Welcome to the landscape, your show about America's
parks and public lands. I'm Aaron Weiss with
the Center For Western Western Priorities in beautiful
evergreen Colorado open the mountains today.
Well, I'm Kate Gretzinger in Salt Lake City.
We've got an episode about president Biden's conservation
legacy for you today. Our colleagues, Lauren and
Sterling, put out a report earlier this month
rounding up the president's actions on public lands
over the past 4 years, and let's just
say he's been busy.
But before we do that, we've got some
news.
The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee held
a confirmation hearing,
on Thursday for interior secretary nominee Doug Burgum.
We learned quite a bit more about Trump's
pick to oversee our public lands.
Throughout the hearing,
Burgum referred to public lands as an asset
on America's, quote, balance sheet.
He was making it clear he sees public
lands as a resource to exploit for profit.
Now this makes sense given Burgum's very close
ties to the oil and gas industry.
Essentially, what it sounds like after day today's
hearing, to Doug Burgum, if you can't drill
it or mine it, there's no economic value
there. When he was governor of North Dakota,
Doug Burgum revealed that he has a land
deal with Continental Resources. That's an oil and
gas company founded by billionaire Harold Hamm.
Burgum
also partnered with Hamm to hold that oil
and gas fundraiser for Donald Trump at Mar
a Lago.
The both The Washington Post and The New
York Times reported that Trump asked the oil
executives gathered by Burgam and Hamm to raise
a $1,000,000,000
for his campaign. And if they did, he
would roll back environmental protections at the behest
of the oil industry.
I put up a piece on our West
Wise blog getting into all of that. There's
a link to that in the show notes.
Bergam's dedication to fossil fuel executives was on
full display during that hearing this week as
he bashed what he called intermittent
sources of power. That's
a a slight against renewables.
He claimed the US needs more baseload
power, by which he means coal and natural
gas.
He also said he wants to expand the
use of, quote, clean coal, which, of course,
does not exist. It's not a thing at
all.
Bergham also spoke at length about his adoration
for Teddy Roosevelt. He sounded a bit like
Ryan Zinke in that way. But Bergam said
that the antiquities act was meant for, quote,
Indiana Jones type archaeological
protections.
Now that's despite the fact that Teddy Roosevelt,
Doug Bergam's hero, used the law to designate
the 800,000
Acre Grand Canyon National Monument.
So, governor Burgum, give us a call. We're
gonna walk you through everything you missed in
US history class about the antiquities act.
Well, speaking of the antiquities act, representative Celeste
Molloy of Utah and Mark Amadegh of Nevada
have introduced a bill to repeal the country's
cornerstone conservation law. The ending presidential overreach on
public lands act would remove the president's authority
to designate national monuments and give that authority
to congress,
which I should add, congress already has that
authority.
The antiquities act has been used over a
100 and 60 times to protect invaluable natural
and cultural resources
including the Grand Canyon, the Grand Tetons,
and Zion and Arches National Parks.
In fact, 4 out of Utah's mighty 5
parks were first protected by presidents using the
antiquities act.
Lawmakers passed a law in 1906
because they knew congress was too slow to
act when it came to protecting public lands.
And that problem has only gotten worse. The
rate of congressional land protection has gone from
9 to just 3,000,000 acres in the past
2 decades.
And, of course, given that Celeste Molloy is
Cliven Bundy's niece, it should come as no
surprise that she is taking in at the
antiquities act.
Cliven, you'll recall, refused to pay grazing fees
and led an armed standoff against the Bureau
of Land Management
in 2014
when agents came to round up his illegal
cattle.
And to this day, his cows are still
grazing illegally inside Gold Butte National Monument,
which was created in 2016 by president Obama
using the antiquities act.
Our guests today are 2 of our CWP
colleagues, Lauren Bogard and Sterling Homard.
They authored our recent report on president Biden's
final year on public lands, which looks at
the president's conservation achievements over the past year
in the context of his full presidential term.
