The Wild Idea

Wild Idea Media

The Wild Idea is an exploration of the intersection of wild nature and our own human nature. The hosts, Bill Hodge and Anders Reynolds, through conversations with experts and thought leaders will dive into the ways that humans have both embraced and impact the function and vitality of our remaining wild places.

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142 episodes
Updated Friday

Episodes142

Newest first

May 26 · 34 min
Tracy Stone-Manning Returns: Don't Mourn, Organize
The federal lands fight has shifted since Tracy Stone-Manning last sat down with Bill and Anders in June 2025. The workforce cuts she warned about have arrived; the Roadless Rule is days from final rescission; and on the day this episode was recorded, the BLM Public Lands Rule was formally rescinded. Stone-Manning, who led the Bureau of Land Management under President Biden, returns as the show's first repeat guest to assess the damage, name what's still worth fighting for, and make the case that the crisis contains an opportunity. The conversation covers the full landscape of the current moment. We walk through the hollowing-out of federal land management agencies, including the deferred resignation programs, proposed 30% budget cuts for FY27, and Forest Service reorganization, all of which she frames as an effort to set agencies up to fail and use that failure to justify divestiture. She sounds a direct alarm on wildfire: with historic low snowpack, a reorganizing Forest Service, and reduced staffing, she calls the coming season a recipe for the government to fail its people. She also addresses the Congressional Review Act's unprecedented use against Grand Staircase-Escalante's citizen-built management plan, and names what a future Congress would need to do to fix it. The episode's most striking thread is Stone-Manning's argument that the destruction itself has opened a door. Ground Shift, a cross-partisan ideas hub seeded by the Wilderness Society but operating independently, is betting that public anger, the obvious inadequacy of laws written for the Dust Bowl and to settle the West, and the scale of what will need to be rebuilt represent a once-in-a-generation chance to reimagine public lands protection from the ground up. Her message to listeners losing hope: don't mourn, organize, and be ready with the answers when the moment comes. Learn more and find the links and resources mentioned today at our website, thewildidea.com.
May 22 · 15 min
The Wild Line: Pearce Confirmed for BLM, Cyanide Bombs Return to Public Lands, Kash Patel Dives Pearl Harbor
This week on The Wild Line, we’re tracking the Senate confirmation of Steve Pearce as Bureau of Land Management director, the Trump administration’s restoration of cyanide trap devices on public lands, new reporting on how automated bots are locking everyday users out of Recreation.gov permits, the launch of a free community shuttle connecting Colorado residents to outdoor destinations in the Golden and Morrison area, and FBI Director Kash Patel’s coordinated snorkel tour of the USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor. From FY27 appropriations markups to Conservation Alliance lobbying in Washington, these stories trace a week of compounding movement on federal lands and wildlife policy. Learn more and find the links and resources mentioned at our website, thewildidea.com.
May 19 · 50 min
John Leshy: The Hollowing Out of America’s Public Lands
John Leshy has spent sixty years tracking the arc of federal public land policy, which makes his assessment of the current moment unusually grounded and unusually sobering. He is an Emeritus Professor at UC Law San Francisco, former Solicitor of the Interior Department under President Clinton, and the author of Our Common Ground: A History of America’s Public Lands (Yale University Press, 2022). In this conversation, Leshy traces the founding-era origins of America’s public lands, from the thirteen colonies’ negotiation over western land claims to the Great Transition of 1890, when Congress first authorized presidents to reserve lands for protection. He then turns to the present, naming the Trump administration’s approach not as a policy disagreement but as something new: a deliberate strategy to hollow out the agencies that manage these lands, make the management visibly bad, and use public disillusionment to justify divestiture. He also examines why Bears Ears National Monument drew an immediate public backlash while rescinding the Roadless Rule has not, and what that difference means for conservation organizers. The hollowing out of agencies is not something that can be reversed quickly; rebuilding the expertise and capacity that has been stripped away could take a decade. Whether public support, which Colorado College’s annual western polls show remains strong and even growing across the political spectrum, can translate into political action remains, in Leshy’s words, “a big, gigantic question mark.” Learn more about today's conversation and find the links and resources mentioned at our website, thewildidea.com.
