Welcome to the 200th episode of The Landscape,
your show about America's Parks and Public Lands.
I'm Erin Weiss with the Center For Western
Priorities in Denver.
And I'm Kate Gretsinger in Salt Lake City.
We're doing something a little different today to
mark the 200th time we've recorded this podcast.
We're gonna take you behind the scenes here
at CWP and introduce you to our colleagues
who make the magic happen.
We'll share what brought us to conservation and
what keeps us motivated to keep doing the
work. But before we get to that, we've
got some news.
Well, you may already know about the big
news this week. It's out of Utah. It
is, not great, but we gotta talk about
it.
So the State of Utah is suing the
federal government for control over
half of the national public land in the
State of Utah. That's
18 and a half 1000000 acres of what
the governor is calling unappropriated
public land. But by that, they actually just
mean almost all the land that is managed
by the Bureau of Land Management.
Now, this term, unappropriated,
ironically comes from Utah's Enabling Act which was
passed in the 18 nineties when Utah joined
the union
and that act states that Utah agrees to
quote
forever
disclaim all right and title to the unappropriated
public lands lying within the boundaries of Utah.
Now, it would look like Utah governor Spencer
Cox doesn't understand
the meaning of the word forever
because the state is going to the Supreme
Court hoping that it takes up this case
and hands those exact quote unquote unappropriated
public lands
over to the state.
Utah, of course, conveniently ignores the fact that
every single acre of national public land in
the state is already
actively managed.
Congress has appropriated a use on every single
acre. Doesn't matter whether it's run by the
park service, the forest service, bureau of land
management.
Congress told all of those agencies to create
management plans for the land, and they have
done that.
No land in Utah is just sitting there
waiting for someone to decide what to do
with it. The entire notion of unappropriated
lands
makes no sense at all in 2024. It
honestly hasn't made sense
even since Utah became a state. So the
legal
ground here
is nonsensical.
Public land law professors, and we've heard from
a bunch of them already,
all agree that this case has no legal
basis, but if it did somehow succeed, it
would be devastating for public lands across the
West.
The issue there is that states simply don't
have the manpower or the revenue
to manage public lands like the federal government
does. A a single massive wildfire,
a a massive mine cleanup
could bankrupt any of these western states. So
in order to manage these lands, the states
would have to increase drilling and mining,
mining, would have to sell off public lands.
We're talking
trophy homes, privatization,
all of that wonderful land running through Moab.
This idea that Utah is pitching here
is in fact a huge threat to public
lands.
We will talk more about this in coming
episodes with some of these law professors,
but I wanna stress right now the magnitude
of what Utah is asking the Supreme Court
to do here. So, first, the Supreme Court
would have to find that that forever
language in the Enabling Act didn't mean forever
or they would have to find that the
Enabling Act itself
wasn't constitutional.
So, maybe Utah's not actually a state. Well,
there's a can of worms you don't wanna
open up a 130 years later.
2nd,
the court would have to toss out a
couple
centuries
of case law on national public lands.
Most notably,
the Cleppey decision from 1976.
That's a decision that said, in no uncertain
terms,
the property clause of the constitution, article 4,
section 3,
means exactly what it says on the tin.
Congress, and only Congress, has the power to
dispose of and manage public lands. And CLEPI
is itself built on more than a 100
years of decisions before that,
going all the way back to a case
in 18/40
where the court wrote, quote,
the power over the public lands is vested
in Congress by the Constitution
without
limitation.
So would this Supreme Court, as conservative
as it is, go that far?
Tossing out 200
years of precedence and ignoring
the plain text of the Constitution?
I I certainly don't wanna make any predictions
up here on my soapbox,
but legally speaking,
Utah is making as crazy an argument
as you will ever see here.
And with that, I will step down off
my soapbox and we'll get you to listen
to this 200th episode.
Well, hi everyone. Welcome to the CWP conference
room and virtual Kate from Utah.
Before we dive in here, I wanna introduce
everyone. I think listeners have heard just about
everyone here on the podcast at one point
or another, but let's just go around the
room. Everyone, please introduce yourselves.
Hi. I'm Jen Rocola. I'm the executive director
of CWP, and I've been with, CWP for
9 years.
I'm Rachel Hamby. I'm the policy director, and
I have been here for almost 2 years.
I'm Lauren Bogard. I'm the director of campaigns
and special projects, and I've been with CWP
for five and a half years.
I'm Sterling Homard. I am the outreach and
campaigns associate, and I've been here for almost
2 years.
I'm Lily Bach Brownstein. I'm the creative content
and policy manager, and I've been here for
over 2 years.
And you guys know me. I'm Kate Gretzinger,
and I've been here for 3 years.
Wow. And that's all of us. It's kind
of fun having everyone everyone here at once.
Because this is a special episode and
our opportunity to look inward and talk about
what drove us all here,
I wanna just hear what drove everyone into
this conservation work that we do. It seems
like every time I talk to anyone in
the conservation community,
someone's got a an interesting
origin
story of how they how they landed here.