Lauren, welcome back to the pod. Thanks, team.
Sterling, good to have you back as well.
Hey. Happy to be back.
So let's start with the upshot from your
report. The White House is saying Biden protected
the most land and water of any president
in history, which is a pretty big claim.
Do we have the data to back that
up?
Yeah. Well, let's just look at what he's
done recently. Just this year already in 2025,
he's designated Chuckwalla and Satitla national monuments,
in California,
and these added 800,000
acres to his already impressive conservation legacy.
Also, this year, he banned 625,000,000
acres of the outer continental shelf from offshore
oil leasing. So if you imagine the area
that's right,
along the border of the the United States,
625,000,000
acres are now
banned to new offshore oil leasing, which is
a huge deal.
I mean, if we look at that in
in terms of the total acres of land
and water he protected, that total number is
674,000,000
acres. So 625,000,000
is a huge part of that, but let's
not overlook the the 4,000,000 acres he protected
using the antiquities act. This includes a restoration
of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase Escalante National
Monuments which President Trump illegally shrunk, but Biden
restored them when he took office.
You know there are so many ways to
protect public land so it's it's hard to
compare apples to oranges here. But,
president Biden, what I can say is that
he did a phenomenal job of protecting public
lands in just
4 years in office. Yeah. Aaron, do you
have anything to add?
Yeah. I mean, just to your point of,
you know, some of this depends on what
is your definition of protected,
and the White House's claim does include, of
course, the 625,000,000
acres
offshore. So when you do add all that
together, yes, it is definitely a larger number
than any president in history.
And that is also not to take away
from
the accomplishments
of, the recently departed president Carter,
who
protected
tens of millions of acres, 50,000,000
plus acres in Alaska
with what was
honestly the the first and maybe only
offensive use of the antiquities act in history
where president Carter invoked that to essentially
force congress's hand to pass ANILCA.
And ANILCA is the the law that essentially
makes Alaska a special sunflower when it comes
to land management. So because of that, Alaska's
mostly off the table for future presidents. So
can you compare the actions of president Carter
and president Biden and say one was better
than the other or one protected more than
the other? No. They're they had
very different and in my mind
equally important
accomplishments
when it comes to the long term health
of America's lands.
Alright. Well, sticking with the hard questions here
at the beginning,
how much progress did Biden make toward protecting
30% of US land and water by 2030?
This was
a a goal he was his administration called
America the Beautiful,
and we talked about it a lot on
this podcast. But, you know, once again, what
is protected? Those numbers are kinda hard to
come up with. So, Lauren, I'm curious what
you think about this.
Yeah. It's a really good question, and it's
timely. I think it's one that many folks
are gonna be asking at the end of,
president Biden's term.
But I I'm not aware of anyone having
a final answer on that because as you
both just explained, there are a lot of
different ways that we can count to 30%
protected, and some of that depends on how
stringent you are about,
private land conservation,
conservation easements.
And the thing about that is a lot
of those areas have some of the best
habitat, riparian areas, other places. There's a reason
why, some of those private lands,
also have high conservation
value. So a lot of it's gonna depend
on who you ask. But the way I'm
looking at it is looking at rather than
the minutiae of the final accounting and tally
of acres protected,
and to what degree, I'm looking at the
actions that he and his administration took over
4 years in office. And I think by
all accounts, that's pretty astonishing, especially when you
remember
what was going on in early 2021
in terms of
recovering from the COVID pandemic and economic
uncertainty.
So the fact that Biden used the antiquities
act 15 times over the course of his
presidency, and he also established,
about a dozen new national wildlife refuges,
I I think that's a significant achievement
by all accounts. And I would even throw
in there things like some high profile mineral
withdrawals,
in some some some more sensitive and ecologically
valuable areas.
And then also preventing
extracted
activities in areas with high cultural or ecological
significance.
