Bear Grease - Ep. 194: American Wilderness - Unmanaged Land (Part 3)

Episode Date: March 6, 2024

On this episode, Clay Newcomb explores the personal benefits of wilderness, but also criticisms of this federally managed land. He's again joined by Dr. Dan Flores, Dr. Sara Dant, Steven Rinella, Ben Masters, and Adam Keith. Connect with Clay and MeatEater Clay on Instagram MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube Shop Bear Grease MerchSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. First Lights fieldware collection is made for the work that happens long before opening day and continues when the season ends. Products built for early mornings, full days and real use. Hard wearing where they need to be versatile where it matters. No shortcuts. Just gear designed for the work that earns the season.

Built to perform, built to last. Check out. First Light's new field. Worldware gear at firstlight.com. I like getting in situations and being in places where I'm not thinking about really anything besides what I'm doing. I'm just, I'm able to be completely in the moment. And I don't find that that sense of peace and well-being and absence of distraction really anywhere else. American wilderness is fascinating, ironic, and misunderstood.

Today we'll discuss some of the criticisms of federal wilderness. The Bear Greece Academy of Backwoodsmanship, philosophy, and culture is back in session for one final episode. Wild places forged our national identity and the peculiarities of American history made us handle these places differently than anywhere else on Earth. Understanding this forms an essential knowledge base necessary to navigate the modern issues of conservation and land. management. And I'm also interested in how wilderness affects us on a personal level. And at the beginning of this episode, we'll talk with meat eater's Stephen Rinella about that. There are 111 million acres of federally designated wilderness in America, roughly 5% of American soil. There's a lot up for grabs, boys and girls, and there's never a long-term guarantee it's here

to stay. I really doubt that you're going to want to miss this one. When I hear many people talk about wilderness, they talk about basically void of human activity. It sounds picturesque, and it sounds wonderful, but at what point does the void in human use and human management turn into the void of native ecosystem, floor and fauna flourishing there? My name is Clay Newcomb, and this is the Bear Greece podcast, where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant. Search for insight in unlikely places and where we'll tell the story of Americans who live their lives close to the land. Presented by FHF Gear, American-made, purpose-built, hunting and fishing gear that's

designed to be as rugged as the places we explore. This one is from Edward Abbey. Okay. Here's what Abby says. Like D.H. Lawrence, I am taken by the primeval charm and fascination of the simple mysteries. Fire, building in mud, rain, sunlight, the smell of greasewood and live oak after a cloud burst, the luxury of a sleeping hound. I require space, openness, economy, natural existence, red meat, women, fire, Water the essentials of liberty.

That's classic Ed Abby, yeah. That was author and historian Dr. Dan Flores. That quote is a little racy for bear grease, and I even amended out a speck of vulgarity. But the focus on the essentials of human existence provokes thought and it relates to wilderness. Abby was eccentric, but a spokesman for wild places. After the last two episodes, it's become apparent that wild places are essential to the idea of being human.

It seems the very definition of humanity has become that were separated from them. We came out of the wilderness. Nothing else did. Humans in wilderness are like light and darkness. One is defined by the absence of the other. Much of our series has been about policy, history, philosophy, and a bunch of this. boring academic stuff about the dual nature of wilderness, the reality and the ideal. Brent acts like it's boring anyway, but he's dead wrong.

And now to kick us off, we're going to explore some more personal questions. And then we'll get into the criticisms of wilderness. There's going to be two segments. But here's the first, Meteor's own Steve Rinella, talking about what the idea of wilderness means to him personally. I'm a wilderness advocate for matters deeply personal. I'm a wilderness advocate for matters of humanity, okay, out of concerns for humanity.

And I'm a wilderness advocate out of concerns for fish, birds, mammals, wildlife. They all intersect. But when I say I'm a wilderness advocate for matters deeply personal, I feel most enthralled, most engaged, most curious on what I consider to be a wilderness landscape. I'm more impressed by natural features, natural landscapes, than I'm impressed by anything made by man. I don't care about inventors.

I'm not interested in technology for its own sake. I don't look at a phone and feel inspired. I don't look at a Tesla and think, wow. I don't. I'm never impressed by the gadgetry of man. I'm impressed by artistic creations, film and music and things, but I'm not impressed by the gadgetry of man. But I'm deeply impressed by the products of natural ecosystems.

