments or, or really any other monuments in any significant way since he's been in office a second time. So I think, you know, he does get at some base level the idea that those monuments are, are in a special place from a political standpoint and, and they're popular. And he'll do a lot of other stuff and is doing a lot of other stuff to undermine and destroy protections, but he hasn't tamp-tampered with, uh, tinkered with the monument thing yet.
• 36:23
  Do you think that Trump will be as shocked by the public reaction to, say, rescinding the roadless rule or pulling back the public lands rule?
• 36:30
  No, I don't think so, and it's a good question. Why? Why? Because actually, the roadless rule has potentially far greater effects over a much larger area, 50 million acres or more, compared to shrinking a one million or two million or three million acre monument. Why is that? Well, I think the answer is that rescinding the roadless rule, uh, or rescinding the conservation rule or these other things doesn't immediately translate into on-the-ground action. I mean, it doesn't really expose specific areas right now to industrialization and the like. You repeal the roadless rule, yeah, well, you've taken that layer off the table, that layer of protection. But in order to then start building roads or logging in those former roadless rules, you've got to go through a process, and you've got to make individual decisions about that area's gonna be open, that area's not gonna be open, et cetera. And that's where the public, the immediate public reaction, focusing on the particular places, is going to be manifested, and that's the difference, I think. It's between a kind of a generic removal of a single layer of protection, uh, as, as opposed to specifically opening a very specific area to, to industrialization. And he's right about that. I mean, there, the-- while the overwhelming general public reaction to repealing the roadless rule has been negative, it's not been, you know, as sharp and, and kind of focused, uh, as the response to shrinking the Bears Ears.
• 38:15
  Really puts the onus on-
• 38:17
  Was
• 38:17
  ... uh, conservationists and organizers to, to make this real for folks, to, you know,
• 38:24
  Exactly. And, and, and to focus on specific area, and to engage local people who are upset and get them to speak out. You know, "This is my backyard. Uh, you are opening my backyard." To say you're repealing the roadless rule, it's just too abstract for, for people to kinda get that this is, this is facilitating opening my backyard, but it's not actually opening it. That will come later.
• 38:52
  John, as you noted, you know, the administration hasn't taken a, an action on
• 38:59
  Bears Ears, um, or Grand Staircase again. Um, but, but Congress at least has taken a step, which is Representative Malloy and, and Senator Lee's introduction of using the CRA, Congressional Review Act, as a way to undo the management plan for Grand Staircase-Escalante. I'm curious, [chuckles] you, you, you, like you said, you're an attorney. Uh, you practice public land law, taught public land law. You were solicitor at Interior. What are we gonna do with this morass of how they've used the CRA this time on specifically rescinding land management plans? 'Cause that's not the only example, right? They've already cleared the final hurdle on, you know, in Montana, in the Dakotas, in Alaska. Now it's just, uh, Grand Staircase-Escalante. Now, but what are we gonna do with language like they can't now put a management plan that is substantially the same? What is that even gonna mean, and how, how are we gonna sort that out? I'm assuming that's gonna fall to Congress, but maybe you can help me understand that.
• 39:59
  Well, it'll first fall to the courts to kinda figure out what, what that means. Uh, but you're right.
• 40:05
  Using the CRA, which remember, is only twenty years old and, and until recently hasn't been used in this kinda context, so we're seeing a very recent development here. Um, I think it's a complete morass, and I think there are plenty of people on the industrial side, the oil and gas people and others, who are very nervous about this because they don't know what this is gonna mean either. It's create-- it's gonna create a huge amount of instability, of uncertainty for everybody, and it could be used by a friendly, you know, a conservation-oriented administration, a green administration that comes in. They could start using it to cut back on, you know, th- deals that the, that the, uh, oil and gas people got. Uh, so it could be a complete, uh... It's a wild card, uh, in terms of what it might mean and how much instability it's gonna create. And if I had to bet, I would say within, uh, one to three years, regardless of what, who controls the Congress, Congress is gonna have to deal with it because I think the, the morass and the uncertainty is gonna be too great for everybody. And so Congress just has to fix it. I don't, uh, uh, uh...