Anyone wanna go first?
Otherwise, we'll just we'll just pick some names.
Let's start start with Lauren.
So it's funny to me to do career
look backs because it's I I have the
kind of path that only makes sense
looking backward. It's not as though I knew
where I'd end up. But now that I
do look back, I can see that
outdoor
experiences
and
an appreciation
and connection to the outdoor landscape is a
thread that is run through
everywhere I've been in my life and everywhere
I've worked, and it's personally meaningful,
in part because I grew up in the
foothills west of Denver and went on hikes
with my parents who were high school teachers.
My dad was a biology teacher, so he
made sure that we learned the birds and
the plants and all the other animals.
No. Kate.
Sure.
Yeah. Again, similar to Lauren, I did not
plan to end up in conservation work, especially
public lands work. I grew up in Texas,
famously
does not have any public lands.
And that's kind of
why I first fell in love with public
lands. I moved west to work for to
work in public radio in southern Utah, and
I was just shocked that there was that
all of this land that was open to
anyone because in Texas, you have to be
pretty wealthy
to
to have wild spaces that are accessible to
you. There aren't that many.
Basically, there's big ranches that are privately owned.
So I really fell in love with the
concept of public land. And then during COVID,
I lived in a tiny town
called Bluff right next to Bears Ears National
Monument, and I really,
sought refuge in,
the canyons of Bears Ears, just hiking
with by myself and with close friends all
throughout the COVID times.
So, yeah, that that really led me to
form a personal connection with public lands and
just a great appreciation for them, and that
brought me to CWP.
So I spend a lot of time on
public lands backpacking and climbing, and the majority
of that time, I'm by myself.
Self and what I love about being alone
out in those places is that it's one
of the few times we could truly just
be yourself
and the landscape accepts you but also challenges
you and you can learn a lot about
who you are whether it's surprising yourself with
being stronger or more capable than you thought
you were,
or whether it's having a weakness or a
fear exposed and having to overcome it. So
these are places that have offered me so
much and pushed me to be better. And
working to conserve and protect these places from
development and harm is a way that I
can offer something in return and make sure
this opportunity is there for anyone else who's
looking for it now and in the future.
Okay. Well, that wins for the deepest
cut so far.
Sterling?
Let's see if I can win for the
most shallow.
Well,
for as long as I can remember, I
just wanted to be outside. Even when I
was a kid, I would just, like, wanna
be in the front yard playing basketball, you
know.
And I grew up in Minnesota so there
were some outdoor opportunities there. I would nordic
ski, I would canoe, I would fish, do
all the Minnesota things,
but it wasn't until I moved out to
Colorado that I realized how
accessible
public lands are out here,
and it just made me fall in love
with being outdoors all over again.
So being out here, I've gotten more into
outdoor climbing and and backpacking and hiking and
and just enjoying
mountainous landscapes, something that that Minnesota doesn't have
too much of.
And, also, I think, like, being Gen z
has shaped,
how I got into conservation as well.
I feel like it wasn't until the 2000
or so that we really started taking
climate change and biodiversity
threats seriously.
And so growing up, I learned about those
things in school, and I learned that the
outdoor places that I love most might not
exist if we don't do something about it.
So I think that's why I'm here.
Lily?
Yeah. I mean, common thread here. I grew
up with a really
deep appreciation for being outdoors as a kid.
I grew up on the East Coast in
Vermont where we hiked and camped and snowboarded
and,
you know, played in the
somewhat polluted creek in my backyard.
And I always knew I wanted to
do something in connection with the outdoors and
nature. But when I moved out west and
sort of discovered what public lands were, which
is not something
we really have on a big scale on
the East Coast,
it just, like, really blew my mind about
what it offered the community. And my first
real
long term full time job was working on
managing public lands at the county level, and
that gave me a real appreciation for what
it takes to keep those lands protected and
managed for
all the uses that people love to use
them for and,
really inspired me to wanna work to see
more lands protected in a thoughtful way.
Jen?
I was really lucky to grow up in
Colorado, and my parents would take us on
vacations, whether it was up to the mountains,
west of Denver, or to national parks. We
spent a lot of time going to Yellowstone
and Grand Teton. And in a lot of
ways, I feel like I took access to
public lands for granted growing up here. And
it was in college when I was doing
a bike tour around Colorado called ride the
Rockies, and
you spend a lot of time just sitting
on a mountain pass, pedaling up and looking
at these
really just spectacular views. And that's when I
knew I wanted to work in conservation, and
my path to conservation
came through working for public officials, elected officials
who
prioritize conservation. Former governor Roy Romer and former
US senator Mark Udall
were the 2 people who really influenced my
passion for conservation and working to protect public
lands.
Yeah. Like like Kate, I I came into
advocacy
through journalism.
And
for me, it was
growing up in in Tucson, which is, of
course, surrounded by
public lands and also through journalism. My mom
was a news anchor
in Tucson. And when I was about 9
or 10 years old,
she dragged me along as she was doing
a reporting series on the San Pedro River,
which we've ended up since talking about here
on the podcast many times.