I love to look at animals. I like to listen to birds. I like to marvel at fish. I like to engage with these things. And on a wilderness landscape, it's the richest assemblages of those things and the lowest reminder of the absence of those things.

So it's a form of perfection. Wilderness is a form of perfection. I like the sound of that. The implication is that perfection comes from not being influenced by a man, ubiquitous across cultures without exception. It's accepted that anything man touches becomes flawed. Perfection of natural systems is a powerful idea,

and we'll learn that there are some real problems with the reality of wilderness, the actual land designation, because the preservation of wilderness itself is a man-made vessel prone to error. But I want to hear more from Steve about how interacting with wilderness, wilderness tangibly impacts him. And we'll be coming back to this idea of being unimpressed with technology. Wilderness does a lot for my sense of well-being, but it's not a panacea. It doesn't cure, it doesn't enable and cure everything for me.

And I'll speak to that a little more fully. I like getting in situations and being in places where there's not a lot of room. for ancillary thoughts and places that demand a level of focus or inspire a level of focus. If I'm on the North Slope, Alaska's North Slope, I'm probably doing something where I'm only thinking really about what I'm doing.

I'm just engrossed by it. It doesn't help my craft as a writer because I don't care about writing and don't think about writing in that atmosphere. I'm not thinking about really anything besides what I'm doing. I'm just, I'm able to be completely in the moment. And I don't find that, that sense of peace and well-being, an absence of distraction, really anywhere else.

If I, if I'm sitting out, you know, on the, the tundra or sitting on top of a mountain in the Rockies, and I'm just, I'm sort of like, what am I going to see? I'm looking for wildlife. I'm just paying attention only to what's going on. If I'm with people, I'm paying attention to them too, but I'm thinking about. about sleeping that night. I'm thinking about eating that night. I'm just in it.

I'm like in it in the moment. I'm not thinking up book ideas. I'm just being there doing that. Even if I go, even if I go to my, so if I'm at my fish shack in southeast Alaska, which is a marine, it's a marine wilderness. I only think about what I'm doing. We're catching fish.

I'm thinking about that. We're catching shrimp. I'm thinking about that. I only think about what I'm doing. And I love that. I've joked before that the only other place, that I've ever found that was riding my bike in Manhattan where like riding your bike in Manhattan,

you only are thinking about riding your bike in Manhattan because the minute you're not thinking about that, you're going to get hit. And I used to like to ride a bike through Manhattan just because of how much attention you had to pay. Which is, I'm only half joking when I say that. It's like those things that like demand, it demands all of your focus,

demands all of your attention. When I'm cooking, as much as I love my kids and love my wife and love being in my home. When I'm cooking dinner at night, I'm ashamed to admit this a little bit. When I'm cooking dinner at night, I'm not only thinking about cooking dinner for my family in my home.

All their stuff butts in. I don't understand why. If I was at my fish yet I cooking dinner for my family, I'm probably only thinking about my family. Yeah. Well, I think that's a unique space that not everybody can access on purpose. But how has that been?

beneficial to you, is it only beneficial in a moment of pleasure where you're able to escape these other tertiary demands on your life? Or does that time when you're in that space translate to you being more effective back inside of your life in other places or whatever? It's only beneficial in the moment. Interaction with wilderness is only beneficial in the moment. His answer surprised me, but I don't fully believe him. Not that I think he's lying. I just don't think he's giving his interaction with Wilderness enough credit.

Steve spends a lot of time in wild places. His ideas are way different than his buddy Thoreau, who believed wilderness was a reservoir of intellectual nourishment for civilized men. I found that in Roderick Nash's book. But I have to agree with Steve. I'm not immediately functionally inspired by wilderness, aside from the raw pleasures and simple contentment of experiencing fear and discomfort,

accepting physical challenge, engaging with wildlife, and the unexplainable satisfaction brought on by the perception of natural grandeur, and whatever intangible things are gained by the expression of awe. However, when I return home, I think I have a better, maybe even a unique perspective on my everyday life, my normal life. So wilderness does actually affect me beyond the moment. I think it does, Steve, too. Going back to what he said about being uninspired by technology, now that's interesting. Author Charles Hoffman back in the 1800s said that he venerated the hoary oak more than a moldering.

column. He was talking about European columns back when we were establishing national identity trying to make ourselves feel cool because we had wilderness. We didn't have big cities. I like it when a thought leader like Ronella says something revelatory and it opens your eyes. I never really thought about people being inspired by technology. But I think they are. And that might explain why I drive a 10-year-old dirty truck worth only two-thirds what by best mule Izzy is. and not to change directions too quickly, but here's an interesting thought from Ronella on the end of the world. It's an interesting idea that we'll run our course, right?

