Background

There are 10 Western states with about 61,500 wild horses and approximately 23,900 burros. Most are located in Nevada, Wyoming, and Oregon. Wild and free-roaming horses are federally protected under the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971. This federal protection says that wild horses cannot simply be captured, killed, harassed, or sold like ordinary stray livestock. The law also gives the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) management authority over 175 Herd Management Areas across ~25 million acres. The U.S. Forest Service has management authority for horses on Forest Service land, a smaller role than the BLM. The agencies must maintain healthy populations while making sure public rangelands stay healthy as well. If populations become too large, the government can remove excess animals and make them available for adoption or other authorized placement. The Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act does allow culling of wild horses as a management tool, but Congress traditionally has used appropriations restrictions to prevent such a cull, and wild horses are not allowed to be sold for slaughter.

It’s become apparent that the status quo is not working for American wild horses. Their numbers exceed BLM management targets. Livestock can be moved seasonally, but wild horses remain on the range year round, which has negative impacts on vegetation, soil, water resources, and the overarching health of rangelands. These same rangelands support iconic western species like elk, pronghorn, mule deer, and sage grouse. Because an introduced grazer is allowed to be this abundant without any seasonal restrictions/movements, they are destroying habitat for native wildlife. Unlimited population growth is often presented as the humane thing to do. But, eventually the numbers become so big that there isn’t enough food or water. Simply allowing horse populations to grow without effective management is not necessarily the humane alternative. Eventually, populations can exceed available forage and water, resulting in declining body condition, starvation, dehydration, and death.

Managers should have access to a broad range of humane, science-based management tools, including removals and adoption, fertility control, sterilization, and, where other approaches are inadequate, consideration of humane lethal removal as a last-resort management tool. Managers can use fertility control and sterilization. However, these tools have not yet been deployed at a scale sufficient to control population growth across most large western herds. Fertility control is particularly difficult and expensive in large, remote herds and works best once populations have already been brought closer to management targets. In other words, contraception alone can’t solve a herd that’s already twice the desired population. The goal should not be eliminating wild horses from the American West. It should be maintaining healthy, free-ranging herds at levels that the landscape can sustain while protecting the native wildlife, waters, and rangelands with which they coexist.

Reforms

Policy reforms that could enable managers to have access to a broad range of responses could include beginning with and prioritizing severely overpopulated herds. BLM already has authority to gather and remove excess horses, but limited adoption demand, limited holding facility capacity, and the cost of a lifetime of off-range care constrain the scale and speed of removals. Congress should address this bottleneck by expanding successful adoption, training, sale, and transfer programs while developing a financially and ecologically sustainable policy for excess horses that cannot be placed in private care. Rather than continuing to rely on indefinite taxpayer-funded holding, managers should have access to additional humane options for addressing animals that cannot be adopted or otherwise placed. Congress should provide dedicated funding and clear targets for contraception and other fertility-control programs. Fertility control should be used aggressively to maintain herds once they have been brought near sustainable population levels, reducing the need for repeated gathers and removals in the future.

Where herds remain substantially above sustainable levels and adoption, transfer, and other nonlethal options are insufficient, Congress should consider allowing carefully regulated humane lethal removal as a last-resort management tool. Finally, managers should have access to humane lethal removal as a carefully regulated last resort. The Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act already provides authority for the humane destruction of certain excess animals, but Congressional appropriations restrictions have prevented BLM from using federal funds to euthanize healthy horses that cannot be adopted. Congress could modify these restrictions so that humane lethal removal is available only when clearly defined ecological and animal-welfare thresholds have been met and reasonable nonlethal alternatives (such as adoption, transfer, fertility control, and other placement options) are inadequate. This would not become the default method of managing wild horses, but neither should managers be forced to choose between degraded rangelands, animals facing starvation, and maintaining excess horses in taxpayer-funded captivity indefinitely.