But that was really an eye opener
for me
on
threats
to these lands and, in this case, to
a
spectacular
riparian area so unlike
anything else in the desert there
and, you know, that's one of those
formative experiences for me growing up in the
desert
that carried with me all along and, I
mean, I think folks who've listened to this
podcast over the last 199 episodes know that
whenever
anything in that area comes up, whether it's
the San Pedro or the the Rosemont copper
mine or the Santa Arenas, I I still
feel that and take that very personally because
it's it's the land I
grew up around.
And I mean, I really love hearing this
from everyone because it is that
connection.
Right? There that that moment often
growing up that that really,
brought us where we are here today.
Great. Well,
you know, we've been here, some of us,
for a long time, some of us for
a short time, but we've all met some
interesting people in the course of doing this
work.
Let's talk about that. Lauren, why don't you
start us off again? Name some of the
folks that you've
met through your work with CWP and why
they stuck in your mind.
Sure thing. And it's a really wonderful and
deep bench, but I'd be remiss if I
didn't talk about AJ Carter
and the team at Metropolis Media Group. Folks
may not be aware. This is a a
person who is a jack of all trades
when it comes to videography,
cinematography,
sound,
and he has helped us produce the road
to 30 postcard
films. And he works with some really talented
film editors
as well. And there's just been such a
pleasure in getting to know him as a
person and to seeing his
delight and
amazing
attitude
about going to these
remote places and,
somehow he manages to be a one man
band.
And we have produced some some work that
I'm incredibly
proud of, and we've had a lot of
fun along the way. So,
folks may not realize how integral that's been
to our production of these, but it's also
been a really fun and pleasurable experience. And
and I mean, really, a a secret weapon,
I think, in terms of
the quality of the work, the shooting that
he does, and we haven't really talked about
it here, but several of those road to
30 films have end up in film festivals
and and getting a nice amount of recognition
for the the work and the shooting and
editing that AJ has done.
Jen, how about you?
I I think one of the things that
we've been able to do is really help
amplify the voices of conservation leaders, and that's
from folks at the local level, but also
folks at the federal, national level.
Governor Bullock, former governor Bullock from Montana is
a really amazing public lands advocate,
and it's been really fun to,
you know, work with him in his office
when he was governor.
Former New Mexico senator Tom Udall.
And then,
our current BLM director, Tracy Stone Manning. We
got to know Tracy before she was a
BLM director, and it's been great to have
her leadership at the BLM as they've worked
to reform the oil and gas leasing process
and implement the public lands rule.
Awesome.
Aaron, how about you?
Some of the more curveball guests that we've
had. I I love the number of authors
that we've gotten to talk to on the
podcast,
over the years. I mean, going all the
way back, one of the very early episodes
was with a a writer named Mike Finkel
who wrote a book,
about this
hermit who lived in the Maine woods
for decades, and and Mike now is back
on top of the New York Times bestseller
charts with a book about an art art
heist.
Tommy Caldwell, obviously, not not an author, but
just a legendary
climber and what what a treat it was
talking to him and, again, those connections and
origin stories of what
leads someone who has a very successful career
as an athlete
into advocacy, those kinds of conversations that I
think any other, you know, conservation group that
didn't have the freedom that we do here
to have those kinds of conversations wouldn't happen.
I've I've really appreciated that.
Awesome. Well, I'll go
Through our work with the postcards video series
that Lauren mentioned earlier, I got to meet
Regina,
White Skunk Lopez. She is a Ute Mountain
Ute Tribal member and a huge advocate, for
the Bears Ears National Monument. She was on
the intertribal coalition at one point, and I
had heard her name just because I lived
in Bluff for years. And then I got
the chance to actually reach out to her
and ask her to be in the video
and meet her and even actually become friends
with her. So that was a really, really
cool for full circle experience for me. Let's
listen to a clip of that real quick.
My name is Regina Lopez Whiteskunk.
I'm a former elected official for the Ute
Mountain Ute Tribe. I'm also a former co
chair of the Bears Ears Intertribal
Coalition.
What I feel when I come out here
is like I come home. There's a connection.
It's like I come to visit,
a relative.
Does anyone else have anyone they wanna mention?
I would mention some folks. So,
Lauren mentioned AJ, and, so he's he's our
cinematographer.
Worked with him on the postcards campaign. He's
just the coolest dude. Like, he's great at
what he does. He produces amazing videos for
us, but he's just so fun to be
around.
If you could just imagine, like, the most
Australian
cinematographer
capturing nature and wildlife, that's him. We'll be,
like, getting a shot, and he's, like, look
at this bay. We need this bay to
come back, and we're gonna win some awards
with this one.
He's amazing. He's just so fun. That's so
accurate. Now now we're gonna need an AJ.
You are right. We did win some awards.
Yeah. Yeah. Heck, yeah. Yeah. We got film
fests. He's like our, resident Steve Irwin.