We'll run our course, and humans will be gone from the earth. And then all this crazy stuff's going to happen here, right? I'll sometimes look forward, like I kind of look forward to humans being gone from the earth, even though I won't be able to witness it, you know, crazy stuff will happen here with wildlife. It's great to think about it. It makes the destruction of the human race not quite as bad to think about it

if you think about how crazy it's going to get here all over again. Someday, you know, after that happens, I could see in centuries, thousands of years, it would revert back to a wilderness state, and then all of a sudden you'd see like, you know, you're going to see chunks of what was a highway overpass. You know, the highways would get grown over.

but you'll see like, oh my gosh, like a highway overpass, you know, or something, but it'll revert, but it doesn't revert in any kind of a time frame that humans can comprehend. Well, that's encouraging, Steve. I appreciate that. Actually, I mostly agree with him. All joking aside, and without a hint of religiosity, I want to give a criticism to modern Christianity. Why say you? The Bible speaks of the end of time and the earth burning up with fire, and some have used this to minimize their personal responsibility towards ecological stewardship, as in it doesn't matter because this place is going to burn up anyhow. But I don't think the writers of the Bible were implying to play it fast and loose with the earth. But rather, I read in the first two chapters a direct exhortation for wise ecological

stewardship. Why is this relevant, you may say? Because Christianity's influence on American culture in history is unparalleled, rivaling any other institution. And that makes it relevant to an intelligent discussion. But I agree with Steve. There is a timestamp on the human race's tenure on this earth. We've used Steve Ronella as a test patient to mine down into the tangible impact of wilderness on his life. And with that, we're going to switch gears back to my original larger question of this series. Are American ideals on wilderness globally unique? And we're going to broach a bigger question of whether wilderness is still relevant to modern America. Here is Dr. Dan Flores. Writing about things like environmental history,

you always have to ask questions like, so why is the United States? the first country in the world to create national parks. Why are we the first country in the world to create a national park system? Why are we the first country in the world to create a wilderness preservation system? Well, the explanations all go back to this litany of things that we've been talking about, and they all sort of await, really, someone with insight, like Frederick Jackson-Turner, to distill it in a simple form the significance of the frontier in American history. And what the title doesn't say, but what you find out when you read the article is, the significance of the frontier in American history is that it created Americans.

That's what the significance is. And so it's such a potent idea that it shapes the next 75 years of American history. I think this has been quantified beyond doubt, that the American mind frame on wilderness is globally unique, not perfect, just unique. Like Turner wrote in his 1890 essay, I believe that today, wilderness is still essential to the American character. Here's Alabama's first son, Hal Herring. If you listen to the last Barry Shredder, you heard my vocal impression of this man. Here's how.

And I was thinking of being on the, what is the? Is it the 405 down in California, you know? And you're just stuck in that 12 lanes of traffic. And not that far away from you is, you know, at least the desolation wilderness, which Jack Kerouac wrote about in 1950. He went there with Gary Snyder, you know, the poet. Like this is so, so much a part of the fabric of our national identity. I mean, you don't have to go back to John Muir, you know, the grand old.

poet of the Sierra Nevada in California. You can go to Gary Snyder in the 50s. You can go to David Brower in the 80s and all of that huge movement that resulted in the 1970s like environmental legislation. These were people who were out in these wilderness areas in the United States and they were forming a kind of national identity. You can go back to Frederick Jackson Turner in the frontier thesis, but this is, it's still going on. It's still part of our national identity, maybe more so now than ever, that all these tributaries have kind of come together and created this river, that it's so obvious to us now that these places are, they're irreplaceable, there, there is no way to put a value on them.

Howell says wilderness is more relevant than ever to our national character. There is no way to put a value on it. I like that. However, nations change, identity shifts, and policy drifts. I'd like to see our society cast a gaze back to our roots, as conflicted as that can be. America's story of wilderness is odd and full of ironies. We became so proficient at destroying wilderness that we were the first to federally save it. Wilderness was touted here as a sacred cathedral.

worthy to be preserved on its own merit, but it conveniently coincided with pragmatism. And most of our first wildernesses were rock and ice, basically unusable. Wilderness itself is defined by the absence of man's intervention. But the reality of modern wilderness is that it's entirely man-made. America is known worldwide for our great cities and urban centers, but the wilderness defined our early identity. Isn't it ironic, don't you think? Last spring, Clay Newcomb and I collaborated with Jason Phelps at Phelps game calls in building each of our own favorite turkey diaphragms called prime cuts.

