Speaker 1 0:00
Bren. The following is a production of wild idea media.
Bill 0:06
Welcome to the wild line where land stories are the lead stories. This is our report for October 10, 2025
Anders Reynolds 0:14
bill on Monday, President Trump signed an order directing the approval of the Ambler road through the pristine back country of Northwestern Alaska. Here's Matt Jackson, Senior Manager for Alaska, for the Wilderness Society. So this
Speaker 2 0:27
idea of building a road to the Ambler mining district has been around since 2015 and basically it would be a 211 mile spur off the Dalton Highway that the public would not be allowed to access. It'd be a private industrial Road, it'd still be getting a lot of traffic. We're talking about dozens of massive ore trucks every day. But it's not a public access highway. It's a private industrial road crossing to more than 200 miles of the Southern Brooks Range, crossing really special rivers like the Koya con and the Kobuk, as well as hundreds of their tributaries. So it's a big project through an area that so far has been completely spared from industrial development.
Anders Reynolds 1:07
Here's Jackson on who the road is actually being built for. Yeah, the
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people who were benefiting from this road are the people that own the mining company, and for the large part, those people are not Americans. It's a foreign corporation. And I think that's one of the alarming things about this announcement, you know, separate from the White House's announcement attempting to approve the road, is that they're investing taxpayer dollars in a foreign corporation. And I hope you can hear the skepticism in my voice, because I think that's a little bit odd that Americans public lands and people's backyards are being sacrificed for the benefit of a foreign mining company
Anders Reynolds 1:46
during a ceremony in the Oval Office, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said construction on the road would begin in the spring of 2026 with assistance from the Department of Defense. Once again, here is Matt Jackson on whether or not that's true.
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I can't speak to all the possibilities, and that's largely because no one's ever cited section 1106, of the Alaskan National Interest Lands Conservation Act to approve a road like this before. It's totally unprecedented, and so we're in uncharted waters. And one of the things that is clear from Anoka is that even if the president tries to direct the agencies to approve all this. Those agencies are still required to act according to all the applicable laws. Just because the President said this doesn't mean that those other laws don't apply. So there's still serious questions about, you know, section 404, Waters of the United States, there's questions about clean water, there's questions about cultural heritage sites, there's questions about section 810, subsistence rights. So people in Alaska are not giving up on this, and I don't think anybody down south should either.
Anders Reynolds 2:54
The reaction from Alaska Natives and other environmental groups was swift, with many press releases noting that 89 tribes have opposed the road which would divide the migration route of the Western Arctic caribou herd as it cut through Gates of the Arctic National Park.
Bill 3:08
On Tuesday, the President offered his opinion that civil servants impacted by the current government shutdown should not receive back pay, as they have in previous shutdowns, and is required by a law signed by well himself in 2019 until a few days ago, the White House Budget Office's own guidance affirmed that furloughed workers, including 1000s who steward public lands, should receive back pay. But it appears OMB has quietly reversed its own public guidance on this in just the last few days, Trump's statements brought swift condemnation from congressional leaders, including rare pushback from Republican leaders, including Chair of the Appropriations Committee, Susan Collins and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson.
Anders Reynolds 3:50
Turning to the Hill on Wednesday, the Senate voted, along party lines, to repeal resource management plans in North Dakota and Montana, where the action will impact over 2 million acres of Bureau of Land Management lands in the Powder River Basin. Those bills will now go to the White House for the President's signature. We first mentioned this effort when it passed the House in early September, while proponents of this action are hoping to expand coal mining in eastern Montana. The tool being used to do so, the Congressional Review Act is a blunt instrument that was originally meant to be used on rules propagated by various agencies using it now for the first time on a resource management plan, could mean unintended consequences for parts of the plan, beyond coal mining, and will likely lead to lawsuits and other delays. Resource Management Plans seek robust input from the public and enjoy scientific review, using the Congressional Review Act to overturn them only requires a member of Congress to convince a majority to go along with the belief that it should be overturned.
Bill 4:45
Meanwhile, Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chairman Mike Lee introduced the Borderlands Conservation Act, which, like The Flash act that we discussed last month, uses fear mongering around immigration to undermine public lands management in. The Act would authorize the Secretary of Homeland Security to conduct the following activities within wilderness areas for the purposes of securing international land borders of the United States. Access structures, installations and roads. Execute search and rescue operations. Use motor vehicles, motor boats and motorized equipment, and conduct patrols on foot and on horseback, use aircraft, deploy tactical infrastructure and construct and maintain roads and physical barriers. It also removes any DOI or Department of Agriculture discretion andor authority to impede, prohibit or restrict any DHS activities on any public lands within 100 miles of the border. We talked to Bob crmenacher, retired Superintendent of Big Bend National Park and current chair of keep Big Bend
Speaker 3 5:48
wild. It's an interesting bill in that it's posturing a lot about how much they want to preserve the environment of the Borderlands and and wilderness areas. In particular, they talk a lot about trash and terrible things that migrants are allegedly doing to the environment, and obviously some of that is happening. But as the former superintendent of almost 13% of the border at Big Bend National Park in Rio Grande wild scenic river, at least in that part of the border, the extent of the damage does not warrant this kind of override of the authority of the land management agencies or or overriding the Wilderness Act, because there are provisions in place whereby, actually, the Park Service, the Forest Service, the BLM, they're all required to work with DHS, and in fact, they can't use the Wilderness Act to say, hell no. So the system works right now. This is not necessary, and the posturing about why is really not supported by the facts.