Exactly.
So AJ is great. Also, it's worth noting
that I'm a Weese Fellow too. So I'm
the outreach and campaigns associate with CWP, but
I'm also,
a Weese Fellow and that my position is
a 2 year fellowship supported by the Weese
Foundation. And there are,
I don't know, 10 other Wyss Fellows nationwide,
and I get the chance to meet them
every year.
And so they're all just awesome people,
and it has,
been amazing to develop those connections, not just,
like, in Colorado either. It's nationwide
that these other Weez fellows are. So,
there's some awesome
awesome people.
I I wanna turn to some of the
places we've been. We've had the chance to
to travel a bit,
some of it as a group,
some individually to to various
spots,
and
I mean, I appreciate, of course, not being
stuck in an office or stuck working from
home
all day long.
But but I'd love to hear from
folks about where they've been outside of the
office and
what are some of those trips that have
been the most meaningful.
And let's let's start with Lily on this
one.
Sure. Well, I think one of the most
exciting places that we actually went as a
whole team was the Dolores River Canyonlands
out in Western Colorado, where there's a proposed
national monument.
And we took an amazing tour of the
area and just got to see what makes
it special and why
it should be protected. And
it getting actual eyes on a place that
you write about and talk about is, like,
a really important thing, and it makes it
easier
to write about it in the future when
you know what you're talking about and you
really mean what you're saying.
And so I got the chance to go
out there both when we were out there
as a team and then attending a listening
session held by senator Hickenlooper where I got
to hear a lot of perspectives of people
who live there and why they think it's
important to protect the area as well.
Kate, you're lucky that you've gotten to do
some of this stuff right in your backyard.
Yeah. Absolutely. The the Bears Ears video that
we worked on was literally shot in my
backyard,
so that was really cool. But I've also
gotten to travel
to places I absolutely never would have gone,
other if it weren't for CWP,
like the Owyhee Canyonlands
in Southern Oregon.
That is an incredible landscape. There's a monument
proposed to protect it right now, and there
are just multiple areas within that region that
could be national parks. And I was just
floored to see it and floored to realize
it wasn't protected. So that's just one example.
If you live in Boise, you can get
there pretty quickly, and and I highly recommend
it.
Jen?
I would echo what Lily said about the,
Dolores.
It was really an great opportunity for all
of us as a team to get out
and see
this
incredible landscape
that should be protected,
and
it was just awe inspiring to be there
with, Scott Braden, who knows the landscape so
well, and he could describe,
you know, the flora, the fauna, the geography,
the geology. And
it it makes a difference when you are
on the ground and you're seeing a place
that you're advocating to be protected.
I would go back to our monuments to
America
RV tour, which was one of the first
big projects at CWP that I got to
work on where we we wrapped an RV
and went
across the west with a 30 foot tall
inflatable Statue of Liberty
to celebrate National Monuments and the antiquities act
and stopping in in Grand Junction,
seeing Colorado National Monument going through Southern California,
and and sand to snow
down there.
Just getting to appreciate so many different landscapes
within,
within this region
was amazing, but also
all of the the local elected officials, all
of the local conservation
advocates
that we got to meet and talk to
in every city,
and talking to reporters everywhere we went,
creating what I thought was
a really unifying message, pointing out
how these national monuments bring folks together everywhere.
I I just loved that experience
so much,
even even with, you know, 8 to 10
hour,
driving days in the RV every once in
a while.
Yeah. I I think that's right, Erin. And
I think one of the things that CWP
does really well is creating
these opportunities
and these campaigns to really highlight public lands.
One thing that we did during the pandemic
was create a virtual road tour.
Since we couldn't leave our homes, we worked
with
US senator,
Tom Udall to create
the road to 30 virtual tour.
And we highlighted landscapes
throughout the west, talking to local elected officials,
members of congress about
30 by 30
and the need to protect,
public lands,
to fight the climate crisis and the biodiversity
crisis. But it was a great way when
we were all locked up in our homes
to really highlight public lands
from all of these different states. And we
we really helped lead the or lay the
groundwork for the 30 by 30 movement. I
I then I wanna take this opportunity then
to hop in the the way back machine
and play a clip from that,
one of our our road to 30,
live events with
then congresswoman
Deb Haaland, who, of course, is now the
interior secretary.
Take a listen.
Tribes want to protect Chaco Canyon from gas
and oil drilling. And look,
in that area of New Mexico, the,
the northwest corner of our state is the
largest methane cloud in the world, just hovering
above our state. So it's clear
that,
there is a lot of pollution already,
emanating down into those communities.
And
lo and behold,
here we are now 4 plus years later,
and Chaco is protected.
I mean, it's wonderful seeing that through line.
And the BLM has,
put forth and finalized a rule to reduce
methane waste and leaks. So
she really delivered on both of those fronts.
So that's a pretty good segue into our
next question, which is what is everyone here
most proud of that they've done at CWP?
Sterling, why don't you start us off?
