This week on The Wild Line, we’re tracking the looming USDA decision to rescind the Roadless Rule, a same-day deadline to comment on Interior’s wilderness management policy review, the nomination of Dennis Kirk as Interior’s inspector general, and a possible Park Service land swap enabling data center development inside Virginia’s Prince William Forest Park. From an underwhelming offshore lease auction to renewed construction through Big Bend National Park, these stories track the administration’s push to open protected lands to development.
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USDA Nears Draft Decision on Roadless Rule Rescission
The U.S. Department of Agriculture is expected to release a draft decision any day on its proposed rescission of the Roadless Rule, which protects 48 million acres of National Forest land from road construction and logging. The review began over a year ago when Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins announced the administration’s intent to rescind the rule. The draft environmental impact statement is expected to offer three alternatives: full rescission, no change, and a middle option critics say is designed to fracture public opposition. Learn more about the Roadless Rule in our Roadless Month coverage from earlier this year.
Trump Nominates Project 2025 Co-Author as Interior Inspector General
President Trump has nominated Dennis Kirk, a co-author of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 blueprint and a former adviser to then-Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, to serve as Interior Department inspector general. The nomination comes as Interior faces scrutiny over the botched, roughly $16 million restoration of the Reflecting Pool, where a hastily installed lining peeled and a water-purification failure produced a large algae bloom; D.C. prosecutors have since moved to drop charges against people accused of damaging the pool, citing the flawed installation instead. Representative Jared Huffman, ranking member of the House Natural Resources Committee, called Kirk a “fake and fraudulent watchdog” and a “political puppet.” The nomination, sent to the Senate August 7, requires confirmation.
Park Service Weighs Land Swap for Data Center in Virginia’s Prince William Forest Park
The National Park Service is reportedly weighing a land swap that would allow data center development inside Prince William Forest Park in Northern Virginia, a Civil War-era site and one of the D.C. area’s largest green spaces, according to reporting from the Prince William Times and Heatmap. The parcel is privately held land within the park’s boundaries; after wetlands and streams complicated permitting at the developer’s original site, the company proposed exchanging it for more developable Park Service land nearby. A lobbyist and former Interior Department adviser pursued the exchange with NPS and Interior from May 2025 into early 2026. Staff for Representative Eugene Vindman, whose district includes the park, asked the Park Service in July about the transfer’s legal authority and never received a response.
Offshore Oil Lease Auction Draws Muted Interest in the Gulf of Mexico
The Interior Department’s Marine Mineral Administration held its third offshore oil lease auction in New Orleans last week, drawing $82.7 million in high bids from 16 companies, including BP and Chevron in ultra-deepwater areas of the Gulf of Mexico. That’s down sharply from the first auction’s $280 million in December 2025, though it topped March’s second auction, which brought in just $47 million. The pattern points to a broader trend: the administration is opening public lands and waters to extraction that even oil and gas companies appear to view as too costly or too marginal to pursue.
Comment Period Closes Today on Interior’s Wilderness Policy Review
Today, August 14, is the final day to comment on an Interior Department policy review of wilderness management and lands with wilderness characteristics, a process critics say is designed to curtail future land protections. Nine senators, led by New Mexico Democrat Martin Heinrich, sent a letter opposing the review, arguing that wilderness areas, wilderness study areas, and lands with wilderness characteristics protect migration corridors for species from the Canada lynx to the red-cockaded woodpecker and are “beloved lands” central to hunting, fishing, hiking, and backpacking. Michael Carroll, BLM campaign director for The Wilderness Society, joins us to share more:
This review of wilderness policy is part of a broader effort to now eliminate all the policies that are in place that guide the management of wilderness and public lands and undermine those policies so that local land managers no longer have direction to follow the law in the case of wilderness study areas and lands with wilderness characteristics…They’re effectively trying to set up a pretext here for…opening up those wilderness study areas and those wild lands across the country to more off-road vehicle use, to more development, to more of…their energy dominance agenda and their drive to ultimately privatize a lot of those public lands.
Learn more and find links to comment here.
Wilderness.org Take Action page & resources.
Construction Continues on Big Bend Border Road Despite Opposition
Construction is continuing on a Customs and Border Protection security project cutting through Big Bend National Park, despite bipartisan pushback from local officials and members of Congress. Contractors moved forward without providing additional information requested by concerned community members and resource protectors, and images of bulldozers clearing century-old cottonwood trees have drawn national attention. Fewer than 1 percent of border crossings occur in the park’s region, a figure critics cite in arguing the potentially permanent damage to the park is disproportionate to any security benefit.
Wildland Firefighters Killed Battling an Intense 2026 Fire Season
The Wild Line marks the deaths of several wildland firefighters killed this summer amid an intense 2026 fire season driven by low snowpack, heat, and lightning. Jason Ensign, 47, a contract dozer operator with Green Diamond Resource Company, died August 6 while building containment lines on Oregon’s Wrights Spring Fire, the state’s first wildfire fatality since 2022. The next day, pilot Chris Andersen, 64, and crew member Miles Elliott, 50, were killed when their Sikorsky S-64 “Skycrane” helicopter crashed while fighting Utah’s Widemouth 2 Fire under a Forest Service contract. On August 11, contract firefighter Leslie Washington, 41, of Noorvik, Alaska, died of a medical emergency while responding to Minnesota’s Bear Trap Fire near the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.
Next Week
That’s our report for August 14, 2026.
We’ll be back next week with more land stories that matter. Next Tuesday on The Wild Idea, we head to Rock Creek Park in the nation’s capital with Dan Puskar of the Rock Creek Conservancy.
Until then — Act Up and Run Wild.
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