Anders Reynolds 6:49
Another member of that committee, Oregon, Democrat Ron Wyden, received a letter from Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz last week that admitted the agency is falling behind on its goals to treat public land for wildfire, saying only 2.2 million acres have been mitigated this year, compared to 4 million in the final year of the Biden administration. Schultz wrote that, quote, operational challenges have disproportionately impacted the ability to implement prescribed fire across the country. End, quote, surely hampering the work is the administration's own decision to either fire or allow to retire 1000s of civil servants who would normally be focused on the challenges of wildfire mitigation. The current government shutdown isn't likely to help either. As employees in forest service region, one which includes Montana and parts of North Dakota, Idaho and Washington, learned that planned prescribed fires have been abandoned for the time being.
Bill 7:41
Relatedly, the Interior Department has announced a search for its first chief of the new wildland fire service. According to a job posting that went live last week, earlier this month, Burgum signed a secretarial order establishing the wildland fire service, taking away the leading role that the Forest Service traditionally played in fighting fire by consolidating all wildland firefighting programs like training under DOI we highlight again how this shift away from the historic leadership and fire from the forest service will impact that agency way beyond the fire shop itself. According to the job posting, candidates must be dedicated to the quote principles of the American founding end quote, and committed to improving the efficiency of the federal government, passionate about the ideals of our American republic and committed to upholding the rule of law and the United States Constitution.
Anders Reynolds 8:31
Also last week, the Council on Environmental Quality issued updated guidance to federal agencies regarding the implementation of the National Environmental Policy Act pursuant to Trump's executive order. 14154, unleashing American energy. This latest guidance supersedes similar action by CEQ in February and builds on similar actions in April in order to accommodate recent statutory and judicial developments. The updated guidance includes a pay to play scheme included in Section 626 of the big, beautiful Bill act allowing sponsors to opt in to a fee for an expedited NEPA review. It also includes direction to agencies to evaluate only direct effects that is, impacts that happen at the time and the place of a proposed action, while ignoring indirect or cumulative effects of later or incremental impacts, even if they are foreseeable, on public lands or waters.
Bill 9:26
The Environmental Protection Agency has severed funding to the National Association of wetland managers, which until now, has enjoyed a decade long partnership supporting state wetland programs. Marla stout, the group's executive director called the cuts, which represent a loss of 1.2 million conservation dollars, devastating, and announced that she, along with three other employees of nine total, would be losing their positions. The EPA didn't respond to questions about why it was cutting ties with the group bill,
Anders Reynolds 9:56
let's quickly cover some state news. First, the Bureau of Land. Management is moving to potentially rewrite some of the revised Rock Springs land use plan in southwestern Wyoming that was finalized last year in order to make it more friendly to oil, gas and mineral development. Meanwhile, in West Virginia, a US Forest Service decision to cancel a permit that would have allowed for coal hauling through the Monongahela National Forest has been met with applause by conservation organizations. The permit, which was subject to a lawsuit filed last year by the Center for Biological Diversity, was terminated by the Forest Service after they determined that the permit holder was non compliant with certain terms and conditions in Maine High School, counselor Leslie trundy has started offering students who are facing detention for breaking rules like skipping class using their phones or bringing vapes to school, the option to go on a hike instead. In a Washington Post article on the program, students confess that the Three Mile walks through nature are improving their moods and even leading them to make better decisions about their behavior, and many former troublemakers have opted into continuing the hikes, even though their time has been considered served. And in Florida, the Conservation Fund has purchased nearly 2000 acres from a forest products company in order to expand the Marjorie Harris car cross Florida Greenway, which is a part of the state's very impressive Ocala Osceola wildlife corridor. The purchase links two of the state's largest bear populations, offers families more green space and relieves the pressure that development is placing on Florida's outdoor spaces, which experts estimate is losing 60,000 acres a year to urban and suburban growth. And finally, Governor Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 518, last week, which allows California counties to opt in to a permitting framework, making it easier for private land owners to offer low impact camping experiences through online platforms like hip camp. The measure not only expands access across the state, but allows private landowners, particularly farmers and ranchers, to more easily diversify revenue at a time where that industry is facing increased input costs and growing regulatory uncertainty.
Bill 12:05
Before we sign off, we want to share the story of Dr Fred Ramsdell. He was on the last day of a three week totally off the grid hike with his wife in Montana's grizzly country when she began to scream. Was it a bear or an injury? No, the screaming was inspired by her phone's reconnection to the cellular network and the subsequent avalanche of texts coming in informing the couple that Dr ramsell had been awarded, along with two other scientists, the Nobel Prize in Medicine. Dr ramsell own phone had been on airplane mode for weeks, and his lab had informed the Nobel Prize Committee that he was off the grid and unreachable on a pre planned hike, and even when the news reached him in the back country. Dr Ramsdell didn't at first believe it, though he did eventually concede that quote, I have a lot of friends, but they're not coordinated enough to pull off this joke. Dr Thomas Perlman, the Secretary General of the Nobel assembly, told The New York Times it was the most difficult attempt to contact a winner that he had ever experienced. Good things happen in the Montana, back country. Our Congratulations to Dr Ramsdell. That is our report for October 10, 2025 we will be back next week with another wild line. And next Tuesday on the wild idea, we talk with Rachel franquina, executive director of the Society of outdoor recreation professionals, until then act up and run wild.
Speaker 1 13:27
The wild line is a production of wild idea media production and editing by Bren Russell at podblad Digital support by Holly wilkzewski At day pack digital. Our theme music Spring Hill Jack is from railroad Earth and was composed by John skihan. The executive producer is Laura Hodge. Learn more about us at the wild idea.com you.
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