Sure. Well, I think for me, being
a young individual, this is this is my
first job out of college. Right? So
I have had the experiences
of, like, dipping my toes into all sorts
of new things, which is all I could
ask for,
It's so so, like, early in my career.
So things like filmmaking, video editing,
you know, making content for for TikTok and
and Instagram reels.
And specifically with those things, taking really complex
topics
and and diluting them down into, you know,
45 seconds
and just, like, with quippy little sentences that
that anybody can understand. That's,
that takes understanding, like, deep understanding of topics
to be able to to file it down
to such a small size.
So I'm proud of I'm proud of that.
I'm just yeah. I think, like, I'm proud
of the connections I've made too.
The conservation realm I have learned is just
very interconnected,
One organization to another, like, we're all
we're all talking with each other, and I
think that's really awesome. And and I've made
it a priority to to make connections to
use this as an opportunity to,
reach out to other folks that we work
with on a day to day basis.
I'm always amazed by how much we're able
to do with such a small team. We
put out an incredible amount of high quality
content and we're able to seem like we're
a much larger organization than we are because
we're targeted and strategic with the content we
produce. We ensure the research and analysis are
thorough and accurate, and we invest in design
so that the visual aspect of our work
is compelling.
I'm also really glad that CWP continues to
track conservation policy at the state level in
Western states
and that we keep an eye on emerging
issues that impact public lands in the west,
whether that's a renewed interest in mining for
uranium and critical minerals
or accessing geothermal resources or exploring different carbon
capture and storage technologies
and the impacts that all of those will
have on public lands and on our climate.
Lily Rachel mentioned the the visual impact, and,
it should be noted for everyone listening that
that is
Lily doing that with her tremendous skill set.
So I just wanna open that up for
you of what you've been the the most
proud of or or learned the most doing.
Yeah. I mean, that's definitely something that when
I took this job, I was really excited
about because it's very clear that CWP really
values that beautiful
looking products are more engaging and more fun
and interesting for people
to read and to,
look at and take in. And so I
was really excited to take that on as
part of my role. So I've been able
to contribute
in that sense to all kinds of products,
different reports if they're print or they're an
online report on our website, like our conservation
toolbox report, which broke down
a whole bunch of different designations and types
of land protection. And
I am really proud of the way that
everybody
is invested in,
making sure those things are engaging and easy
to read, because they look beautiful.
And most recently, some really beautiful hats and
stickers Oh, yeah. Particularly cute. Coming soon.
Yeah. We got some new swag coming.
I'll I'll jump in here. I'm I'm,
again, just so proud of the postcard videos.
Those are our short documentaries about, people working
to protect iconic places throughout the United States.
It's it's I never ever in my wildest
dreams thought I would end up being a
video producer, a a, quote, unquote, documentary producer,
but it's been a blast learning how to
do that.
I'm also really proud of the podcast. I've
taken over sort of the behind the scenes
production of the podcast from booking to editing,
to obviously hosting. So those are some things
that have been huge privileges that I'm really
proud of that I've gotten to do here.
Erin, how about you?
I well, I'm gonna punt to Jen first
and then come back because I think what
I'm gonna say is gonna be actually a
little different from what what Jen's gonna gonna
say here.
Well, I'm really proud of
all of the campaigns that we've run, but
one in particular is our winning the west
campaign.
We launched that in 2016,
in an effort to really highlight conservation
as an important issue to voters in the
west.
And what we've seen over the last 8
years
is really a measurable impact on
conservation being
front and center in
campaigns
for congress, for the local for campaigns at
the local level, and we've seen it on
both sides, both Democrats and Republicans really highlighting
their
conservation
priorities. And we've also seen it translate into
policy from the Great American Outdoors Act to
the, you know, the full funding of, the
Land and Water Conservation Fund to new national
monuments. I mean, Camp Hale
National Monument,
came out of a report,
that we issued
8 years ago. Now that wasn't winning the
West, but still it was highlighting conservation as
an important issue to voters in the West.
And and I've been thinking a lot about
the accountability work that CWP
has done, will continue
to do.
And thinking back to
early in the Trump administration,
the accountability work on,
regarding Ryan Zinke, the interior secretary who a
lot of folks in our world thought was
the the best case scenario
for an interior secretary in a Trump administration
and quickly turned out not to be, but
also turned out to be quite the embarrassment
both for the West and the administration.
And, obviously, there are a lot of groups
doing important accountability work in there,
but tracking those public documents, tracking those calendars,
being able to
show,
the work that was going on to
bend the government to do the work of
industry.
I think the results that CWP
got
by doing that accountability
work made an impact on the national stage.
And it's one of those things,
in my career that I will look back
on,
being incredibly
proud of, as as unfortunate is that it's
work that has to be done. I'm really
glad we did it.
No. Absolutely. I think the work that we
did during that time was incredibly important to
the conservation community.
Erin, can I add on to that? Yeah.