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The long-term objective should be to shift federal resources away from maintaining tens of thousands of horses in captivity and toward maintaining healthy, sustainable, free-ranging herds on healthy western rangelands. Reforms aimed at scientific transparency could also help managers determine sustainable herd sizes in a way that won’t cause public backlash. BLM should regularly review and update its Appropriate Management Levels (AMLs) using current data on vegetation, drought, native wildlife populations, livestock, and horse populations. The agency could also clearly explain to the public how those factors are weighed when establishing herd targets. This would help address criticism that AMLs can appear arbitrary or primarily designed to accommodate competing land uses, while also providing managers and the public with greater confidence that wild horse population reductions are based on demonstrated ecological conditions.

Dr. Kelly Dunning is an Associate Professor at the University of Wyoming. She is also a member of ACC’s Board of Directors.

A century ago, Americans watched the land turn on them.

Homesteaders across the southern plains spent the 1910s and 1920s turning 5.2 million acres of prairie into wheat fields. In the process, they had severed the roots of the native grasses that had previously kept the earth steady through centuries of drought and flood cycles, leaving the land with nothing left to protect it. Some 850 million tons of topsoil blew off in 1935 alone, and a single storm in May of 1934 carried Oklahoma and Texas dirt two thousand miles east, dusting the desks of Washington on its way out.

The apocalyptic scene was one of our own making. We had refused to let the land rest, forgetting that Sabbath was never ours to give.

The late Wendell Berry was scathing when referencing the hypocrisies he saw between Christianity and Christians’ in-practice stewardship of creation. That indictment lands squarely on the chin of American agriculture, which has sped up to keep pace with American life rather than meet the rhythms of biblical stewardship.

Blasphemy is a strong word for a farming practice, though the pace of American life makes it easy to forget that rest is neither a reward nor a regulation imposed on a broken world. Rather, it was written into creation before the Fall of man and long before it was inscribed into stone on Mount Sinai. Rest, like good work, is part of the rhythm of the created world.

To be a created being is to be limited, not just in metaphysical ways but in the tangible, physical realities of the earth we occupy. In this way, sabbath is not something we grant to God, it’s something we observe. Sabbath is, in perhaps its most direct form, the practice of admitting that we are not the Creator. If the creator of the universe rested on the seventh day, refusal to engage in Sabbath is a form of arrogance.

Rest is woven into the fabric of the created world itself, not just a feature of the work week. Leviticus and Exodus give the fields a sabbath of their own, instructing Israel to work the land for six years and then to leave the seventh alone entirely, with whatever came up on its own left for the poor and the wild animals. The command was as literal as it sounds, telling a subsistence farming society to stop farming for a year and to trust that the sixth year’s harvest would carry them through the gap.

That trust had already been tested in the wilderness, where manna gathered beyond the day’s need bred worms and stank by morning, spoiling in the hands of the people who had tried to store it. The reasoning behind both is explained in Leviticus: “The land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine. For you are strangers and sojourners with me.” Israel farmed as a tenant, and the rest it owed was written into the lease.

American farming would look unrecognizable to a culture that left its fields fallow on purpose. The advent of cheap fertilizer made fallow years begin to look like waste, and they dropped out of the rotation soon after. By the 1970s Earl Butz, Nixon’s agriculture secretary, was urging farmers to plant fencerow to fencerow and to “get big or get out.” Our posture toward the land changed, though the land itself had not. We have gone on asking more of finite ground by whatever means each decade’s technology allows, and the costs have come due in the soil and in the water underneath it.

In Leviticus and 2 Chronicles, the exile is described as the land finally enjoying the sabbaths the Israelites denied it. This is more than a biblical metaphor, it is part of our reality living in the created world: rest happens either way. The choice we have is whether sabbath is given freely or if the land must come to collect its due.

Researchers mapped the Corn Belt and found that nearly 100 million acres, more than a third of the region, has lost its A horizon entirely. This dark, carbon-rich topsoil provides the main biological foundation for plant growth and nutrient absorption, and it’s being washed away from our fields. Chemical fertilizers are unable to make up the gap, either. The loss already stands at roughly 6% of corn and soybean yields, close to $3 billion a year in economic losses.