Yeah. That would be like Chaco
mineral withdrawal around Chaco, the Boundary Waters, really
high profile important
areas. And like you said, Lauren, I think
it's important to point out that, you know,
30% is a number, but, like, some of
these areas have higher ecological value than others
and and cultural value. And,
he he protected a lot of really important
places. And one of the Aaron? One of
the things I do give the the Biden
administration a lot of credit for is starting
to do that difficult work of actually figuring
out how do you count to 30, which
is, in fact, significantly harder than it sounds
at first blush.
The work they did to create the the
first draft
of the conservation atlas was very good and
important.
And even if, let's assume, that work gets
paused
under the Trump administration,
that work doesn't go away.
It just means that either folks on the
outside pick it up, or when there's a
future administration from
any party that is interested in doing that
work, they they pick back up where the
Biden administration left off. And
the Biden administration
recognized some of that does in fact count
individual,
protection measures on the ground to figure out
where you draw that line, what counts as
protected.
So that work of starting to do the
Atlas and the measurement
was was a really important achievement.
Lauren, I'm I'm curious, you know,
why do you think president Biden
was so successful
given that he was a single term president
and got certainly a whole lot more done
in his first term than than president Obama
did?
It's almost as though he
had it in mind for himself and set
the tone in his administration
in terms of what if this is it?
What if this is all the time we
have? And so he set the tone early
with his executive order on tackling the climate
crisis at home and abroad.
That's, an elegant name for a lot of
really
important,
goals and objectives that were government wide, including
it established the national goal of protecting 30%
of America's lands and waters
by 2030 and also called for government agencies
to come up with a plan for how
to reach that goal. And so that is
what we,
what led to the America the Beautiful initiative.
So I think there's a tremendous amount to
be said for setting that as an expectation
and and asking for accountability upfront.
I would add that president Biden really just
got in there and got it done. You
know, he came in with the understanding that
there really is no time to waste,
that we if we want to allow future
generations
to enjoy these outdoor spaces like we do,
then public man protections need to happen, and
they need to happen
now.
And,
you know, by the end of his first
term,
president Obama,
had only protected about 20,000 acres. And let's
not forget, by the end of president Obama's
second term, he had increased that to over
5,000,000 acres.
But but president Biden, just after one term,
he protected over 4,000,000 acres using the antiquities
act,
and that is that is really impressive. I
mean, president Obama was a fantastic
president on conservation,
but it took him a term to get
warmed up. And and president Biden really just,
came in there ready to rock.
And, Lauren, it should be noted that the
president
had a supportive congress,
through through at least part of his term,
and that made a a big difference.
Oh my gosh. Yes.
Insert wistful sigh of how much you can
get done
when you have congressional
champions, and that certainly helped. That helped
in terms of laying the groundwork for the
transition to clean energy,
preparing the next generation
of climate leaders through the
American Climate Corps. Those are things that he
had
congressional champions help get over the finish line
as well as the passage of some really
critical
legislation that funded all of these efforts, including
the bipartisan
infrastructure law and the inflation
reduction act, which I understand is the largest
investment in climate mitigation efforts that the world
has seen. So big deal that that got
over the finish line.
So
Biden also used the
antiquities act to designate national monuments honoring civil
rights and indigenous history.
You know, these aren't really land protection, so
they sometimes get overlooked in our community, but
they are,
a good argument for the antiquities act, which,
as we know, is about to come under
fire,
in the Trump administration.
Lauren, what were some of those monuments that
Biden designated,
to sort of honor history?
So
president Biden and his administration saw the antiquities
act as a tool, not just for land
and resource protection, but also something that can
be applied toward national healing
and acknowledgment
of some of the events of our past.
Some that are, traumatic in terms of the
internment of Japanese Americans during World War 2,
the murder and lynching of Emmett Till.
The president
used his authority under the antiquities act to
create
new cultural monuments and historic sites that that
honor,
the
the legacy and the struggle of those events.
And so that was a a key piece
of his use of the antiquities act. Yeah.