I wasn't at the organization
when you all did this, but doing, the
sentiment analysis
when
in 2017,
there was a review of monuments under the
Trump administration, and that led to the reduction
in size of Grand Staircase and Bears Ears
National Monument
and figuring out a way to,
analyze the public comment data and show have
hard evidence that, what was it, 98%
of respondents were opposed to reducing monuments. And
so that's something that continuously
surprises me and delights me about being at
this organization is that these landscapes that we're
talking about and these issues are main character
in everything we do. And to bring those
to life,
we get to be creative.
We get to be analytical and do research
and there's storytelling in everything
that we do. And it's there's just no
limit to us coming up with new ways
to think of how can we add to
the conversation and be helpful. And I would
also say for me personally, I'm I'm at
my best when I bite off way more
than I can chew.
And the reason is that I have this
team of highly skilled people and we figure
out how to do things like road to
30 postcards.
I don't think any of us knew what
would actually be involved
in putting that together. And
to look back, it's it's an enormous accomplishment,
and it's
due
to all the folks who, contributed to it.
Yeah. I I I thank you for mentioning
the the comments
and us realizing
there is data out there that we can
use
to
to show how public lands are important and
the fact that we've been able to return
to that on so many issues,
under 2 administrations
now.
I yeah. Definitely one of the things that
I'm I'm most proud of and and most
enjoy as a data nerd, honestly. It's I
I love it when we're able to to
find those projects and do them.
Okay. I'm gonna jump in here as well
with something I am very proud of, which
is sort of the workhorse of our organization,
which is our newsletter, Look West. If you're
not subscribed, this is a shameless plug. Please
go subscribe.
It's on our website under newsletter.
We
summarize the top public lands news around the
west,
every single day and send it to your
inbox every morning. And I've heard from countless
people in the conservation space, in journalism,
in politics
that,
people an an art professor at the University
of Utah, truly just people from all backgrounds,
who say that our newsletter is a
resource that they really rely on. So I'm
really proud of that, and,
I think it's just a really cool thing
that we do.
Yeah. Rachel, part of your job as as
policy director here
is working on state issues in particular where,
a lot of us will spend a lot
of time focused on what's happening at the
national
level. You dive in, well, this year on
every single state legislative session in an incredibly
deep way.
How does
how do you compare those 2? How does
one side of it inform the other part
of the work?
So being part of an organization that engages
at the federal level on things like monument
designations
or agency rules
that are going to apply to public lands
across the country.
It's inspiring to think about the size of
landscapes that are being protected or the number
of acres a new rule will apply to.
The scale of the work feels so big,
But at the same time, I think sometimes
you can wonder if you as an individual
are really making a difference, and you are.
You're a needed piece of a puzzle. It's
just a really large puzzle with a really
large number of pieces.
At the state level, in my experience, it's
much easier to feel the impact you're making
as an individual
to see the direct influence you have on
developing and advancing policy.
But sometimes you can feel like that work
pales in comparison to a federal rule or
land designation because the numbers are smaller.
You're the same size of puzzle piece, but
in a smaller puzzle with fewer pieces.
So having now done both, I've learned that
neither one is more important or more impactful
that we need people doing good work at
all levels.
That is all critical and urgently needed and
that wherever you are, if you're not sure
if you're making a difference, keep going.
Awesome. Sterling, I wanna go to you next.
I have a question. We we shout you
out at the end of this podcast at
almost every episode and say, go follow our
TikTok because the work you're doing on there
is so awesome.
And CWP
has traditionally been,
you know,
engaged in a lot of
of more,
old school comms. We talk to journalists. We
put out press releases. We,
brief policymakers,
things like that.
But social media is becoming increasingly important. People
in your age
group are getting their news from social media,
the majority of folks in Gen z, I
believe.
So tell us a little bit about the
work you're doing on social media and why
it matters.
Well, I'm I'm Gen z. I'm the only
Gen z one at CWP, and I grew
up with social media. I mean, it was
just, like, part of part of my daily
life ever since probably middle school,
for better or for worse. You know?
But I think it's just, like, the primary
way of communicating your message with the general
public these days. You know? And and for
CWP
to
have such an important message of of protecting
public lands,
that's something that
that, the older generations and younger folks need
to be on board with alike. You know?
And so for us to to jump on
TikTok, it was a no brainer for me,
and I was happy to to take that
on.
I feel like I have a a connection
with my fellow Gen Zers and and younger
audiences. So,
it's been it's been really fun to, like,
take these complex topics and and and dilute
them down to something that's more bite sized.
And, yeah, it's just completely vital to to
get the the younger folks on board.
I remember my first year
for the first certainly 6 months, maybe 12,
maybe 18 months. I just felt like I
was drinking from the fire hose,
learning things about public lands, public policy,
and, you know, I I came in here
thinking I was fairly wonky
in terms of my political knowledge. I I
just for Sterling and then anyone else, what
what is the what was that experience like
for you realizing,
oh, there's a whole lot here that I
don't even know yet?
It was like drinking from a fire hose,
I would say. Yeah. It was identical to
that.