Now, I'm going to tell you, I love mine because it's easy to use. I'm not going to go, I'm not going to win a turkey calling contest. It's just not going to happen. But when I run this call, I get the sounds that gobblers are looking for. I have a great turkey hunting track record. if you go listen to real turkeys out in the woods, they're not going to win calling contests, right? That's who I listen to.

I can make those sounds on my cut. I also hunt with Phelps's cut, and I hunt with Clay's cut because they're all three great cuts. Check out Prime Cuts at Phelpsgamecalls.com. I think you'll be glad you did, and you'll find out that the Steve Ronella cut is an easy-to-use cut for beginning callers who just want to start making good.

turkey noises and getting action. Now we're going to discuss some criticisms of physical and federally designated wilderness, not the idea. Here's author and professor Dr. Saradant. So one of the things about wilderness is that it has land management protocols that are the most restrictive really of public lands. You can't have mechanized vehicles, you can't have roads, you can't use machinery because it protects that original untrammeled definition as best one can. But for a lot of people, the assumption is that wilderness is the land of no use. They value the public lands because there is that multiple use. The national forests have a multiple use designation.

So do Bureau of Land Management, BLM, land. lands, those have obvious uses that are tied to industries that people feel are in many ways iconic family value kinds of things, timbering, ranching, farming. Those are uses of the land that translate into commercial value, recognized value, and therefore if you can't do those commercially recognized valuable things on those lands, then they're not valuable. They're worthless. What about the argument of the elitist, like from a physical standpoint, like wilderness, you can't drive in there, you can't take a helicopter in there. So it narrows the usage of people who are physically able to get back in there. That's true. What do you say to that? That's true.

And that is unfortunate. But I really wanted to, play professional tennis. And it turns out I can't because I'm not able to do that. It's not going to be an experience for everyone. And there are places, there are public lands that we do make accessible to everyone that we pave trails, we do all of those things, and there are those places. But I'm not going to get to the top of Everest either. The issues of access and multiple use are some of the biggest criticisms of federal wilderness.

Adam Keith is from Missouri. He's a professional habitat and wildlife consultant, and he has a podcast called Land and Legacy. Once he muttered something to me about wilderness with the capital W that made me spin around and furrow my brow, here's Adam Keith. When someone asked me about wilderness, I first, I have so many follow-up questions because what exactly are we talking about? And you say, you know that wilderness area. The definition I would use that almost say with a chuckle is a large track of land that's unmanaged. Because these are areas that for me, when I see them, I get concerned about the future of that

area. And I look at them from a standpoint of going, what is the natural landscape supposed to be here and what it is now? You know, coming from Missouri, born and raised, and now with my job, we work in 32 states from basically Montana to the Atlantic. And I get to see a lot of country. And I assist landowners and improving their property to try to add the most biodiversity on the property possible. So the most is specifically game species, but also non-game species, can flourish there. And so for me, when I see these wilderness areas, the ones I've stepped on and been on, I almost cringe when someone says, oh, the wilderness area, because I'm looking at it from the lenses of a native landscape enthusiast, and as a hunter, and I'm going, man, these areas are in dire need of some management, some disturbance,

some sort of action to help restore the biodiversity that was once there. Wait a minute. I thought wilderness was the poster child of biodiversity. What is he talking about? So I look, you know, I love public lands. I've hunted a lot of public lands. But when I see these wilderness areas, specifically in the Midwest and East, I just have to cringe and say, man, they could be so much better if we were allowed to manage them the way the landscape needs to be managed.

And when people talk about wilderness and we see kind of what the purpose was to exclude these, you know, four-wheelers and mechanical machines, no chainsaws. But we have to, I like to say, but let's also look at what's being excluded that was beneficial to the landscape from a natural disturbance. And specifically, fire is one of them that I really wish we could see more of. I'll take a very close approach, hits right at home. There's a large track of National Forest, just a few counties south of me. And you have a large track that is National Forest, and you have a large track that is wilderness. The wilderness being about 12,000 acres.

