This week on The Wild Line, we’re tracking a BLM proposal to rewrite grazing regulations across 155 million acres of public land, a lawsuit challenging the Forest Service’s restructuring into 15 new state offices, new wildlife crossing funding in Pennsylvania and North Carolina, and a wildfire burning into Colorado’s Uncompahgre Wilderness. From grazing policy to a new tool for tracking public comment periods, this week’s stories highlight how much is moving right now on public lands.

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

Program Note: The Wild Line Is Moving to Its Own Feed

This is the last month The Wild Line will appear inside The Wild Idea podcast feed. The show is moving to its own dedicated feed; subscribe now on your podcast player of choice to keep receiving new episodes without interruption. Through July, new episodes will publish to both feeds during the transition.

Wildlife Crossing Funding Grows in Pennsylvania and North Carolina

Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro announced the Pennsylvania Wildlife Connectivity Work Group last week, a first-of-its-kind statewide partnership co-led by the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources and PennDOT. Eleven agencies will identify priority wildlife corridors and build the state’s first statewide connectivity plan, backed by an $840,000 federal Wildlife Crossings Pilot Program grant. Meanwhile, North Carolina’s new state budget includes $10.2 million recurring every two years for wildlife crossings, building on a landmark 2023 appropriation. The National Parks Conservation Association and the Safe Passage Coalition, formed around the Pigeon River Gorge where I-40 bisects a corridor linking Great Smoky Mountains National Park to nearby national forests, praised the funding. Roughly one million large-animal vehicle collisions occur nationally each year, costing about $8 billion.

Smoky Mountains Mule Packing Program Marks 50 Years

The Great Smoky Mountains National Park mule packing program celebrated its 50th anniversary with a “golden jubilee” this year. Three park employees work alongside 12 mules and six horses to haul supplies through the park’s 816-square-mile backcountry, and in 2025 the team removed 997 trees, packed 57,800 pounds of material, and logged nearly 687 hours pulling logs up to 18 feet long over distances of two miles. It’s the only East Coast national park with a mule team and the only park that shoes its animals in-house; its mules, at roughly 1,250 pounds, are the largest of any National Park Service pack program. Park partner Friends of the Smokies has purchased mules and auctioned naming rights to support the program.

Southern Environmental Law Center Launches Wildlife Down South

Bill and Anders spoke with Ramona McGee, Senior Attorney and Wildlife Program Leader at the Southern Environmental Law Center, about a new project aimed at increasing awareness and education around Southern wildlife. The project, Wildlife Down South, is available now on Substack and focuses on the species and habitat stories that don’t always get coverage outside the region. McGee joined us to share more about the new project:

“We started this Substack called Wildlife Down South. And the whole purpose or premise here is really to spread the word of our world-class biodiversity here in the South and to bring the South and southern wildlife into the conversation about solutions when we’re talking about how to protect wildlife and habitat…Communication is absolutely essential to inspiring action. And I’ll tell you, I am still surprised at how often I’m talking with folks who live here in the South who are not aware of the amazing biodiversity in our proverbial backyards. And so I just think it’s so important that we spread that word because you can’t expect people to act to protect these incredible species if they don’t know about them in the first instance.”

BLM Proposes First Grazing Rule Overhaul Since 1995

For the first time in more than 30 years, the Bureau of Land Management is rewriting the grazing regulations governing ranching across 155 million acres of Western public land, an overhaul that would expand grazing and favor the livestock industry. The proposed rules would narrow who counts as “interested public” and eliminate steps for public comment on permit decisions, while adding automatic pauses in management when ranchers appeal and enshrining subsidized grazing fees. Interior official Karen Budd-Falen, a longtime grazing advocate from a ranching family who required an ethics waiver to work on the policy, has championed a return to Reagan-era grazing rules.

Forest Service Restructuring Draws a Lawsuit as Chief Defends the Plan

U.S. Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz defended the agency’s largest restructuring in a century while speaking in Park City, a plan that would dissolve the regional offices set up under first Chief Gifford Pinchot in favor of 15 new state offices and move headquarters to Salt Lake City. Critics, including agency retirees, call the process hasty and opaque, and warn it will politicize the agency and eliminate research stations and oversight staff that check politically expedient decisions; Trump’s proposed FY2027 budget would also cut the National Forest System by roughly 24%. A coalition of unions, environmental and civic groups, and local governments has sued for a preliminary injunction, arguing the reorganization violates a 2026 budget-bill provision barring funds for relocating or reorganizing offices. Western Watersheds Project Executive Director Erik Molvar said the move puts industrial interests in charge of public land management. Bill and Anders also spoke with Bill Avey, National Chairperson of the National Association of Forest Service Retirees, for context on the reorganization:

“We believe the fire transfer is the greatest threat to the Forest Service and land management in general because fire is part of the land..we don’t have a wildfire crisis problem [so much] as we have a land management crisis problem…So we feel that the transfer of fire out of the agency and moving to a suppression force is exactly the wrong thing to do.”

Gold Mountain Fire Burns Into Colorado’s Uncompahgre Wilderness

At time of recording, the Gold Mountain Fire, burning about two miles north of Ouray, Colorado, had grown to 26,405 acres and remained uncontained, with a large portion burning east into the Uncompahgre Wilderness, a remote area that hasn’t seen wildfire in more than 50 years and holds conifer stands with no history of fire mitigation. Steep, rugged terrain toward Baldy Peak has made it difficult to establish fire lines, while crews built a containment perimeter along Highway 550 with more than 820 personnel assigned. Dry and dead fuel, steep slopes, hot and windy weather, poor snowpack, and ongoing drought have primed the landscape for continued growth, and the Grand Mesa, Uncompahgre, and Gunnison National Forests remain closed to visitors. This is a fast-moving fire.

New Free Tool Tracks Federal Public Lands Comment Periods

More Than Just Parks has launched the Public Lands Action Network, or PLAN, a free and continuously updated tracker of open federal public comment windows on public lands decisions. PLAN centers the comment periods that matter, explains what’s at stake in plain English, and walks users through submitting a comment in about two minutes; it currently lists 45 open decisions, nine closing this week, with more than 107,000 comments logged. Beyond commenting, PLAN offers a Congressional Public Lands Scorecard, a Threatened Public Lands Map, state- and issue-filtered email alerts, and a crowdsourced “submit a fight” form, all drawn from the Federal Register, BLM’s NEPA register, and verified reader reports. Its current “lead action” opposes the Forest Service’s own move to narrow public comment rights.

Former Senator Bill Frist Predicts a GOP Shift on Climate

A New York Times profile this week features former Tennessee Republican Senator and surgeon Bill Frist, who argues Republicans will eventually “come around” on climate change and protecting the natural world. Frist points to the human health consequences of a degraded natural environment as part of his shift, though his own legislative track record on the issue has been mixed.

Remembering David Page

The Wild Line marks the sudden and unexpected passing of David Page, Executive Director of the Winter Wildlands Alliance, who died July 7 following a car accident on Wyoming’s Teton Pass. He was 57. A Winter Wildlands Alliance release remembered Page for his boundless energy, his uncanny wit, and his love of adventure, calling him a zealous backcountry skier, a passionate advocate for wild places, a fearless leader, and a gifted writer whose work invited people to see winter landscapes with greater wonder and purpose.

Next Week

That’s our report for July 10, 2026.

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

Until then — Act Up and Run Wild.

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