The Wild Line

For the first time since Mount St. Helens erupted in 1980, Chinook salmon are spawning again in its upper watershed. The Trump administration is weighing a land exchange inside Yosemite National Park with a private developer, a flash flood killed at least two people and shut down the bottom of the Grand Canyon indefinitely, and conservation groups filed suit to challenge the reduced Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments. We also cover a halted data center on Nevada public land and a rollback of national park crowd control.

The Forest Service is proposing to reverse its longstanding travel management rule, opening national forests to motorized vehicles everywhere except areas specifically closed, a move critics warn could bring immediate chaos and long-term harm to wildlife and recreation. Nevada has sued the federal government over Colorado River cuts that could reduce its water allocation by up to 71 percent annually over the next decade. Meanwhile, California’s national forests are seeing record glyphosate use, the Interior Department has reshuffled dozens of senior career staff, and Gulf Coast advocates are rallying this weekend to defend endangered species from an oil-and-gas exemption.

The Forest Service has opened a one-month public comment period on its plan to rescind the Roadless Rule, which protects close to 45 million acres of National Forest. Minnesota Governor Tim Walz issued new state-level protections for the Boundary Waters watershed, a bright spot after Congress reopened the door to mining near the wilderness earlier this year. In Utah, mining claims have surfaced inside the newly downsized Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments, and Senator Mike Lee is moving to subject Bears Ears’ management plan to the Congressional Review Act. Elsewhere, a federal judge blocks a road through Alaska’s Izembek refuge, CBP pauses its Big Bend border project, and Glacier National Park weighs new winter access rules.

The USDA is expected to release its draft decision on rescinding the Roadless Rule any day, a move that would open 48 million acres of National Forest to road building, and today is the final day to comment on a related Interior Department review of wilderness management policy. President Trump has nominated Project 2025 co-author Dennis Kirk as Interior’s inspector general, and new reporting reveals the National Park Service is weighing a land swap that would clear the way for data center development inside Virginia’s Prince William Forest Park. Elsewhere, an offshore oil lease auction underperforms, construction continues through Big Bend National Park, and the episode remembers the wildland firefighters killed this summer.

The Bureau of Reclamation has released a new 10-year Colorado River management plan mandating major water cuts for Arizona, California, and Nevada, while the Bureau of Land Management has approved the first data center on public land without a new environmental review. The Forest Service has opened a 30-day comment period on a proposed rare earth mine near Devils Tower, and new reporting reveals Forest Service Law Enforcement participated in an ICE raid along North Carolina’s Wilson Creek. Elsewhere, the fight over the shrunken Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante monuments intensifies, NOAA denies Endangered Species Act protection for smalltail sharks, and Texas lawmakers push back on border construction through Big Bend National Park.

A Senate committee dropped most of the wilderness, national park, and wild and scenic river bills on its docket this week, advancing energy permitting measures instead. A federal judge in Anchorage also cleared the way for transferring more than 2 million acres along the Dalton Highway corridor to the State of Alaska, while the Interior Department canceled the Endangered Species Act’s “blanket 4(d) rule” and NOAA rejected a bid to expand North Atlantic right whale critical habitat. Elsewhere, new reporting connects paused DOGE wildfire-prevention funding to the fires burning across northern Minnesota’s Superior National Forest, and the administration has begun removing tribal signage at the newly shrunken Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments.

Newly proposed federal rules would gut tribal consultation requirements under the National Historic Preservation Act, while the Trump Administration opened a comment period on drilling within 10 miles of Chaco Culture National Historical Park. The same week brought a nearly one-third cut to Canada lynx critical habitat, two Forest Service employees kidnapped at gunpoint in Northern California, and a flash flood that killed five members of one family in Utah. Amid it all, the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge is closing in on its own UNESCO World Heritage designation.

President Trump signed executive orders this week cutting Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears National Monuments by a combined 3 million acres, over the objections of tribal nations who say they were never consulted. The same week brought a wave of Endangered Species Act rollbacks: federal agencies rescinded the regulatory definition of “harm” that has protected habitat since the 1980s, and Interior proposed handing grizzly bear management back to Western states. Amid it all, wildlife biologists confirmed some real good news: four new litters of wild red wolf pups born in North Carolina, the most endangered wolf species on Earth.

The Bureau of Land Management is rewriting grazing regulations across 155 million acres of Western public land for the first time since 1995, a proposal that would expand grazing and sharply limit public participation in permit decisions. This week’s Wild Line also tracks a lawsuit challenging the Forest Service’s largest restructuring in a century, new wildlife crossing funding in Pennsylvania and North Carolina, and a wildfire burning into a Colorado wilderness area that hasn’t seen fire in more than 50 years.

The Forest Service opened a comment period on a proposed rule that would narrow public input into how national forests are managed, with the window closing July 31. This week’s Wild Line also tracks a new Interior Department genomics partnership with “de-extinction” company Colossal Biosciences, a lawsuit testing the limits of the Congressional Review Act over an Oregon timber sale, a volunteer-built replacement for the shuttered Climate.gov, and the loss of three wildland firefighters in western Colorado.

The Senate Agriculture Committee’s Farm Bill draft includes wilderness designations for over 100,000 acres in Virginia, an Arkansas wilderness expansion, and protected forestland in southern Illinois. This week’s Wild Line also tracks Kevin Lilly’s confirmation hearing, Interior’s proposed rollback of oil and gas safeguards, a leaked memo threatening recommended wilderness in Montana’s Flathead National Forest, a Forest Service emergency salvage sale with a one-week comment window, and NPS restrictions on fatality reporting.

Weekly policy roundup covering new wilderness management directives on climbing anchors, expanded grazing on national forests, the America the Beautiful Act, Grand Staircase-Escalante protections, and Big Bend border construction, with updates on federal public lands and conservation policy.