That's a really good point. And I think
that it's something that is worth stating even
though it's maybe obvious is that the Biden
administration was really intentional with how they were
protecting lands and what lands they were protecting
and who they had,
you know, in the room when those lands
were protected. So I feel like the it
was a,
it was we're moving into this age of,
conservation where it is a little bit more
intersectional and there is it's less about just,
like, wilderness and putting acres on the board.
And it's more about who does this help?
Who does this benefit? Whose story does this
tell? And I feel like we really saw
that sort of 21st,
century
concept of conservation come into
focus under the Biden administration. So I'm glad
you guys brought that up.
And certainly
I just wanna add that also certainly, that's
true at Camp Hale in Colorado where we're
acknowledging
both the outdoors that that played such a
central role in training
the troops for for World War 2, that
the landscape and the history in that case
are interconnected.
And one of the monument campaigns
that did not make it over the finish
line was Swabhi, swamp cedars in Nevada,
where the the tribes were very clear that
this is honoring
hallowed ground, the the site of,
of a terrible massacre. And there is more
work to be done.
And we can hope that either congress or
a Trump administration
will go in and look at places like
Musawby and and acknowledge that protecting the land
is protecting history in these cases.
Right. And and sorry not to belabor this
point, but I do think when you have
conservation,
when you're viewing it from this bottom up
model, it becomes less partisan, which, of course,
is helpful
in every sense.
You know, protecting these lands,
shouldn't be political. And when you start with
real people on the ground saying this is
this really matters to me, I think you
can, avoid some of the the partisanship that
sometimes comes with conservation.
And I think that leads us, of course,
to to tribal land stewardship
co management,
and
what president Biden did there,
Lauren, I think is really remarkable.
It is. There have been tribal consultation
laws on the books for for decades, but
in some cases, that's been more of a
checking the box exercise rather than meaningful consultation.
So
the president and his administration
sought to engage with tribal nations and leaders
early on as partners
and,
updating some of those tribal consultation
procedures and and guidelines, as well as bringing
more indigenous people into leadership roles within agencies
like secretary Holland and Chuck Sams, the director
of the National Park Service.
The president also
reengaged with tribal nations on an annual basis
by restarting the White House Tribal Nations Conference,
something that had been done under president Obama
and,
was halted under president Trump.
Yeah. And let I mean, let's just look
at the most recent, national monument designation. Satitla
Highlands National Monument, in Northern California, that is
an effort
totally led by the the Pit River Nation.
And president Biden did a phenomenal job of
listening to their requests of of land protection
for these lands that are healing, that are
sacred.
Yeah. And and one thing that,
bears mentioning is the the final Bears Ears
National Monument Management Plan, which was just finalized,
just in time.
And it really,
the the BLM in that plan,
you know, it was the first plan developed
in coordination with tribes, with the the tribal
commission that was created by the monument proclamation.
So that's pretty historic,
and it's just awesome to see that the
Biden administration got that over the finish line,
because I think it will have some lasting
power, hopefully, under the Trump administration
regardless of what happens to the monument.
And that's certainly the most high profile example,
I think, just given the national attention on
the
establishment and illegal reduction and then restoration of
Bears Ears. But over the course of
president Biden's term, the interior department and the
forest service,
committed up front to enhancing tribal management
efforts, and that led to over 400
co management agreements that have been signed since
the beginning of the administration.
That's so awesome. That number, I feel like,
is not getting enough attention. So I'm glad
you brought that up. Thanks, Lauren.
So we we mentioned Chuckwalla and Satitla National
Monuments, which were were both tribally led.
The
White House, when they created those monuments, announced
this that they'd also created the largest stretch
of protected land in North America.
They're calling it
the Moab to Mohave conservation corridor, and this
kind of caught me by surprise. I hadn't
heard about this before,
last week. So,
why is that important, Sterling, and what sort
of makes up that corridor?
Well, I think you're not alone in,
in saying that you hadn't heard of it
before. Honestly, I'm not sure the Biden administration
themselves had heard of it before they did
it.
