This week on The Wild Line: We’re back with a full roundup of what’s happening across all three branches of government, plus a reminder that history is written not just in laws, but in landscapes.

A correction, and a win:

Anders opens with a correction from last week’s episode: the controversial Ambler Road project was actually removed from the final reconciliation bill, thanks to sharp-eyed advocacy from Alaska Wilderness League and others. The industrial mining road would have cut through 200+ miles of wild lands in Alaska, crossing 11 major rivers and threatening sensitive habitat and Native communities. Its exclusion is a rare but meaningful win.

BLM greenlights the Uinta Basin Railway

On our May 30 edition, we covered a Supreme Court decision that significantly narrowed the scope of NEPA, the National Environmental Policy Act, paving the way for controversial infrastructure projects to avoid full environmental review. Just 13 days later, the Bureau of Land Management approved a massive crude oil rail project in Utah with zero public input. The Uinta Basin Railway would dramatically increase oil-by-rail shipments from Utah to Gulf Coast refineries, and conservation groups warn it sets a dangerous precedent.

Two new Trump-era executive orders:

Last Thursday, President Trump signed an executive order creating the Make America Beautiful Again Commission, which the administration describes as a “tool to promote both economic growth and responsible natural resource management on protected public lands.” The commission, chaired by Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and composed of senior federal officials, is tasked with broadening access to parks and forests and promoting a wide range of outdoor activities including hunting, fishing, hiking, biking, skiing, climbing, boating, off-roading, and wildlife viewing.

While the announcement was met with cautious optimism by some recreation and conservation groups, others noted that the language closely mirrors the administration’s broader push to roll back Biden-era climate protections and expand commercial development across public lands and federal waters. As always, the real impact will depend on how the commission defines and implements its goals.

In a separate but related order titled Improving National Parks, President Trump proposed higher entrance and recreation pass fees for foreign visitors, with the revenue earmarked for infrastructure improvements across National Park Service sites. The order would also overturn a 2017 directive from President Obama that aimed to advance diversity and inclusion in national parks and public history programs, a move that many advocates say erases progress toward making public lands more accessible and representative for all Americans.

On Capitol Hill:

• Senators held budget hearings for the U.S. Forest Service, and lawmakers began work on next year’s appropriations bills. Among them: a new rescission package mostly targeting NPR, PBS, and foreign aid (with some implications for conservation funding), and a batch of spending bills that could reshape public lands priorities ahead of the September 30 fiscal deadline.
   

  We talked to Bart Johnsen-Harris of The Trust For Public Land about the appropriations process and what funding debates lovers of wild nature should be keeping tabs on.

  “There are going to be some really serious funding level disputes. The President’s budget includes deep cuts to agencies like the Forest Service and Department of the Interior, and on the House side we’re already seeing extreme funding reductions passed along party lines. Add to that nearly 100 policy riders—everything from reopening mining leases in the Boundary Waters to stripping Endangered Species Act protections for grizzlies and gray wolves. Meanwhile, a rescissions package is moving in the Senate. If it passes, it could set a precedent for quietly gutting conservation funding through backdoor maneuvers in the months ahead.”
  — Bart Johnsen-Harris, Trust for Public Land

• On Tuesday, Senator Merkley partnered with Oregon Representative Val Hoyle to introduce the Wildfire Resilient Communities Act. This legislation proposes $30 billion in mandatory funding for federal land management agencies and boosts the Community Wildfire Defense Grants Program to $3 billion — a program originally created under Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act but now frozen by the Trump Administration.

   

• And on Wednesday, Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley and Montana Senator Tim Sheehy introduced the Supporting American Wood and Mill Infrastructure with Loans for Longevity (SAWMILL) Act. The bill is aimed at unlocking federal dollars to help timber mills modernize their operations so they can process hazardous fuels removed from public lands

Supreme Court ruling clears the way for mass federal firings:

In a 5-4 decision, the Court lifted a lower court block on President Trump’s sweeping plan to fire thousands of federal workers, including those in land and resource management agencies. While the ruling focused on procedure, not legality, it opens the door for a major reordering of the civil service.

Grassroots effort to save national park signage:

Following an order from Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to remove “negative” interpretive content from public lands by September 17, advocates are scrambling to archive what they can. The Data Rescue Project is asking park visitors to upload photos of interpretive signs, markers, and exhibits to saveoursigns.org before they’re taken down. As Molly Blake from the Data Rescue Project puts it, the National Park Service is the nation’s largest outdoor history classroom, and they work tirelessly to steward our nation’s stories – good and bad – and make them accessible to ALL Americans.

“The National Parks really are the nation’s largest outdoor history classroom. Every one of the 450+ sites has a congressional mandate to interpret the historical significance of that specific place — and those places were chosen carefully to tell the complicated, multifaceted history of the United States. Many highlight moments of progress, like the abolitionist, civil rights, and women’s rights movements. Others tell painful, difficult stories about our past. But those stories are essential if we want to understand how we got to the present — and use that knowledge to decide where we want to go from here.”
— Molly Blake, Data Rescue Project

Help out this week:

📸 Visiting a park or monument? Take a picture of any historic or interpretive signage and upload it to saveoursigns.org. These public records help preserve stories that may soon be erased.

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Next Week on The Wild Idea:

No Wild Line next week! We are taking a break and exploring some of the wild ourselves, but we will be back with the Wild Line on Friday July 25th. Don’t miss Tuesday’s new episode of The Wild Idea, featuring ecologist and writer Cristina Eisenberg.

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