The Wild Idea

Latest Episodes:

Dalton George: The Hellbender, The High Country, and the Fight to Keep Appalachia Wild Apr 28, 2026

Show notes

Dalton George is the mayor of Boone, North Carolina and the national organizing director for the Endangered Species Coalition. He came up through community organizing, founded a tenant rights organization, led the campaign to make Boone the first carbon-neutral municipality in North Carolina, and got himself elected to town council before becoming the youngest mayor in the state.

The thread connecting Dalton's work across housing justice, voting rights, and wildlife advocacy is a conviction that displacement is displacement, whether it happens to people or species. He draws a direct line between luxury development pressuring working families out of Appalachian communities and the same pressures pushing the Eastern hellbender salamander toward extinction. Both stories, he argues, are about powerful outside forces reshaping a place and its character, often without the people who live there having much say.

The episode was recorded while Dalton was in Washington, DC lobbying against the ESA Amendments Act, a bill that would have significantly weakened the Endangered Species Act. The morning they recorded, that bill was pulled from the floor after opposition mounted and its sponsors realized they did not have the votes. It was a rare and meaningful win, and Dalton's reflections on what made it possible, ordinary people from across the country showing up to tell their stories in congressional offices, cut to the heart of what he believes about organizing, advocacy, and the kind of power that's still available to regular people when they decide to use it.

Learn more about today's conversation and find the links and resources mentioned at our website, thewildidea.com.

The Wild Line: Advocates Notch a Win for Endangered Species, the Forest Service Considers Chainsaws and Mining in Wilderness Apr 24, 2026

Show notes

This week on The Wild Line, we’re tracking a major Endangered Species Act victory on Capitol Hill, proposed Forest Service rule changes that would open wilderness areas to chainsaws and fast-track mining exploration on national forest land, Interior and Agriculture secretaries facing congressional budget scrutiny, and a landmark master plan approved for California’s Great Redwood Trail. From federal wilderness policy to tribal treaty rights, these stories reveal the high stakes of public lands management in 2026.

Learn more and find the links and resources mentioned today at our website, thewildidea.com.

Jessica Howell-Edwards & Dani Purvis: Fighting for the Wild Soul of Cumberland Island Apr 21, 2026

Show notes

Cumberland Island National Seashore is one of the most ecologically rich and historically layered landscapes on the American East Coast, and it faces a pivotal moment. In this episode, Bill and Anders sit down with Jessica Howell-Edwards and Dani Purvis, the volunteer advocates behind Wild Cumberland, to explore what makes this Georgia barrier island so extraordinary and what forces are working to reshape it.

Jessica and Dani walk listeners through Cumberland's layered past: from the Timucua people who first called it home, to the plantation economy built on enslaved labor, to the Carnegie family's sweeping land acquisitions in the late 1800s, and ultimately to the island's designation as a National Seashore in 1972. That history, they explain, is not just background. It's the foundation for understanding why the Park Service's current proposals, including a Visitor Use Management Plan that would more than double the daily visitor cap and a proposed land exchange with private inholders, deserve intense scrutiny.

The conversation also turns to what makes Cumberland ecologically irreplaceable. The island accounts for eighteen miles of Georgia's undeveloped coastline and hosts between twenty-five and thirty-three percent of the state's sea turtle nests each year, in part because of its rare, nearly uninterrupted darkness. With only 4.7 percent of Georgia in public ownership, Cumberland carries an outsized conservation burden, and both guests make clear that protecting it requires not just passion but process, public engagement, and long-term thinking.

Find the links and resources mentioned today at our website, thewildidea.com.

The Wild Line: GOP Approves Mining in the Boundary Waters, USFS Faces Questions on Reorganization, SELC Sues the God Squad Apr 17, 2026

Show notes

This week on The Wild Line, we're tracking the Senate's passage of a Congressional Review Act resolution to enable mining in the headwaters of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, the Forest Service's proposed headquarters relocation to Salt Lake City, the Conservation Reserve Program's final deadline for 2026 offers, evidence of Trump administration coordination with Sen. Mike Lee's federal land sell-off proposal, the Confluence of States' 2025 Outdoor Report highlighting the $1.3 trillion economic value of outdoor recreation, a Gallup survey showing widespread concern about environmental protection, and a lawsuit challenging the administration's use of the "God Squad" to grant broad exemptions from the Endangered Species Act for Gulf oil and gas leasing. From federal public lands management to conservation policy, these stories highlight the accelerating pace of regulatory rollbacks and their implications for American wilderness and wildlife.

For more details about the links and resources mentioned today, visit our website at thewildidea.com.

Dr. Erica Smithwick: Fire, Climate, and Forest Resilience in the East Apr 14, 2026

Show notes

Dr. Erica Smithwick, a distinguished professor of geography at Penn State University and director of the Earth and Environmental Systems Institute, joins us to explore the rapidly changing fire landscape in the eastern United States.

For decades, fire was largely considered a western phenomenon, but shifting climate conditions and changing forest composition are transforming fire regimes across eastern ecosystems in ways that don't match historical patterns.

In this conversation, we examine why eastern forests are burning in new and unexpected ways, what the Eastern Fire Network is doing to address these challenges, and how communities can work together to manage fire in an era of climate change. Dr. Smithwick brings both scientific expertise and personal conviction to the discussion, sharing her perspective as both a researcher watching these changes unfold in real time and a parent concerned about what we're leaving future generations.