So someone looked at the map and realized
what they'd just done? Exactly. Yep. Yep. We
were joking around that the maps guy was
like, you know what? I think we did
something here.
So, I mean, it's true. Yeah. Biden
used the antiquities act,
so well that he created,
whether on purpose or not, this 600 mile
stretch of
contiguous landscape that is now protected
is the longest contiguous stretch of protected
public lands in the continental United States. The
Moab to Mohave conservation corridor, and it it
includes places that president
Biden protected using the antiquities act of Ekua
Mae National Monument,
Chuckwalla National Monument as of just this year,
Grand Staircase Escalante, Bears Ears. These are places
he restored.
I mean, looking at president Biden's conservation legacy,
he
he dropped a bomb with this one. I
mean, 608
600 miles is nothing to sneeze at. And
and, you know, as time goes on,
it is harder and harder to find places
that aren't interrupted
by human development. I mean, that's the definition
of contiguous.
Right?
And so to have this space in
in Southwest,
in the Southwest United States is so important
not just for,
the conservation of it, the the tribal recognition
that these lands
were where
indigenous peoples traveled along the Colorado River, but
also for wildlife. You know? Wildlife need these
spaces that aren't interrupted by by human development.
So in addition to protecting lands and waters,
Biden also made public lands part of the
renewable energy transition. And this is, you know,
not necessarily conservation, but it is important.
How did he do that, Lauren?
Yeah. So
early on, the administration
set a goal to permit
25 gigawatts of new clean energy on public
lands by 2025.
And they actually achieved that goal this past
April in 2024,
which was obviously several months in advance. And
in the end, the BLM approved 45 renewable
energy project projects with the capacity to generate
33 gigawatts, which is enough to power
15,000,000
homes. So
part of what allowed the agency and the
administration writ large to achieve this milestone
was the necessity to update some regulations and
incentives that would make it
easier to both thoughtfully cite renewable energy development
on public lands,
and then just provide a framework for how
to do so in a way that has
fewer resource conflicts. Because as as you all
were mentioning just a second ago, there's
there just aren't going to be more public
lands, more land in the US. It's it's
a finite thing, and there's certainly pressure,
for it to serve a lot of purposes.
So the fact that they managed to to
do this in a way that brings a
lot of renewable capacity online and keeping in
mind some of those conflicts is is really
remarkable.
And I think you also have to acknowledge
the oil and gas reforms
that got done, first under the inflation reduction
act,
and then the rule making that followed.
That overhauled
a oil and gas leasing system that had
been rigged in the industry's favor for a
century.
So fixing a 100 year problem is nothing
to sneeze at, and that that credit goes
to both congress
and secretary Holland,
and, of course,
Bureau of Land Management director Tracy Stone Manning,
who got that stuff
done.
And those
those overhauls,
most of which are required by law and
a little bit was done through a a
durable rule making, that really is going to
have a long term
difference,
in terms of how America manages publicly owned
oil and gas, both in terms of making
sure we are not
locking up acres unnecessarily that are never gonna
get drilled and making sure that when oil
and gas gets drilled, that taxpayers get a
fair return.
So then I think we have to look
forward to what happens next as we're recording
this,
on Wednesday. There are, by my math, a
120 hours left in the Biden presidency.
We know that
president-elect Trump has already pledged to try to
roll back a number of national monuments, something
that he tried to do the last time
around. Lauren, just refresh our memory.
What
happened back then, what, about 7 years ago?
Yeah. The public outcry was immediate. It was
swift and unequivocal. People hated
the Trump, and then
and then interior
secretary Ryan Zinke
did that. And the polling results, even in
Utah,
reflected that sentiment.
Yeah. They they they did a whole public
comment process on this national monument
review, and 99%
of the public comments
told them to leave national monuments alone. I
mean, it's just
crazy when you think about any subject in
America
where there is 99%
agreement, and that folks care enough about to
write into to to their elected officials and
tell them, oh, gosh. No. Do not do
this. So,
and we continue to see that year after
year in public polling. Lauren, what did we
just see this week?
