The Wild Idea

Dillon Osleger is a geologist, conservationist, and trail builder whose debut book, Trail Work: Restoring the Paths and Stories of America's Public Lands, reads as both a love letter and a reckoning. Named after Dillon, Montana, and raised by field geologists who hauled him on their excursions through the Canadian Rockies and the rangelands of southwestern Montana, Osleger grew up learning that the land itself is a kind of map, one that records what came before and what we choose to preserve. This episode continues The Wild Idea's month of stewardship with a wide-ranging conversation about trails, history, and what the act of maintenance actually means.The conversation moves through the Appalachian Trail and Pacific Crest Trail as case studies in how long-distance trails have drifted from their original purposes, which were economically and socially rooted in rural communities, toward a culture of speed and personal achievement that has little relationship to the land itself. It returns, finally, to the people who maintain the trails: the campground hosts, trail crews, and seasonal rangers who rarely receive the recognition the work deserves. Osleger's argument is not nostalgic. It is a civic one. Stewardship, he says, is one of the few remaining spaces where people from genuinely different backgrounds can work side by side, swinging tools for the same reasons. The question the episode leaves open is how long that common ground can hold if we stop funding the people who tend it.Learn more about Dillon and today's conversation at our website, thewildidea.com.

The Three Forks of the Flathead River in northwest Montana didn't just earn Wild and Scenic designation — they inspired the law that made it possible. In the 1950s, a proposed dam at Spruce Park would have dewatered the Middle Fork entirely, routing its flow through a mountain tunnel into Hungry Horse Reservoir. Wildlife biologists John and Frank Craighead floated the river to document what would be lost, and their fight against the dam seeded the movement that became the National Wild and Scenic Rivers Act of 1968. The three forks themselves weren't formally designated until 1976 — 50 years ago this year.Recorded live at Lake Baked in Bigfork, Montana during the annual Whitewater Festival, this episode features Sheena Pate, executive director of the Flathead Rivers Alliance (FRA), in conversation with Bill and Anders about what protecting 219 miles of wild river actually requires on the ground today. FRA runs a River Ambassador Program, an annual noxious weed pull with 165 volunteers, water quality monitoring, youth programming, and boots-on-ground education at put-ins across all three forks — work that has become more urgent as recreation pressure has grown and federal agency capacity has shrunk.The conversation covers the distinct character of the North, Middle, and South forks; the transboundary dimension of the North Fork, which originates in Ktunaxa Nation territory in British Columbia; FRA's partnerships with First Nations tribes and the Blackfeet; and the long-overdue update to the 1980s river management plan. Bill is a former board member of FRA who was there at the organization's founding, which gives the conversation an unusually frank quality about what it takes to build a river stewardship organization from scratch.Learn more and find the links and resources mentioned today at our website, thewildidea.com.

In this special episode, The Wild Idea brings its recent public webinar directly to podcast listeners. Join a high-powered panel of scientists, attorneys, policy veterans, and conservation advocates to examine one of the most consequential federal land protection policies in American history: the 2001 Roadless Rule. The rule has shielded 58.5 million acres of largely intact national forest land from new road construction and most commercial timber harvest for more than two decades, and it now faces a proposed rescission by the current administration.The conversation opens with Mike Dombeck, the former Forest Service chief who oversaw the rule’s development, tracing the road system’s explosive post-World War II growth and the maintenance crisis that made the moratorium on new road construction both necessary and politically viable. From there, the panel moves through the science of wildfire ignitions near roads, the rule’s flexibility for forest health treatments, the economic value of roadless areas to outdoor recreation, and the water supply those landscapes provide to more than 60 million Americans. Monte Mills and Martin Nie bring legal and policy depth to questions of tribal consultation, indigenous land rights, and the gaps that rescission would leave in existing forest plans. Vera Smith of Defenders of Wildlife walks listeners through two interactive mapping tools that illustrate which threatened and endangered species depend on roadless forests, region by region.The episode closes with the full panel reflecting on what, if anything, could be improved in the rule, and how everyday people can make their voices heard before the draft environmental impact statement is finalized. The answer that emerges, again and again, is that the public support which gave this rule its unusual durability remains the most powerful tool available to those who want to see it preserved.Learn more about today's episode and the resources mentioned at our website, thewildidea.com.