The hollowing out of agencies is not something that can be reversed quickly.

John Leshy is an Emeritus Professor at UC Law San Francisco, former Solicitor of the Interior Department under President Clinton, and the author of Our Common Ground: A History of America’s Public Lands (Yale University Press, 2022). He has spent sixty years tracking the arc of federal public land policy, which makes his assessment of the current moment unusually grounded and unusually sobering.

In this conversation, Leshy traces the founding-era origins of America’s public lands, from the thirteen colonies’ negotiation over western land claims to the Great Transition of 1890, when Congress first authorized presidents to reserve lands for protection. He then turns to the present, naming the Trump administration’s approach not as a policy disagreement but as something new: a deliberate strategy to hollow out the agencies that manage these lands, make the management visibly bad, and use public disillusionment to justify divestiture. Leshy identifies Russ Vought, Director of the Office of Management and Budget, as the architect of this strategy. He also examines why Bears Ears National Monument drew an immediate public backlash while rescinding the Roadless Rule has not, and what that difference means for conservation organizers.

Asked whether this amounts to a reset or just another blip, Leshy is measured. He estimates it will take two to five years to know. The hollowing out of agencies is not something that can be reversed quickly; rebuilding the expertise and capacity that has been stripped away could take a decade. Whether public support, which Colorado College’s annual western polls show remains strong and even growing across the political spectrum, can translate into political action remains, in Leshy’s words, “a big, gigantic question mark.”

In this episode:

• The founding era of America’s public lands — How the thirteen colonies negotiated over western land claims after independence, eventually relinquishing them to the national government, and how those original commons became the foundation for everything that followed.
• The Great Transition of 1890 — The moment Congress gave presidents authority to set aside lands for protection, launching a conservation movement that held its trajectory, through occasional disruptions, for the next 130 years.
• The hollowing-out strategy — Leshy’s characterization of the current administration’s approach: deliberately degrading federal agency capacity until the public concludes the government can’t manage these lands, creating justification for divestiture or state transfer. He identifies Russ Vought, Director of the Office of Management and Budget, as the architect.
• Public support across the political spectrum — Colorado College’s annual “Colorado and the West” poll has tracked voter attitudes across about ten western states for twenty years; the most recent data shows support for protecting public lands not just holding steady but growing, including among self-identified MAGA voters.
• Bears Ears versus the Roadless Rule — Why reducing a specific named monument drew sharp, immediate public reaction while rescinding the Roadless Rule has not, and what that difference means for conservation advocates trying to mobilize opposition to abstract policy rollbacks.
• Co-stewardship and Indigenous land rights — The rise of tribal influence over federal land management in the last twenty years, the legal complexity behind the term “co-stewardship,” and how those arrangements vary across different tribal contexts, land types, and management questions.
• The Congressional Review Act and land management plans — How a law designed to overturn federal regulations is now being used to rescind land management plans, creating what Leshy calls a complete morass of legal uncertainty for everyone, including the oil and gas industry it is meant to benefit.
• The case against a new public land law commission — Why Leshy admires the 1970s commission that shaped FLPMA but doubts today’s polarized Congress could replicate it. One exception: a targeted review of the revenue and funding side of public land management, particularly the longstanding hardrock mining royalty gap.
• Reset or blip — Leshy’s two-to-five-year estimate for when we’ll know whether the second Trump administration has fundamentally broken the long arc of public land conservation, and why the answer isn’t obvious either way.

Links & Resources

Media & Books 

• Our Common Ground: A History of America’s Public Lands — Leshy’s 2022 book (Yale University Press) tracing the full arc of federal public land policy from the founding era to the present.

Organizations & Initiatives:

• Ground Shift — A bipartisan ideas hub focused on reimagining America’s public lands and waters management.
• Colorado College “Conservation in the West” Survey — An annual poll tracking voter attitudes on public lands across approximately ten western states, conducted annually for the past twenty years.
• Wallace Stegner Center — The environmental law and policy center at the University of Utah’s S.J. Quinney College of Law; where Leshy spoke at the annual symposium attended by the hosts before this recording.

Places & Landscapes:

• Bears Ears National Monument — A monument in southeastern Utah significant for its Indigenous cultural sites; reduced in size during the first Trump administration and restored under President Biden.
• Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument — A monument in southern Utah that was also reduced and restored; currently subject to Congressional Review Act proceedings in the current Congress. (For more context on Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, listen to our recent conversation with Autumn Gillard & Steve Bloch)

Government & Policy:

• Congressional Review Act (CRA, 1996) — A law allowing Congress to overturn recent federal rules; currently being used to rescind land management plans for national monuments and other federal lands, creating significant legal uncertainty.
• Roadless Area Conservation Rule (2001) — The rule protecting approximately 58 million acres of National Forest System land from road-building and development; rescinded by the current administration. (Explore our coverage of the Roadless Rule)
• Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA, 1976) — The foundational law governing Bureau of Land Management lands, passed in part as a result of recommendations from the Public Land Law Review Commission.
• Wilderness Act (1964) — Federal law establishing the National Wilderness Preservation System.

People Mentioned:

• Russ Vought — Director of the Office of Management and Budget; identified by Leshy as the architect of the current administration’s strategy to hollow out federal land management agencies.
• Andrew Mergen — Harvard Law professor and faculty director of the Emmett Environmental Law & Policy Clinic; proposed the idea of Congress recommissioning a public land law commission at the Wallace Stegner Center symposium.
• Ryan Zinke — Trump’s first-term Interior Secretary, who recommended shrinking Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments; Leshy notes Trump only acted on two of several recommendations and then backed away.

John Leshy is Emeritus Professor at the University of California College of the Law in San Francisco. His political history of America’s public lands, Our Common Ground, was published in 2022 by Yale University Press. Leshy was Solicitor (General Counsel) of the Interior Department throughout the Clinton Administration, and earlier was special counsel to the Chair of the Natural Resources Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives, a law professor at Arizona State University, Associate Solicitor of Interior for Energy and Resources in the Carter Administration, an attorney-advocate with the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), and a litigator in the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division. He headed the Interior Department transition team for Clinton-Gore in 1992 and was co-lead for Obama-Biden in 2008.

He’s four times been a visiting professor at Harvard Law School, from which he graduated in 1969, after earning an A.B. at Harvard College. His many publications include a book on the Mining Law and co-authoring casebooks on public land and resources law (8th edition, 2022) and water law (7th edition, 2025).

In 2025 he received the Horizon Award for Extraordinary Contributions to Environmental Law & Policy from the Harvard Environmental Law Society. His complete C.V. and bibliography can be found here.

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