Yeah. Exactly. The Grand Canyon Trust commissioned some
new polling
in both Utah and Arizona
that was just released yesterday, and it reinforced
how much people love the monuments in their
state and support
their existence
going forward, with the majority saying they wanna
keep Bears Ears, Grand Staircase, and Bajnavio
Itaukukfani
as they are. So it's it might not
be 99%,
but it's a a majority of voters in
those states. Yeah. And of Republicans, if I
remember correctly.
True.
Sterling, you sort of have an interesting window
into public sentiment because you run our TikTok
account,
where you've
and and our some of our insta you
make our Instagram reels as well, and some
of these have
really,
gone viral recently. So what are you hearing
and seeing from people online about public lands?
Oh my gosh. Well, I'll I'll use a
recent example. We've been doing a lot of
coverage of,
Utah's latest attempt to to seize control of,
what they call unappropriated
public lands in their state.
And these are national public lands, so they
belong to all Americans across the the United
States.
But I made a video about it because
the supreme court denied to hear Utah's,
case that they want
18,000,000 acres of public lands to be transferred
to the state.
I made a video about it, and it
blew up, and there are over 500 comments.
And as I've been looking through these comments,
people are saying
that they want public lands to remain in
public hands. You know. They want their national
public lands to remain,
accessible,
for fishing, for hiking, for camping, for for
all their their recreation purposes, and they don't
want their public lands to be sold off
to
to,
developers, to the oil and gas industry, to
mining companies, you know.
And so across the board, I mean, I'm
seriously, like, 500 comments on this one video.
I've been looking at all the comments, and
I think I've seen one that says
that Utah was was right in in making
this lawsuit. So I'll let you do the
math there on what percentage that is of
people who support
national monuments. But, I mean, people love their
public lands, and they don't want to see
protections for those public places,
be rolled back.
So speaking of protections, how much of the
progress made under Biden is at stake under
Trump, Lauren? I know we've touched on this,
but but can you sort of pull it
all together for us?
I'll try. I mean, the good and the
bad news is that they've told us what
they're gonna do in their project 2025,
whether Trump wants to say he knew nothing
about it or not.
Many
folks who had served in the 1st Trump
administration,
said what they wanna do in terms of
public lands and oil and gas.
So while we don't know for sure when
or what or what they'll actually
target,
they have given us their road map. And
so
I I think
the bottom line is that any time we
spend going backward or not making
progress reducing our carbon emissions or protecting biodiversity
and ecosystems
as much as possible
is time that we simply don't have.
Okay.
Completely accurate. We don't have any time to
waste, but there is some good news here.
Right, Erin?
Like,
these some of these regulations and and changes
will be hard to undo.
That's right.
One of the things that, especially, the Bureau
of Land Management did right is they got
these rules over the finish line in a
way that they are durable. They can't just
be reversed using the congressional review act. And
we know from the past
that the the first Trump administration
tried to cut so many corners that a
great deal of their
anti conservation agenda didn't stick because they didn't
follow the law. Things like the Administrative Procedures
Act. Things like NEPA, the National Environmental Policy
Act. The Clean Water Act, the Clean Air
Act.
Those are all in place and those are
all strong safeguards
for our public lands, for our clean water.
And the at the administrative
level at least,
they really do put some serious handcuffs on
any attempts
to just wholesale get rid of
these land protections and these new environmental patrol,
and and these new environmental
protections that we saw under the Biden administration.
That is for me
one of my north stars
going into these next 4 years, along with
the fact that we can continue to hold
this administration
accountable from an ethics standpoint, from a transparency
standpoint.
All of those safeguards
are still in place, and and that's what
I look at every day when when I
go into work. And I refuse to end
this episode on a bleak note because this
is a celebration of a remarkable conservation legacy
of of president Biden's.