And if you go to those two areas, you'll see entirely different landscapes. You go to the Glay Top Trail where there's active management. see these huge open glades, these amazing grasslands with dotted savannas around them, transitioning into woodlands with just incredible diversity. You might even catch an eastern collared lizard, which is kind of one of our rare reptiles here in the Midwest, and you might even catch a covey of quail. But you jump right across the road into the wilderness area, and you're going to see stark difference of unmanaged ground. And that is going to be chocked full of eastern red cedar. They historically take over the glade ecosystem. You're going to see lots of invasive

species like seresa Lespidae. Ultimately, you're going to see not a whole lot of these open, beautiful wildflower meadows that are within a mile away. It's just such a comparison for me to look at that and go, if I were to have to choose one, obviously I'm going to take the glade top trail with active management going on. You see more life there than you do at the wilderness. Adam has seen federal wilderness, especially in the east, having a lot of invasives, having less biodiversity, and is actually less like pre-European landscapes than the more managed national forest, primarily because of lack of fire. But I think it's important to note that he's primarily talking about these smaller wilderness areas in the eastern USA, because some fire does naturally happen in the big western wildernesses,

but it's often catastrophic fire. Smaller, more regular burns would reduce fuel loads, and fires wouldn't be as intense. This is all really complicated stuff. When it comes to these wilderness areas, I think it's very unfair to assume that you can manage an eastern wilderness, let's say in North Carolina, the same way you would manage a wilderness area in Montana,

or Alaska. They're totally different areas, totally different ecosystems, different historical disturbances. And you wouldn't even manage your own farm, or you wouldn't manage the same way in the southern part of your state as the northern part of the state. So I think it's very unfair for us to believe that you can throw a label or throw up some signs

and call it a wilderness area and have the same management across the board and expect the same results. When I hear many people talk about wilderness. They talk about basically void of human activity. Talk about the ability to go and camp or walk and hike all the way through it, ride a horse, and not run into major human activity. And it sounds picturesque and it sounds wonderful, but putting the lens of land management and natural native ecosystem restoration on, I say, but at what point does the void in human use and human use and human management turn into the void of native ecosystem, floor and fauna, flourishing there.

A lot of people love the idea of wilderness. They love the idea of it, but if I could walk with every single one of those people through a wilderness here in the Midwest and eastern part, we would walk away on the same page. I'm convinced of it. The real question here is what do we really value about wilderness? Is it the physically untrammeled, uninfluenced by man, aspect, meaning you don't see roads, firebreak, stumps, and tire tracks, or do we value pre-European biodiversity? It seems like it's really hard to have both, and this is a tough one for me.

I don't like seeing roads, and even if they are gated, you know people will violate the law and unlawfully inner. Would any human management at all break the whole untrammeled aspect of wilderness that we love so much? What's more important? to you, untrammeled or biodiversity. Think about it. Here's documentary wildlife filmmaker Ben Masters. Well, I think that it's important to recognize that we are living in an extinction crisis in the world right now and that wildernesses harbor one of the greatest hopes in conserving biodiversity. So if a wilderness area isn't managed for, that natural habitat that should be there. For example, a ponderosa pine forest, which requires

natural fire to go through that ecosystem. And instead, that area is allowed to become dominated by an invasive species. Then not only is that I believe antithetical to the purpose of the wilderness ideal, but I would also consider that to be a threat to bioeastern. diversity at large. Of course we should manage our wilderness areas to promote native endemic species to that areas. And if that requires things like burn breaks or requires things like, you know, removing invasive species through mechanical means, then I am in full support of that. I'd like to think that we could take a hands-off approach, but like the whole idea of wilderness is very hands-on. Like that is a very human-com. to designate a wilderness as a place free from humanity.

But just the very political nature of how wilderness was created inherently means that it is this man-made thing. And I think that recognizing what that man-made thing is, we should manage it to be the best wilderness possible. And if that requires some intervention, you know, ensuring that that habitat is able to continue to exist, into the future, then by all means, I think that we should intervene. Ben's answer surprised me, but seems reasonable.