May 15 · 10 min
The Wild Line: Public Lands Rule Rescinded, Right Whale and Roadless Rule Hearings Loom, and Wins in Colorado and New Mexico
This week on The Wild Line, we're tracking the Bureau of Land Management's rescission of the Conservation and Landscape Health Rule, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum's congressional testimony — including his description of designated wilderness areas as "death sentences for forests" — a House bill that would block North Atlantic right whale protections through 2035, the authorization of chainsaws in the Frank Church Wilderness, and state-level wins in Colorado and New Mexico. Find the details and links mentioned at our website, thewildidea.com
May 12 · 47 min
Gregg Treinish & Lara Birkes: Turning Adventure into Conservation Data
In this episode, Bill and Anders sit down with Greg Treinish, founder of Adventure Scientists, and Lara Birkes, the organization's newly appointed executive director, for a wide-ranging conversation about what happens when outdoor skill meets scientific purpose. Greg launched Adventure Scientists 15 years ago after growing restless on expeditions across the Andes and Appalachian Trail, feeling that the time and effort spent exploring wild places could be put to better use. What began as a scrappy nonprofit driven by personal relationships and viral outdoor media has grown into a global network of more than 10,000 trained volunteers collecting data across projects spanning microplastics, antibiotic resistance, endangered species, coral reef restoration, illegal timbering, and high-altitude fungi. A central theme of the conversation is data quality: how Adventure Scientists has built protocols rigorous enough to hold up in court, and how that credibility has forced a broader reckoning in the scientific community about what community-gathered data can actually achieve. Greg and Lara also discuss the frontier of new tools, from eDNA sampling to LIDAR drones flown by indigenous communities in the Peruvian Amazon, and how these technologies extend the reach of field science without replacing the irreplaceable value of boots on the ground. Learn more and find the links and resources mentioned today on our website.
May 8 · 7 min
The Wild Line: Pearce Nomination Heads to Senate Floor, American Prairie Permit Battle, Alaska Land Transfer, and Ted Turner's Legacy
This week on The Wild Line, we're tracking the Senate's imminent floor vote on Steve Pearce's nomination as BLM Director, Montana's escalating campaign against American Prairie's bison grazing permits, a federal land transfer tied to the Ambler Road corridor in Alaska, an Alaska court ruling allowing unlimited bear killing in southwest Alaska, a pending Forest Service decision on chainsaw use in the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness, and the death of conservationist Ted Turner. From nomination fights to wilderness policy to bison restoration, the pressure on public lands is building on every front. Find the links and resources mentioned today at our website, thewildidea.com
May 5 · 48 min
Autumn Gillard & Steve Bloch: Tribal Voices and the Fight to Save Grand Staircase - Escalante
In this episode, Bill and Anders are joined by Autumn Gillard, coordinator for the Grand Staircase Intertribal Coalition, and Steve Bloch, legal director for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA), for a wide-ranging conversation about one of the most contested and celebrated landscapes in the American West: Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. Autumn brings a Southern Paiute perspective to the work, rooted in personal connection to ancestral land and galvanized by witnessing the vandalism of irreplaceable cultural sites. Steve brings 30 years of legal and conservation advocacy, including direct involvement in the monument's establishment in 1996 and the subsequent legal battles that followed. The conversation traces the full arc of the monument's history, from early twentieth-century preservation visions to the coal mining threat that catalyzed the 1996 designation, through the Trump administration's 2017 reduction of the monument boundaries and the Biden administration's 2021 restoration. Steve and Autumn explain how the collaborative management planning process that followed the restoration became an opportunity to elevate tribal voices in unprecedented ways, with coalition members sitting alongside elders without smartphones to hand-transcribe their knowledge into formal public comments. That process produced a management plan that now faces a new and potentially permanent threat: weaponized use of the Congressional Review Act by Representative Celeste Maloy and Senator Mike Lee. What emerges from this conversation is not despair but resolve. Autumn speaks with quiet power about carrying the weight of ancestral obligation and drawing strength from the land itself, preparing not for today's outcome but for seven generations forward. Steve lays out the legal landscape with clarity and urgency, while both guests leave listeners with a simple, actionable message: your voice matters, and raising it, whether by calling Congress or simply visiting the monument, is its own form of advocacy. Learn more about today's episode and find the links and resources mentioned at our website, thewildidea.com.