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Water is going the same way. Western Kansas draws its share of groundwater nine times faster than precipitation is able to refill it, and more than 80% of the water once stored under some countries is already gone. This is forcing farmers to revert to dryland, meaning farming on rainfall alone – rainfall that in western Kansas runs under 20 inches a year. Corn will not reliably grow on that, so the ground goes to wheat and sorghum at a fraction of the value. These crops often only yield every other year while the land sits bare to bank moisture for the next crop.

Our relationship to the land need not be a series of booms and busts, nor do we need to reject modern agriculture outright. We just need to rediscover a rhythm of rest and recovery. Aligning our farming methods and, importantly, the financial infrastructure and public policies that support them, with this rhythm is the harder half of the work. The practice itself is simple enough: keep something living in the ground year-round, rotate what is planted, disturb the soil as little as possible, and incorporate animals where it makes sense. A cover crop does what fallow was meant to do, holding moisture and rebuilding organic matter, and does it better, since living roots hold soil that bare ground surrenders to the elements. It also does something fallow never could, because a cover crop can be grazed or cut for forage, so the land takes its rest while families eat.

Wendell Berry’s argument at its core was that good work honors the work of God, making how we farm a religious question whether or not we treat it as one. Scripture promises that there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, and the rest a field takes is a small sign pointing toward that larger one. We do not solve sabbath, we submit to it. The land will have its rest either way.

Alina Voss is the Communications Director at the American Conservation Coalition.

A year ago, my wife and I decided to stay in Rhode Island and build our roots here, despite the cost. I had come to believe I needed to stop running in search of the perfect place and instead stay and create the change I so desired: a family enterprise we were all invested in, our children growing up watching and participating as we built something meaningful, useful, beautiful, good, and eternal. That’s when I noticed the wool shawl sweater on me; the chickens and children running around outside; the chicken coop and run that I built; the plentiful grassy yard around my house.

I looked at the tag to see what the sweater was made of, and where:

“80% recycled wool, 20% nylon. Made in Vietnam.”

I wondered if I could make this here, in America, maybe even in New England.

In short order I realized it wasn’t remotely simple to do in New England, let alone America. Live sheep existed, but nothing like they used to: the American flock peaked at 56 million head in 1942 and stands near five million today, much of it now hair sheep raised for lamb, not wool breeds at all. The mills followed; roughly 650 textile plants closed between 1997 and 2009 alone. But sheep and mills are only the endpoints of the whole chain that turns fiber into fashion. Lose your sheep, or your mills, or both, and all the parts in the middle, the shearers, scouring plants, spinning mills, and dyehouses, become lost as well. Though in truth, as I learned, we’re most hampered by the loss of the knitting and finishing, for the machinery, the engineers, and the technical skills – the most expensive parts on the way from fiber to sweater – have disappeared, and even if we patch together the missing middle, we still don’t have the machinery to make the final product.

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When I started calling around to see if anyone could actually knit my sweater, I found practically zero- or at least zero who wanted to return my calls. So I decided to get my own sheep and build the whole thing myself, with any partners who want to be a part of it.

Two months after our Corriedale sheep arrived, I watched their fleeces fall to the earth as our shearer worked them free. Seeing that simple, yet profound conversion was mesmerizing. And it will happen every year, for as long as the animal lives, which is also why so much American wool is discarded. Medium wool commonly fetches around 20 cents a pound, less than the shearing costs, and even where a buyer exists, transport eats whatever the clip might bring in return. So fleeces get burned, buried, or dumped in ditches across the country.