I you know, it's funny because when you
apply to a job, you want to seem
like you're super qualified and you're like you
know the topic super well.
I promise you, nobody who applies for this
job could have known every single thing about
every single topic that we cover. I mean,
we're doing things from
from,
you know, energy development to oil and gas
leasing reform.
Those topics are incredibly dense,
and they still they still make me wanna
bang my head against the wall every once
in a while. But, I think that's a
collective
feeling, Sterling, especially on energy reform.
But, yeah, I mean, it's it's it's a
lot to come into an organization that does
so much with such a little team. But,
honestly, I wouldn't have it any other way.
Like I said, I'm I'm starting out my
career. And so to have something where I
can have all these different experiences straight out
of the gate, that gives me assets that
I can that I can use going into
the future.
I would say, Sterling,
I learn something new every day, and there
are days that I feel like I'm drinking
from a fire hose.
It's definitely the a fun part of this
job. It's what keeps it interesting is that
we get to
read up on things and become experts and
then, share that knowledge. It's really exciting. I
was gonna say, Kate Kate, you you you
got a crash course in housing policy this
year.
Yeah. Housing project 2025.
Go read those blogs.
Shameless plug there. But, yeah, I just wanted
to say when I started at CWP, it
took me the longest time to actually understand
what CWP does. And I wonder if any
listeners of this podcast
are having the same question.
And I think, Erin, maybe you said this
to me,
was so helpful, but I think that you
said that we do PR for public lands,
and that really has stuck in my head.
And, yeah, if anybody's wondering what we do,
that's that's the shorthand. That's the elevator pitch.
That is definitely the, yeah, the the forward
pitch. And and I I think beyond that,
you know, we why is it so hard
to pin down what we do? Well, we
do whatever needs to get done today,
and it is really
fun for me being at an organization where
our
mandate
is broad enough
that we can do that to recognize, well,
this is what needs to get done today
even if we haven't done it before.
I would add to it too. I came
from
working in DC for 8 years on Capitol
Hill and at the interior department,
and it took me a little while to
appreciate what we are able to do and
say in the nonprofit sector
that is really hard to say
if you work at a government agency. You
know, the trick there is like, how do
you toot your own horn without blowing it?
And so sometimes,
we can,
be more direct and say,
look,
budgets are, you know, this there's a reason
why some of these things are really difficult,
that it's just awkward to say when your
work is funded by US taxpayers.
So it's it it took me a while
to let go of some of my rigidness
and my acronyms
and and the way I talked about these
issues that was so steeped
in government
thinking and speak to realize, oh my gosh,
I get to stretch my wings. We get
to we get to talk about this and
think of this in a more comprehensive way.
So I wanna turn this to to Lauren,
Jen, Erin, folks that have been working in
conservation
for a long time,
on at the federal level, what has changed
since you started in this space, and and
where do you think we're going? So I'll
jump in here.
I think it's fair to say that there's
a long overdue reckoning in terms of the
initial displacement
of indigenous people that led to some of
these treasured public lands, national parks, refuges, places
that we all love and enjoy and consider
one of America's best ideas. So
just within
the last several years, I think there's a
much
stronger
chorus of of saying, hey, we need to
look at this and see what was lost
by removing people from a landscape whose knowledge
of those places goes back millennia. Not only
that, a spiritual and a cultural
connection. And it's only within the last couple
years that I think we're seeing,
the rubber meet the road in terms of
how can you do co management and co
stewardship
of some of these landscapes.
And
and it matters to have people in leadership
positions like secretary Deb Haaland and National Park
Service Director
Chuck Sams who have a different lived experience
and bring that to these positions. So I
would say that's one of the biggest things.
Another issue that is only going to be
more important over time is overcrowding
of some of these crown jewels.
There's,
I think, 60 some national parks and most
of the visitation is
concentrated and probably
8 to 10. So looking at,
do we need more public lands
and safe equitable outdoor access and also dispersing
that and taking care of of these places
that we all love and enjoy.
Yeah. And I would say,
just teeing off what Lauren said, we've really
seen,
especially under the Biden administration,
public lands have been a priority.
Conserving 30% of lands and waters have been
a priority in a president's 1st term, and
that's unprecedented.
We didn't see that under Obama.
He prioritized public lands, but not until his
2nd term.
And then under the Trump administration,
there was an all out assault on public
lands. And so
conservation
over the last 10 years has just become
a much more important issue
for administrations, for members of Congress.
And that's been that's been, you know, great
to see from our perspective as a PR
firm for public lands. Right?
Well, and I think when you look back
when I started
2015,
2016, the amount of
work we were doing around anti public lands
extremism
that had
seeped its way
into, in one case, a a full party
platform,
there was a significant movement pushing to dispose
of national public lands
on the wholesale level.
You saw folks going around with the map
showing the east versus the west claiming that
the the amount of public lands in the
west were proof that there were too many
and that we need to get rid of
them, and that position
has become a political third rail
across the political spectrum. And there are certainly
still folks out there arguing for wholesale disposal,
but now they have to couch it,
like we saw governor Lombardo from Nevada doing,
couching the language
of of housing, and that's why we need
to get rid of 50,000 acres at a
time because they know they can't just say,
oh, we just need to get rid of
it.