• 41:20
  Obviously, that's a, that's a prediction I, um, but I, I, I'm pretty confident that that's what's gonna have to happen.
• 41:27
  So I'm gonna take us back to the beginning here as we get near the end.
• 41:32
  When do you think we'll know whether this was a blip or this is a hard reset? Like, is it gonna be 10 years from now before we finally realize, oh man, they completely reset the argument for how Americans value public lands, or two years from now are we gonna go, well, that was just a quick blip and, you know. 'Cause I mean, obviously things could change with the midterm election in November and, uh, a Congress that might actually, you know, provide more oversight on something like the reorganization of the Forest Service, which we've not even talked about here. So how long do you think we'll know b- about this being a reset or not?
• 42:03
  Excellent question. Uh, if I had to predict and you held me down to a specific answer, I'd say within two to five years. I don't think it's, uh, I don't think it's gonna be immediate that we'll know, uh, as has happened in the past where you've had these little blips and, you know, a year or two later, you know, well, that was just a blip. Uh, this is much more serious. What Trump, the second Trump administration's doing is far more comprehensive, global, and serious, uh, than anything that's happened before for the, since 1890I would say. Uh, and so it... A- a- and particularly this hollowing out stuff, the idea of ripping the managerial expertise and capacity and strength out of these agencies and their budgets, uh, that's not something you ... It's like a light switch you can turn back on. That will take years to, to, uh, revive and, and reinstall. And during those years, uh, you know, public support is, is up in the air. I mean, it's a question mark whether more members of the public are gonna start saying more and more, "Yeah, the feds really are ... don't know how to manage these lands. They're not doing a very good job, and therefore we need to transfer them to the states or private sector or both or whatever." So this is a huge threat, and, uh, I, I'm hopeful it will be a blip, but we may not know for four or five, six years, uh, say five years, whether it's a blip or not. Of course, if it's five years, it's not really a blip. It's, uh [chuckles] it's something a little more than a blip. [laughs]
• 43:42
  Yeah, for sure. I ... In, in a preview of a, of a conversation we have coming up and something that you and I got to hear proposed, uh, from the, from the dais at the Stegner Symposium was Andrew Mergen's idea about Congress recommissioning a public land law commission like they did in the '70s. I'm curious both your view on that idea, that concept, but also that there's so many different people out there, including, uh, you know, the folks now at Ground Shift, who are starting to at least reimagine what public lands management might look like moving forward. But what are your thoughts on a, a land, public land law commission in Congress and this larger thinking that's going on while we're also still in the middle of today's fights?
• 44:30
  On the commission, I, I am a- actually a big admirer of the public land law commission that, that presided in, uh, 1970s. Uh, started in '64, but took several years and read and studied and made recommendations about what to do about public lands, and Congress adopted many of those in the Federal Land Policy and Management Act and reforming the Forest Management Act. So that's a very influential commission. Had a powerful impact on the future of policy. Uh, can we simply repeat that with a new or something like it with a new commission? You have to look at what Congress did back then, how different Congress is now. That commission was largely congressional. I mean, most of the members of the commission were experts from Congress, sitting members of Congress. And so, a- and they did their work really well, and they had really good background studies to act on and that sort of thing. Uh, and so it was no surprise that their recommendation, almost all of them got approved eventually by Congress. You can't do that now. You can't have a Congre- I don't think Congress would ever, uh, recreate that in its current form, uh, that is the current Congress or the current culture. It's too polarized. Um, you don't have any tradition of kinda working across agency lines or people open-minded, members of Congress being open-minded. Uh, now, there are a number of commissions that have been created before and after that one which have had very little impact. Um, you know, there was one on water policy Congress, uh, uh, uh, set in motion in the '90s, 1990s. I worked a little bit then on that. And, uh, and its recommendations went kinda nowhere, you know. It was like, "Yeah, that's interesting," and, "Well, you know, that might make sense," but none of them got adopted because they were, they were really a kind of, uh, you know, uh, I hate to use this word, but a sort of academic think tank type of thing. You know, what do you do when you take some people who don't have their, uh, hands dirty in the practical realities of Congress and make recommendations? I worry that a commission today would have more likely to be like that and then have no real impact. And in the meantime, the, the thing that troubles me in that context is, uh, you're gonna create a lot of ... soak up a lot of attention and, uh, and energy on something that's not gonna go anywhere. And so that's kind of a, ultimately a waste of time and detracts from more important or more likely results that could improve, uh, public land management. We don't need a change in the basic laws like the multiple use and sustained yield principle and all that. I, I think