May 1 · 12 min
The Wild Line: Trump Pulls NPS Nominee, Appalachian Groups Sue Over Corridor H, and the Forest Service Embraces Glyphosate
This week on The Wild Line, we're tracking the withdrawal of the Trump administration's National Park Service nominee, a Forest Service plan to spray glyphosate across 10,000 acres of public land, a federal lawsuit to stop a controversial West Virginia highway, a proposed blast mine threatening the San Joaquin River, new University of Montana survey data on public lands attitudes, a coalition framework rejecting public land sell-offs as a housing fix, and the opening of a new trail at Red Rock Canyon. From farm bill stalemates to the gap between what Montana voters say and how their delegation votes, these stories cut to the heart of who controls — and who protects — America's public lands. Find the links and resources mentioned today at our website, thewildidea.com.
April 28 · 31 min
Dalton George: The Hellbender, The High Country, and the Fight to Keep Appalachia Wild
Dalton George is the mayor of Boone, North Carolina and the national organizing director for the Endangered Species Coalition. He came up through community organizing, founded a tenant rights organization, led the campaign to make Boone the first carbon-neutral municipality in North Carolina, and got himself elected to town council before becoming the youngest mayor in the state. The thread connecting Dalton's work across housing justice, voting rights, and wildlife advocacy is a conviction that displacement is displacement, whether it happens to people or species. He draws a direct line between luxury development pressuring working families out of Appalachian communities and the same pressures pushing the Eastern hellbender salamander toward extinction. Both stories, he argues, are about powerful outside forces reshaping a place and its character, often without the people who live there having much say. The episode was recorded while Dalton was in Washington, DC lobbying against the ESA Amendments Act, a bill that would have significantly weakened the Endangered Species Act. The morning they recorded, that bill was pulled from the floor after opposition mounted and its sponsors realized they did not have the votes. It was a rare and meaningful win, and Dalton's reflections on what made it possible, ordinary people from across the country showing up to tell their stories in congressional offices, cut to the heart of what he believes about organizing, advocacy, and the kind of power that's still available to regular people when they decide to use it. Learn more about today's conversation and find the links and resources mentioned at our website, thewildidea.com.
April 24 · 12 min
The Wild Line: Advocates Notch a Win for Endangered Species, the Forest Service Considers Chainsaws and Mining in Wilderness
This week on The Wild Line, we’re tracking a major Endangered Species Act victory on Capitol Hill, proposed Forest Service rule changes that would open wilderness areas to chainsaws and fast-track mining exploration on national forest land, Interior and Agriculture secretaries facing congressional budget scrutiny, and a landmark master plan approved for California’s Great Redwood Trail. From federal wilderness policy to tribal treaty rights, these stories reveal the high stakes of public lands management in 2026. Learn more and find the links and resources mentioned today at our website, thewildidea.com.
April 21 · 43 min
Jessica Howell-Edwards & Dani Purvis: Fighting for the Wild Soul of Cumberland Island
Cumberland Island National Seashore is one of the most ecologically rich and historically layered landscapes on the American East Coast, and it faces a pivotal moment. In this episode, Bill and Anders sit down with Jessica Howell-Edwards and Dani Purvis, the volunteer advocates behind Wild Cumberland, to explore what makes this Georgia barrier island so extraordinary and what forces are working to reshape it. Jessica and Dani walk listeners through Cumberland's layered past: from the Timucua people who first called it home, to the plantation economy built on enslaved labor, to the Carnegie family's sweeping land acquisitions in the late 1800s, and ultimately to the island's designation as a National Seashore in 1972. That history, they explain, is not just background. It's the foundation for understanding why the Park Service's current proposals, including a Visitor Use Management Plan that would more than double the daily visitor cap and a proposed land exchange with private inholders, deserve intense scrutiny. The conversation also turns to what makes Cumberland ecologically irreplaceable. The island accounts for eighteen miles of Georgia's undeveloped coastline and hosts between twenty-five and thirty-three percent of the state's sea turtle nests each year, in part because of its rare, nearly uninterrupted darkness. With only 4.7 percent of Georgia in public ownership, Cumberland carries an outsized conservation burden, and both guests make clear that protecting it requires not just passion but process, public engagement, and long-term thinking. Find the links and resources mentioned today at our website, thewildidea.com.