So I wanna ask each of you to
wrap up by giving us
your north star as a conservation advocate
as president Trump takes office? And let's let's
start with Lauren on that one. Oh, Erin.
Good idea. Let's not end on a bleak
note. It's it there's a lot coming at
us right now, but,
you're right. This is a celebration of the
durability and the progress that was made.
Gosh. In terms of
North Star
as Trump takes office, I mean, I I
put that to every single one of us
in this country. Anyone who has a fake
favorite hiking trail or values
clean air, clean water, we can all be
conservation
champions, and I hope we're we're up to
the challenge. There's gonna be a lot happening,
but,
it's it's,
you know, you gotta stand up for the
things that you love. So I'm looking to
to all of us to be part of
that groundswell
of protecting the progress that was made by
president Biden and his administration.
Sterling, what's, what's keeping you going?
I think
it's so easy to feel
alone in the belief that conservation
is popular.
Right?
As we see
Trump elect all these different
Trumpers
to to be part of his administration,
it has made me kinda think like, oh
my gosh. Am I the only one that
cares about conservation here? I mean, all these
people, just like they said they were gonna
do in project 2025,
are are now,
backing president Trump in his anti conservation agenda.
But I think it's important for people to
realize that
for con I I think it's important for
conservationists
to realize
that we are not alone.
There is a huge community of conservationists
in the United States. A majority of Americans
are,
supportive of public lands protections
and, I think it's important for me to
just take a step back and realize that
the anti conservation,
rhetoric that the Trump administration is pushing
is unpopular
among the public. It is largely
undemocratic
when, he puts forth
anti conservation legislation that is not supported by
a majority of Americans. So
at the very least, we have
a team amongst each other, and we have
support with other conservationists,
across the country.
Yeah. I'll I'll jump jump on that and
just say, yeah, we have numbers on our
side. You know, I'd we said this after
the election, and I'll say it again here.
Trump was elected in spite of his position
on public lands, not because of it.
And, you know, the other thing for me
that keeps me going is remembering how incompetent
the Trump administration was the first time around.
They like to cut corners. They like to
do shortcuts, and we have an army of
attorneys on our side in addition to to
public sentiment. So,
it will be hard to undo a lot
of this progress.
And, you know,
hopefully, after 4 years of attacks on public
lands and,
anti climate rhetoric,
will have a president who believes in conservation
and climate change again. So I look forward
to that future.
I can just add one other thing, which
is that,
we're so lucky that
this is popular,
that, people love
their parks and public lands. So we've definitely
got that going for ourselves going forward. And
one thing that I think I'll be doing
that'll put a smile on my face and
make me feel
gratitude is just looking back at all the
places that I was able to visit with
Kate and Sterling and others on our team
in doing the road to 30 postcards campaign.
And what it makes me think of is
how some of those
protection efforts were decades decades
in the works. And to see
those
efforts get over the finish line
gives me a tremendous amount of satisfaction
and pride and gratitude that that that's where
we are at the end of this. And
I would even say that for some of
these long overdue
rule makings and reforms. Some of those were
decades in the making as well. So to
be here now is definitely a big celebration
and something we can appreciate and enjoy going
forward.
That is a beautiful place to leave it,
along with the batch of remember the incompetence
bumper stickers that I'm gonna print up right
after this.
Lauren Bogard, Sterling Homard, thank you so much
for that progress support. It is a wonderful
flag to have planted,
to remember how remarkable the last 4 years
have been.
And of course, we are not going anywhere.
Alright, folks. That is it for today's episode.
As always, we love to hear from you.
Podcast@western
priorities.org.
It is kind of remarkable to think that
this was our last podcast of the Biden
presidency.
And as you can tell from our news
segment at the top of this show, things
are gonna get crazy over the next couple
months. We will be here to keep track
of it all. If there's stuff that you
wanna hear about or learn about, again, use
that email address, podcast at westernpriorities.org.
Tell us what you wanna hear.
Thanks again to Sterling and Lauren for their
time today, and thank you for listening to
the
landscape.