• 47:22
  w- we, uh, we have gone in a, in the right direction within the framework of those laws, and we can continue to go in the right direction, that is, of holding and protecting more and more land. I don't think we need a change in the law to do that. So I'm, I'm a bit skeptical. Now, I would make one important exception to that, and that is I think it would be very useful for somebody, whether it's an academic type of group or some members of Congress or whatever, to look at the funding, both the revenue side and the expenditure side of public land management in general, because it's a complete kinda mishmash. You know, it's congressional appropriations, and some of them are transferred automatically to states and local governments for various purposes and, and some of them don't raise revenue at all, like hardrock mining. No hardrock miner has ever, uh, paid us any penny to the federal government for mining on public lands. And, uh, so it's, uh, just a mishmash. It cries out for some more rational approach, and I think that could be useful to take that particular niche, that sort of revenue g- raising and distribution and funding side, uh, and making more sense of that.
• 48:36
  What scares me about a commission made up of, of members of Congress today is we just don't have the public lands literacy
• 48:43
  that we had way back, uh, in the '70s or the '80s or even the '90s. I just, you know, I think we really struggle to identify members, and there are some out there who are wonderful champs and who come from public lands backgrounds, but just w- just sheer numbers are not the same as they once were.
• 48:58
  I agree 100%.
• 49:00
  John Laschi, it has been such a privilege and an honor to have you on here. We could go on so much longer, but I think this just means we're gonna have to have you back again and again and again as, as thinking evolves. I just think we're gonna have to go ahead and say, "John, we need to make you a regular. We need you to come back. We need to update what thinking should look like today." But, uh, for today, I think we'll, we'll sort of be respectful of your time and say it's just been a real honor to have you on. People, again, I encourage you to pick up Our Common Ground. It is a, it is, it is an intense read, it is a thorough read, and you will, you will better understand the full suite of our public lands if you read it. So John, thank you for coming on. We really appreciate it.
• 49:38
  Well, it's an honor to be here. I thank you very much for the privilege, and, uh, as you can tell, I will talk about public lands anytime, anywhere. So y- I, um, invite me back. I'd be delighted. [laughs]
• 49:50
  We will do that. It'll be, it'll be an honor to have you as a regular. Coming up on The Wild Idea podcast, we have a summer of travel and live events from the shores of the Flathead Lake to the bayous of Louisiana to working ranch lands of Montana. We are getting out there to bring you the conversations that we hope generate thought and inspire action. We will profile amazing stewards of our public lands and visit with authors, scientists, and activists that cover what makes our intersection of wild nature and our own human nature so interesting. We love that each of you are engaging on this ride with us, and we hope you will invite others to the party through our socials and on the podcast players you use. You can stay on top of all we have going on with our newsletter that you can subscribe to at thewildidea.com. You can support our work with a one-time or recurring contribution via Buy Me a Coffee, which you also find on our website. Here's to you getting out there, us getting out there, and when we all do, we will see you on down the trail.
• 50:47
  The Wild Idea is a production of Wild Idea Media and hosted by Bill Hodge and Anders Reynolds. Production and editing by Brent Russell at PodLab. Digital support by Holly Wilkoszewski at Daypack Digital. Our theme music, "Spring Hill Jack," is from Railroad Earth and was composed by John Skehan. Our executive producer and ringleader is Laura Hodge. You can find The Wild Idea wherever you listen to or download your favorite podcast. If you have a minute, please take a minute to give us a rating, and if you really like us, we hope you'll subscribe. Learn more about us at thewildidea.com. [upbeat music]