April 17 · 10 min
The Wild Line: GOP Approves Mining in the Boundary Waters, USFS Faces Questions on Reorganization, SELC Sues the God Squad
This week on The Wild Line, we're tracking the Senate's passage of a Congressional Review Act resolution to enable mining in the headwaters of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, the Forest Service's proposed headquarters relocation to Salt Lake City, the Conservation Reserve Program's final deadline for 2026 offers, evidence of Trump administration coordination with Sen. Mike Lee's federal land sell-off proposal, the Confluence of States' 2025 Outdoor Report highlighting the $1.3 trillion economic value of outdoor recreation, a Gallup survey showing widespread concern about environmental protection, and a lawsuit challenging the administration's use of the "God Squad" to grant broad exemptions from the Endangered Species Act for Gulf oil and gas leasing. From federal public lands management to conservation policy, these stories highlight the accelerating pace of regulatory rollbacks and their implications for American wilderness and wildlife. For more details about the links and resources mentioned today, visit our website at thewildidea.com.
April 14 · 47 min
Dr. Erica Smithwick: Fire, Climate, and Forest Resilience in the East
Dr. Erica Smithwick, a distinguished professor of geography at Penn State University and director of the Earth and Environmental Systems Institute, joins us to explore the rapidly changing fire landscape in the eastern United States. For decades, fire was largely considered a western phenomenon, but shifting climate conditions and changing forest composition are transforming fire regimes across eastern ecosystems in ways that don't match historical patterns. In this conversation, we examine why eastern forests are burning in new and unexpected ways, what the Eastern Fire Network is doing to address these challenges, and how communities can work together to manage fire in an era of climate change. Dr. Smithwick brings both scientific expertise and personal conviction to the discussion, sharing her perspective as both a researcher watching these changes unfold in real time and a parent concerned about what we're leaving future generations. Learn more and find the links and resources mentioned today at our website, thewildidea.com.
April 10 · 15 min
The Wild Line: Trump Budget Targets Parks, USDA Consolidates NEPA Rules, and Three Key Public Lands Votes Loom in Congress
This week on The Wild Line, we're tracking the Trump Administration's proposed budget cuts to the National Park Service, the controversial Forest Service reorganization plan, a new consolidated NEPA rule at the USDA, and legislative calls to action in Congress. From federal land management challenges to endangered species protections, these stories highlight the stakes for public lands policy and the staff who steward America's natural resources. Learn more and find the links and resources mentioned today at our website, thewildidea.com.
April 7 · 47 min
Dr. William Keeton: Carbon, Complexity, and the Future of Old Growth
Dr. William Keeton is a forest ecologist and silviculturalist at the University of Vermont who has spent most of his career studying old-growth forests in the eastern United States and around the world. In this conversation, he joins hosts Bill Hodge and Anders Reynolds to examine what old growth actually is, where it still exists in the East, and why its fate matters for climate, biodiversity, and the landscapes future generations will inherit. The episode opens with a deceptively simple question: what is an old-growth forest? Keeton explains that old growth is not a fixed condition but a stage of forest development characterized by structural complexity, habitat diversity, and a suite of ecological functions including carbon storage, hydrologic regulation, and biodiversity support. He pushes back on the assumption that eastern forests have nothing to offer compared to towering Pacific Northwest Douglas firs or coastal redwoods, walking through the surprising inventory findings of the past few decades that reveal far more old growth in the eastern United States than was previously believed, from the Adirondacks of upstate New York to the Southern Appalachians and the longleaf pine systems of the Gulf Coast. The conversation also takes the listener below the surface, into the soil, where Keeton discusses the growing understanding of mycorrhizal fungi networks, deep soil carbon, and why a recent study found Swedish old-growth forests store eighty-three percent more carbon than middle-aged forests, with most of that difference buried underground. For listeners who care about public lands, forest policy, and the long arc of ecological recovery, this is a conversation that connects the science to the stakes with rare clarity. Find out more about the links and resources mentioned today at our website, thewildidea.com.