When we get into the wilderness and I start talking about this, I typically, depending on who I'm talking to, but they're ready to pitch me away because it's kind of, I'm not, I'm not anti-wilderness. I'm not anti-public lands. I'm not any of that. I'm just pro-active land management. And I feel like a simple, you know, I'm not saying call up the lumber crews and the timber crews and get them in there and let's start cutting some wilderness areas. I think what we have to understand in my argument in simple terms is can we reevaluate the management plan that we have currently? Can we reevaluate the terms that are put in place for the wilderness areas? Because there's too many invasives, there's too much catastrophic fire, there's too many

wildfires, there's too many things happening in these areas that are causing a major decline in our game and non-game species, as well as the flora and the fauna. We're not just talking, I want more deer. I'm not saying that. And for just a simple solution, I'd say, can we use prescribed fire in these areas? Can we use them to help thin out some of the invasive species that are there? Can we help use the fire to stimulate new growth? There's a lot of trees in some of these wilderness areas that are sick, diseased, declining, and fire will help go ahead and kill them and free up that space for new life to grow up. And the other simple requests I would have would be anything invasive species management.

Once we identify the invasives that are there, can we go in and remove them through different means? Whatever the best management practice is for that list of invasives, that's what I choose to do. could be a timed application of herbicide to remove the specific species. And I know I said the word herbicide and people are going to be upset about that. But we have to find solutions to remove these invasives or at least begin to set them back rather than just let them go crazy in our wilderness areas. If we resurrected John Muir and introduced some type of invasive tree to the Yosemite Valley and took him there, and said, all right, John, look at this valley. Here in 50 years, it's going to be completely dominated by this invasive tree.

And this ecosystem that inspired you so much to advocate for wilderness is going to disappear. What do you think we should do? Should we combat this invasive species? Or should we preserve the wilderness idea and take a totally hands-off approach? I think John Muir would agree with that sentiment that we should. should manage our wilderness areas for what makes them so special. Yeah, I think a hands-off approach is irresponsible. A hands-off approach is irresponsible.

I appreciate the certainty of his answer, and he's not wrong. However, I'm not sure I trust the system enough to let them change the rules. Is that reasonable? And to make a comment about the extinction crisis, As North American hunters, we, Clay, loves to talk about how well the 29 big game species are doing and how hunting has saved them. This is our stump speech. And sometimes I can be dismissive of environmental messaging because it appears to be politically motivated. However, as I pay attention to what's going on globally and in this country, this biodiversity crisis is real.

Let's just take where I live in Arkansas, pre-European settlement there would have been. in significant numbers, wolves, mountain lions, bison, elk, I've rebuilt woodpeckers, and passenger pigeons. Only the pigeon and the woodpecker are extinct. The others just extirpated, but that's a significant chunk of biota taken off the landscape. And this isn't even including amphibians and insects. The road, Dad Gumming, talked about the demigod that stole the stars and how he wants to see an entire heaven and an entire earth. The real question is what do we value in wilderness? Is it simply no people or evidence of them,

or is it a healthy, biodiverse ecosystem? Here's Adam. As a land manager and a habitat consultant, a lot of times we love to quote Aldo Leopold and we love to read Sand County Almanac and just be mesmerized by his thoughts. And, you know, Aldo Lippe passed away in like 1948. Another common name when you start talking Aldo Leopold, you talk about John Muir.

And he passed away in 1914. And, you know, these guys had incredible ideas of the landscape. John Mirror, more of a preservationist mindset. Aldo Leopold, you know, famously for his five tools of land management with an axe, a cow, plow, fire, and a gun. That doesn't sound like a preservationist, a wilderness type. even though he's helped with some of the ideas of wilderness and I think as much as I love all those work there's one thing that I pulled away when reading him is his love

for native landscapes like just just the wild undeveloped land and so when he talked a little bit about invasive species but you know there's a it's a totally different world when you look at the invasive loads that we have today versus in the 30s and 40s. And I think if he were alive today, I feel like he would have to say, I think we need to reevaluate the management that we're doing in our eastern and Midwestern forest,

especially the wilderness, because we are drowning in evasives, and they are in dire need of help, and right now we can't do anything. But with this wilderness idea, it's like, let's just blanket it and call it a wilderness area, and now all we know is that no man's going to be building houses or condos or cottages there.