That's been a shift, and and I think
not one that was
guaranteed
when you when you look back a decade
at where that
Bundy style sagebrush rebellion was at.
And, you know, thanks to a number of
things, including,
St Luke's Hospital in Boise.
Ammon Bundy is, of course, now sidelined and
more or less
in hiding, but his movement is
has been sidelined and and forced to try
to find other ways
to argue for what what they want because
the actual just straight up, let's be honest
that you don't like National Public Lands, It's
politically toxic now. And I I I'm really
happy and, I think proud of the role
we played in getting the country there.
So let's wrap this up by turning towards
the podcast.
This is our 200th episode. Erin, you started
the podcast almost 8 years ago, which is
just crazy
to even think about.
And I'd love to talk about the
past of the podcast and the future of
it as well. So, Aaron, why don't you
talk about the
the the very beginning?
Yeah. I mean, I think it's important to
note that this podcast, the the landscape started
with a different name.
And that that name,
Go West Young Podcast, was something that we
saw at the time as
a bit of a clever play on words,
and
it reflected, I think, certainly a blind spot
on my part,
and and the organization overall
that
while that was
may have seemed like a play on words
to us, it was also,
in some ways making light of manifest destiny
and,
the process by which we recognized, especially in
2020, we needed to change the name of
this podcast,
was
a really good one for me. I I
wanted to go back and
listen to that because we did do an
episode on, hey. Here's why we are now
calling this podcast The Landscape.
4 years ago, we started this little podcast
about the outdoors in America's public lands, and
now 90 episodes later, we are changing things
up. Welcome to the landscape from the Center
For Western Priorities.
I'm Erin Weiss. And today, we are saying
goodbye to the name Go West to Young
podcast.
We will explore why in an interview with
2 historians, Patty Limerick and Philip Deloria,
about the legacy of manifest destiny.
So,
yeah, I mean, Jen, you went through that
process
with us.
It it was a I think it was
a really important process for us to go
through, and
I think it was very thoughtful. And
the conversation with the 2 historians,
I thought,
just really helped
us and our listeners understand why why we
needed to change the name. And the landscape
in a lot of ways is
a broader, more
inclusive name for the podcast, and I'm really
proud of the work that we did to
to make that change.
Tell correct me if this is wrong, Yaron,
but I feel like the the pace at
which we are publishing episodes maybe has increased.
It has 100%, and you are entirely to
thank for that.
Yeah. Apologies to everyone who has episodes stacking
up in their feed that they haven't gotten
to yet.
It's become a passion project of mine for
sure, and I love trying to balance
the types of guests that we're getting,
everywhere for from background to,
you know, ethnicity
to,
whether it's an author or a politician.
It's been fun to try to just,
make sure that there's a a healthy, interesting
mix of people coming on.
And,
on that note, I'm I'm really excited,
to do more podcasts with folks that have
audiences on social media, that we can sort
of co
post, the episode about. Because I think that's
a great way we can bring in new
listeners and,
also expose our listeners to organizations
and and influencers and groups like, the disabled
hikers, which we just had an episode from,
that they may not have found otherwise. So
I'm excited to to do more of that
and just continue growing the audience here. And
I'm excited to get us back out on
the road and live
doing more episodes
in person,
whether it's
out,
in a farmer's
rancher's field out in in Steamboat Springs
or on the trade show floor at outdoor
retailer
or at a brewery in Missoula, Montana.
Those experiences
have been
so much fun and I think create better
conversations. So I I'm excited to to get
to do more of that with this show.
Anyone else?
Yeah. What what do you guys want on
the podcast? We never ask you that.
I think, I mean, I think the guests
that we have have been tremendous. And what
I really appreciate,
with Kate and Erin is that you are
looking for those opportunities to highlight voices
who might not get that amplification
and
and, the creativity with the interviews.
So I would say just continue more of
the same. I think there are a lot
of opportunities out there
to pursue different angles around public lands.
Alright. And we'll throw it to our listeners
too. You guys, you know where to find
us, podcast at westernpriorities.org.
So, please, if you're having thoughts right now,
if you're thinking, oh my gosh. I can't
believe they didn't mention this, or this podcast
sucks. They should totally change it. Let us
know. Or if you really like it, you
know, it's always good to hear that. So
with that, I guess we'll wrap up this
200th episode of the landscape.
Thank you to our team for doing this.
We we got you guys in here and
made you think about your work and put
on headphones and speak into microphones. So thank
thanks to everyone for for doing this.
Thanks. Thank you. Thank you.
We're skipping good news this week for the
sake of time, so that means we've reached
the end of this episode. You can always
reach us with questions and comments, podcast at
westernpriorities.org.
Thanks to team CWP for chatting with us
today. And as always, thank you for listening
to the landscape.