Learn more and find the links and resources mentioned today at our website, thewildidea.com.

The Wild Line: Trump Budget Targets Parks, USDA Consolidates NEPA Rules, and Three Key Public Lands Votes Loom in Congress Apr 10, 2026

Show notes

This week on The Wild Line, we're tracking the Trump Administration's proposed budget cuts to the National Park Service, the controversial Forest Service reorganization plan, a new consolidated NEPA rule at the USDA, and legislative calls to action in Congress. From federal land management challenges to endangered species protections, these stories highlight the stakes for public lands policy and the staff who steward America's natural resources.

Learn more and find the links and resources mentioned today at our website, thewildidea.com.

Dr. William Keeton: Carbon, Complexity, and the Future of Old Growth Apr 07, 2026

Show notes

Dr. William Keeton is a forest ecologist and silviculturalist at the University of Vermont who has spent most of his career studying old-growth forests in the eastern United States and around the world. In this conversation, he joins hosts Bill Hodge and Anders Reynolds to examine what old growth actually is, where it still exists in the East, and why its fate matters for climate, biodiversity, and the landscapes future generations will inherit.

The episode opens with a deceptively simple question: what is an old-growth forest? Keeton explains that old growth is not a fixed condition but a stage of forest development characterized by structural complexity, habitat diversity, and a suite of ecological functions including carbon storage, hydrologic regulation, and biodiversity support. He pushes back on the assumption that eastern forests have nothing to offer compared to towering Pacific Northwest Douglas firs or coastal redwoods, walking through the surprising inventory findings of the past few decades that reveal far more old growth in the eastern United States than was previously believed, from the Adirondacks of upstate New York to the Southern Appalachians and the longleaf pine systems of the Gulf Coast. The conversation also takes the listener below the surface, into the soil, where Keeton discusses the growing understanding of mycorrhizal fungi networks, deep soil carbon, and why a recent study found Swedish old-growth forests store eighty-three percent more carbon than middle-aged forests, with most of that difference buried underground.

For listeners who care about public lands, forest policy, and the long arc of ecological recovery, this is a conversation that connects the science to the stakes with rare clarity. Find out more about the links and resources mentioned today at our website, thewildidea.com.

The Wild Line: U.S. Forest Service Overhaul, Interior Aims to Drill Chaco Canyon, Protections for Rice's Whale Lifted Apr 03, 2026

Show notes

This week on The Wild Line, we're tracking a proposed reorganization of the U.S. Forest Service, a sweeping Endangered Species Act exemption for Gulf of Mexico oil and gas operations, a court ruling against the Nantahala-Pisgah Forest Plan, a public scoping period threatening Chaco Culture National Historical Park, commercial fishing access in Pacific Marine National Monuments, and a rare wave of conservation wins from San Francisco Bay to Arkansas. From federal agency restructuring to bedrock wildlife law, these stories define the stakes for public lands in 2026.

Learn more and find the links and resources mentioned today at our website, thewildidea.com.

The Past, Present and Future of The Roadless Rule Mar 31, 2026

Show notes

In this special episode, The Wild Idea brings its recent public webinar directly to podcast listeners. Join a high-powered panel of scientists, attorneys, policy veterans, and conservation advocates to examine one of the most consequential federal land protection policies in American history: the 2001 Roadless Rule. The rule has shielded 58.5 million acres of largely intact national forest land from new road construction and most commercial timber harvest for more than two decades, and it now faces a proposed rescission by the current administration.

The conversation opens with Mike Dombeck, the former Forest Service chief who oversaw the rule’s development, tracing the road system’s explosive post-World War II growth and the maintenance crisis that made the moratorium on new road construction both necessary and politically viable. From there, the panel moves through the science of wildfire ignitions near roads, the rule’s flexibility for forest health treatments, the economic value of roadless areas to outdoor recreation, and the water supply those landscapes provide to more than 60 million Americans. Monte Mills and Martin Nie bring legal and policy depth to questions of tribal consultation, indigenous land rights, and the gaps that rescission would leave in existing forest plans. Vera Smith of Defenders of Wildlife walks listeners through two interactive mapping tools that illustrate which threatened and endangered species depend on roadless forests, region by region.

The episode closes with the full panel reflecting on what, if anything, could be improved in the rule, and how everyday people can make their voices heard before the draft environmental impact statement is finalized. The answer that emerges, again and again, is that the public support which gave this rule its unusual durability remains the most powerful tool available to those who want to see it preserved.

Learn more about today's episode and the resources mentioned at our website, thewildidea.com.

The Wild Line: A Pipeline Executive Heads to Congress, SpaceX Eyes Refuge Land, and E&E News Loses a Quarter of Its Newsroom Mar 27, 2026

Show notes

This week on The Wild Line, we're tracking Oklahoma's new energy-executive senator, a congressional push to block wilderness at Big Cypress National Preserve, a proposed federal land swap with SpaceX in South Texas, and major staff cuts at E&E News. From Capitol Hill to the Lower Rio Grande Valley, these stories highlight the accelerating pressure on federal public lands and the institutions that cover them.

Get more details and the links and resources mentioned today at our website, thewildidea.com.

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