It's going to be kind of left alone. And it's like, oh, no gay manager in the country would say, I'm going to write a plan for now, forever, and leave it as is. There's always re-evaluations that happen. And that's because we're trying to do what's best for the landscape. The trouble with re-evaluations when it comes to federal wilderness is what, if they change it all together? What if an open gate ends up with the whole thing being reorganized? Is it better to risk it with invasive species or fundamentally change the regulations on wilderness

risking larger scale changes? Is the federal system nimble enough to regulate different places under different rules? Can they be trusted? I do not know the answer to this. What do you think. Now we've seen some of the problems with wilderness, but what are the most real challenges they'll face in the coming generations? I've had the opportunity to think a lot about wilderness. I recently had a daughter and a son. Bertie is three and a half and Davis, my boy, he's a year and a half old. I think about how our generation has inherited this amazing gift of wild places. and of all the wonderful things that America has the opportunity, the economic opportunity,

I think that the greatest gift that we've inherited is wild places. And I think that that is the greatest gift that we can give our children as well. You know, looking 50, 100, 200 years down the road, that is going to be the most valuable commodity that the future. has is wilderness. And I think that it's foolish for us to assume that just because a wilderness area exists today, that it's going to exist 50 or 100 years from now.

I asked Hal Herring what the biggest threat to American wilderness is. Here's what he said. I sure hope he doesn't bring up America's greatest president, Ronald Reagan. In the West, particularly, all over the world, the country though. The United States, the people since Reagan have been taught. Dad Gummett Howe told you not to bring up Reagan. That the federal government is the enemy. The most dangerous words in English language or I'm from the federal government and I'm here to help you. You know, Randy Weaver,

whatever, David Koresh in Waco, right? Like, and you're not going to find a more skeptical person of government power than Hal. That person doesn't exist. However, We have been carefully taught to despise and reject the federal government as a solution to any problems. And the honest answer to this is the federal government is responsible for the U.S. Forest Service and for the wilderness and for the designated wilderness and for all the American system of public lands. and if we continue to disempower, dislike, distrust, despise our own government at the federal level, we're not going to have these protections

and these lands are going to be overrun by people who seek to profit from them in the next 100 years for sure. So the answer to that is a very American answer, and it is that we the people operating a government of the people by the people for the people are going to have to choose at the federal level to keep these lands in public hands and federally managed. Woo! How?

That's interesting and insightful. As we come to a close on this session of the Bear Greece Academy, we've covered a lot of ground. But most notably, this series is. challenged my views on American wilderness through one simple thing. Knowledge. I just know more than I did before. I want to ask Dr. Flores one final question, and it pertains to knowledge, and it's more of a philosophical one.

It's one I'm asking myself. Has your attitude of wilderness changed? Oh, yeah, it's changed for sure. But so I understand much better the role of wilderness as a constructed idea. Yeah. In the American mind in particular. One of the great things about learning new information is that it rearranges the furniture in your head. Suddenly, you can't ever go back.

Your whole point of view is from a different angle on the world now. And I think understanding how wilderness got conceived and, and, you know, how it was altered by romanticism and by Turner, Frederick Jackson Turner, and by the Wilderness Act, and the whole notion of wilderness is a place where humans don't remain, which was a complete misapprehension of what early Europeans actually were seeing in America. That's all been modified by what I've read and understood, but somehow it didn't make me not not want to live like this. And it hasn't had any kind of impact on I've got a chance to go spend 12 days floating down the Hula Hula River from the top of the Brooks Range to the Arctic Sea through the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge with 10,000 caribou around me and packs of wolves hunting them.

Right, I'm got to go do it. I hope this series has made you evaluate how you view, interact with, and are influenced by America's wild lands. I believe understanding our cultural history is critical to having any objective and reasonable opinions on how it should be treated today in the coming decades and even coming centuries. I believe wild lands will one day be the most scarce natural resource on planet Earth. A day will come when men will crave to interact with them and will not be able to find them. That is, unless we can keep them wild. in many ways that day is already upon us. Overall, I hope the series sparks a more effective passion in our hearts for wild lands in all their forms.

I know that it's challenged me. It's rearranged the furniture in my head. In the end, it's clear to me that America does have a globally unique perspective on wild lands, and that's something to be proud of. We just have to make sure the wild places stay wild. Thanks so much for listening to Bear Grease. The spring is upon us, and we're about to get into some turkey hunting stories. Be sure to come out and see Brent and I on March 9th, 2024,

in Bentonville, Arkansas, the Black Bear Bonanza. We'll be there all day. And the mediator crew is hitting the road again for a live tour out west in April and May. So look for some more info on that. I'll be there too. I hope you have a great week. Thanks again. First Lights fieldwear collection is made for the work that happens long before opening day and continues when the season ends.

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