April 3 · 19 min
The Wild Line: U.S. Forest Service Overhaul, Interior Aims to Drill Chaco Canyon, Protections for Rice's Whale Lifted
This week on The Wild Line, we're tracking a proposed reorganization of the U.S. Forest Service, a sweeping Endangered Species Act exemption for Gulf of Mexico oil and gas operations, a court ruling against the Nantahala-Pisgah Forest Plan, a public scoping period threatening Chaco Culture National Historical Park, commercial fishing access in Pacific Marine National Monuments, and a rare wave of conservation wins from San Francisco Bay to Arkansas. From federal agency restructuring to bedrock wildlife law, these stories define the stakes for public lands in 2026. Learn more and find the links and resources mentioned today at our website, thewildidea.com.
March 31 · 1 hr 23 min
The Past, Present and Future of The Roadless Rule
In this special episode, The Wild Idea brings its recent public webinar directly to podcast listeners. Join a high-powered panel of scientists, attorneys, policy veterans, and conservation advocates to examine one of the most consequential federal land protection policies in American history: the 2001 Roadless Rule. The rule has shielded 58.5 million acres of largely intact national forest land from new road construction and most commercial timber harvest for more than two decades, and it now faces a proposed rescission by the current administration. The conversation opens with Mike Dombeck, the former Forest Service chief who oversaw the rule’s development, tracing the road system’s explosive post-World War II growth and the maintenance crisis that made the moratorium on new road construction both necessary and politically viable. From there, the panel moves through the science of wildfire ignitions near roads, the rule’s flexibility for forest health treatments, the economic value of roadless areas to outdoor recreation, and the water supply those landscapes provide to more than 60 million Americans. Monte Mills and Martin Nie bring legal and policy depth to questions of tribal consultation, indigenous land rights, and the gaps that rescission would leave in existing forest plans. Vera Smith of Defenders of Wildlife walks listeners through two interactive mapping tools that illustrate which threatened and endangered species depend on roadless forests, region by region. The episode closes with the full panel reflecting on what, if anything, could be improved in the rule, and how everyday people can make their voices heard before the draft environmental impact statement is finalized. The answer that emerges, again and again, is that the public support which gave this rule its unusual durability remains the most powerful tool available to those who want to see it preserved. Learn more about today's episode and the resources mentioned at our website, thewildidea.com.
March 27 · 12 min
The Wild Line: A Pipeline Executive Heads to Congress, SpaceX Eyes Refuge Land, and E&E News Loses a Quarter of Its Newsroom
This week on The Wild Line, we're tracking Oklahoma's new energy-executive senator, a congressional push to block wilderness at Big Cypress National Preserve, a proposed federal land swap with SpaceX in South Texas, and major staff cuts at E&E News. From Capitol Hill to the Lower Rio Grande Valley, these stories highlight the accelerating pressure on federal public lands and the institutions that cover them. Get more details and the links and resources mentioned today at our website, thewildidea.com.
March 24 · 52 min
Trust for Public Land: Why Every Child Deserves Green Time
In this episode, Bill and Anders sit down with two researchers and advocates who are reshaping how we think about nature and public health: Dr. Carrie Besnette Hauser, President and CEO of the Trust for Public Land, and Dr. Pooja Tandon, a pediatrician and researcher at Seattle Children's Hospital who also serves as a senior scientist with TPL. Together they bring a rare combination of policy reach and clinical grounding to one of the most urgent questions facing American families: how do we make sure every child has meaningful access to the outdoors? The conversation raises a deeper question that runs throughout the episode: what does it mean to bring wild nature to people, rather than waiting for people to come to wild nature? With 100 million Americans living more than a ten-minute walk from a park, and with school yards representing 2 million acres of largely underused civic land, both guests make a persuasive case that the opportunity to change those numbers is already in front of us. The challenge is political will, funding, and the recognition that access to green space is a matter of public health equity. Find out more about the links and resources mentioned today at our website, thewildidea.com.
March 20 · 15 min
The Wild Line: Congress Shields Lead Ammo, ESA Exemptions on the Table, and a Georgia Seashore Fight
This week on The Wild Line, we're tracking Congress's move to block federal lead ammunition and tackle regulations, the first convening of the Endangered Species Act's God Squad in over 30 years, a public lands crossroads symposium in Salt Lake City, and a contested land swap at Cumberland Island National Seashore. From wildlife toxicology to oil and gas exemptions on federal waters, these stories define the current frontlines of public lands policy. Find the links and resources mentioned today at our website, thewildidea.com.