This week on The Wild Line, we’re tracking House Natural Resources Committee approvals on sequoia stewardship and scenic trail designation, tensions over the farm bill’s nutrition title and conservation programs, Trump administration moves on public lands leadership, Montana political shifts affecting conservation policy, border wall threats to Big Bend National Park, prescribed burn controversies in Illinois wilderness, and efforts to overturn the Grand Staircase-Escalante management plan. From shifting congressional priorities to landscape-level threats, these stories highlight the accelerating pace of federal public lands policy in 2026.

🎧 Listen to the full episode for context, analysis, and what to watch next.

House Natural Resources Committee Approves Save Our Sequoias Act and Benton MacKaye Trail Scenic Designation

The House Committee on Natural Resources approved a number of public lands bills, including California Republican Vince Fong’s Save Our Sequoias Act and Tennessee Republican Chuck Fleischman’s bill to study a National Scenic Trail designation for the Benton MacKaye Trail that cuts across Georgia, North Carolina, and Tennessee in the Southern Appalachians. A companion Senate bill has already passed the Senate Agriculture Committee.

Farm Bill Coalition Fractures Over Nutrition Title and Food Policy Separation

House Agriculture Committee Democrats condemned the Republican majority’s proposed farm bill during markup, arguing that the historic bipartisan coalition connecting anti-hunger advocates and farming interests has been destroyed. Rep. Angie Craig (D-Minnesota) warned that cutting the nutrition title and separating food and farm programs would dissolve the coalition essential to passing farm legislation. An amendment by Rep. Jahana Hayes (D-Connecticut) would reverse SNAP spending cuts from Republicans’ domestic tax and spending package. The farm bill has historically carried conservation programs and public land protections.

Senate Energy Committee Advances BLM Director Nominee Steve Pearce

The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee voted to advance President Trump’s nominee for Bureau of Land Management director, former New Mexico Representative Steve Pearce, to the Senate floor. Democrats unanimously opposed the Bureau of Land Management nomination, citing Pearce’s past statements supporting the sale of public lands. The committee’s agenda included bills to convey Bureau of Land Management parcels to Price, Utah, and Senator Steve Daines’s bill to release Montana public lands from wilderness study area protection.

Montana Politics: Congressman Zinke Exits, Senator Daines Withdraws from Reelection

Congressman Ryan Zinke announced he will not seek reelection, citing lingering health issues from his Navy SEAL service. As Interior Secretary in Trump’s first term, Zinke pursued reductions in national monument designations. He later founded the Public Land Caucus with Democrat Gabe Vasquez but subsequently whipped votes for House Resolution 140 to overturn the 20-plus-year mining moratorium in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness headwaters. Senator Steve Daines withdrew his name from reelection just hours before the filing deadline. Daines has served on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, opposing land protection legislation while advancing bills to release wilderness study areas.

DHS Waives Environmental Laws for Big Bend National Park Border Barrier Project

U.S. Customs and Border Protection is moving forward with border barriers across the Big Bend region of West Texas, including a 150-plus-mile corridor encompassing ranchland, small towns, and Big Bend National Park. The project is funded by $46.5 billion appropriated in the Big Beautiful Bill passed in July 2025 for the proposed smart wall, which could include steel bollards, waterborne barriers, roads, cameras, lighting, and detection technology. The Department of Homeland Security waived 28 environmental and archaeological protection laws to accelerate construction. Local Republican officials including Brewster County Judge Greg Henington and Hudspeth County Judge Joanna MacKenzie have opposed the project. Conservation groups warn the wall would sever wildlife migration routes and damage the national park landscape.

Bob Krumenaker, former superintendent of Big Bend National Park and current Chair of Keep Big Bend Wild, had this to say: 

Homeland Security has announced a plan, no details, but a plan, to build a permanent border wall from far upstream of Big Bend National Park, including the largest state park in Texas, Big Bend Ranch State Park, all the way through the National Park and most of, if not all of the Rio Grande Wild and Scenic River, which is downstream as well, hundreds of miles in what is the most remote, difficult terrain, and least trafficked section of the entire US Mexican border.

 

The threats to the area are massive. We’re looking at a national park which is also the darkest skies in the entire 40 lower 48 we’re looking at some of the greatest biodiversity in the nation, if not the continent, the most number of bird species, many of which are riparian bird species. And then you’ve got wildlife like Mexican black bears that have recolonized the country north of the Rio Grande, a huge conservation success story. And we’re looking at potentially the entire river that the Big Bend is named for, that the park is named for being cut off and essentially ceding that territory. In Mexico, there is a big recreational boating community and an economy in the gateway communities that it’s dependent upon that, as well as other tourism and Astro tourism, that would be devastating. You’re looking at, it sounds like we’re looking at a 300 to 500 person construction camp. We don’t know where it would be. We know that private landowners outside the national park have been approached for voluntary leases and threatened with condemnation if they don’t comply. So this is hitting us really fast. It would destroy the wild character of not just the park but the area.

Shawnee National Forest Prescribed Burn Proposal Violates Wilderness Act Mandate

The Shawnee National Forest in southern Illinois proposed a Prescribed Burn Project that would allow the agency to burn approximately 289,000 acres—including all seven federally designated Wilderness areas totaling nearly 30,000 acres—in 25,000-acre increments annually, seemingly in perpetuity. The affected wilderness areas are Bald Knob, Bay Creek, Burden Falls, Clear Springs, Garden of the Gods, Lusk Creek, and Panther Den. Wilderness Watch argues the proposal violates the Wilderness Act’s untrammeled mandate, since the draft environmental assessment gives no indication the agency would treat Wilderness areas differently from the rest of the forest, meaning unlawful activities such as chainsaws and mechanical ignition could be used in Wilderness. The Wilderness Act comment period closed March 2.

Utah Delegation Uses Congressional Review Act to Challenge Grand Staircase-Escalante Management Plan

Senator Mike Lee and Congresswoman Celeste Maloy introduced a Congressional Review Act resolution to nullify the management plan for Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah. The Congressional Review Act process allows Congress to overturn federal rules through expedited procedures.

Travis Hammill with the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance said:

The CRA resolutions that have been introduced by Senator Lee and Representative Malloy of Utah represent a pretty significant attack on Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument…the CRA has not been used in this way on a national monument before on a management plan like this one, and it sets a lot of dangerous precedent…the biggest issue that I see within this CRA resolution that the Utah delegation is rallying behind is that the CRA includes language to prevent future substantially similar rules in in any kind of management plan. If this were to pass, that means that if this were to pass, it would be impossible to be as agile and focused and able to be good stewards of our public lands, because they would be prevented from establishing rules that could have anything related to what was currently in there.

Next Week

That’s our report for March 6, 2026.

Join us Tuesday for an inspiring conversation with Terry Tempest Williams. And, we’d love to see you on Tuesday evening for our first ever Wild Idea Community Webinar – the Past, Present and Future of the Roadless Rule.

We’ll be back next week with more land stories that matter.

Until then — Act Up and Run Wild.

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