Saving America's Top 10 Most Endangered Public Lands: Stephanie Pearson Explains the Political, Corporate, & Ecological Threats

About this episode

Stephanie Pearson discusses the top 10 endangered public lands in the USA and the threats they face.

Award-winning travel writer Stephanie Pearson explains the top 10 federal public lands in the USA (out of the 640 million acres that we co-own with wild animals) that are most in need of our protection from a variety of elevating threats at this point in human history (we discuss industrial activity in Alaska and Minnesota, AI data centers all over, climate crisis-caused extinctions in Hawaii, wildlife fragmentation in the Western grasslands, introduced species killing off mammals in the Everglades, government censorship at parks nationwide, and proposed border walls messing up wild lands in Texas). This is based on Stephanie's special news report co-published by Outside magazine and RePublic. The article is titled “America’s Most Endangered Public Lands 2026” and can be read at the website Republic(dot)land. Republic is a new nonprofit online journalism source dedicated to protecting America’s public lands. In this 50-minute "In Tune to Nature" radio show, aired March 25, 2026, host Carrie Freeman interviews outdoors writer Stephanie Pearson about her public lands article and ideas for getting politically engaged and enjoying public lands, and at the end we get a preview of her…

People in this episode

Host: Carrie Freeman

Guest: Stephanie Pearson

Topics covered

• endangered public lands
• environmental threats
• political engagement
• wildlife conservation
• climate crisis
• outdoor writing

Keywords

• public lands
• environmental threats
• wildlife
• climate change
• conservation
• political engagement
• outdoor activities

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Outside magazine, RePublic, National Geographic

Books & works: America’s Most Endangered Public Lands 2026, 100 Hikes of a Lifetime USA

Places: Alaska, Minnesota, Hawaii, Everglades, Texas

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