That’s when I realized I was dealing less with a wool problem and more with a land problem. All around me I see pastures but no sheep, and in fact, no animals at all. On the smaller pastures around us, sheep would be ideal, but when the wool becomes worthless, the sheep earn less, and the pasture loses its viability as a productive landscape. Soon, though it may take a generation or two, the family views it as nothing more than a parcel to be sold to some developer. The American Farmland Trust has recorded roughly 11 million acres of agricultural land converted to development between 2001 and 2016. I would wager that on a good share of those acres, the working economy died years earlier, when the buyers of what that land produced went away. We all groan when the machinery appears to prepare a field for development, but this is just the final act of a series of events set in motion when the mill in town closed many years prior. We were too ignorant to notice, or worse, took it for a sign of advancement.

Now, what I am about to say comes from a friend of conservation. Every easement in New England is a good thing, and wilderness set aside for its own sake- our parks and refuges and deep woods- needs no economic defense from me, an avid upland and deer hunter of those lands. But for working land, the easement is only half the battle. It may preserve the ground to pasture sheep on, yet it cannot preserve the thing that makes the fleece worth shearing.

That distinction is what I’ve come to call the working landscape, whose conservation comes less through preservation than through productivity. On the land you have the woods, pastures, and meadows, and the farmers, shepherds, ranchers, and hunters who tend them; in town you have the shops, mills, and factories, and the trades who work within them. The two are more connected than one realizes, for the town needs the land just as much as the land needs the town. And this working landscape is as important as the natural landscape spread through it, and must be conserved as carefully, for the two were never really separate to begin with.

The artifacts of such a time stand right in front of our faces through much of New England: stone walls running through secondary-growth forest that was once sheep pasture; the abandoned or repurposed mill in the connecting town. The Blackstone River Valley, not far from my home, is where America went from farm to factory, when Samuel Slater set the nation’s first water-powered cotton spinning to work in Pawtucket in 1790 (the practices in those early mills were far from good, though that is hardly a reason not to run them better now). Farm and mill rose together, and when the mills left, the farms did not flourish without them. Soon enough they thinned out too, along with all the pieces in between, really the supply chain itself. As the mills with their workers go, so go our meadows with their animals and their stewards.

What can conservationists do? First, land trusts that work to preserve farmland should also look at nearby markets for what the farm produces, and count that production as part of their mission. Second, historic preservationists, who have saved so many of our mills, though converted to offices, museums, and apartments, might weigh whether an operating mill, producing goods of value to land and town, is a higher form of preservation. Third, our schools should take seriously the teaching and apprenticing of the trades the whole chain depends on: shearers, machinists, technicians, textile workers. And fourth, perhaps most important, buyers, institutions, and customers both must not only come to appreciate but also accept that a wool sweater made locally, with local sheep, local hands, and local machines, will not be cheap, though it will outlast every cheap thing they own. We don’t need to recreate Sturbridge Villages all over New England to make this possible (though it would be cool). We have modern machines, interstate freight, and the internet to sell over. As long as the value comes back to the land, the town, the people who grew it, and the people who made it, we will know this is good.

At the end of the day, my sheep are still here growing their wool, just as they did last year and will next. That wool will have to be sheared, whether I do it or not. And ideally it becomes something, and on its way to becoming something, every hand it touches finds further meaning in the work. A productivity that gives purpose. Because as long as the wool comes every year, those hands will remain productive. Or they should, if we do the hard and proper work to help conserve it.

Greg Cello is a husband, father of four, U.S. Army veteran, and writer living on a small homestead in rural Rhode Island and building his sheep farm, Cello Acres. He writes about family, land, industry, and the recovery of rooted life at Kinward and on X at @gregcello.

August has always been one of my favorite, and busiest, seasons at ACC. It’s been that way since I initially joined as Southern Regional Director in August 2022. The excitement of a new school year energizes us and gives us momentum unlike any other.

While the weather forecast still says summer (who else is over these 100-plus-degree days?), we’re already thinking about fall kickoff events, tailgates, hikes, and more. There is a lot of behind-the-scenes preparation that leads us to this moment, so when August comes around, we’re ready.

For the past two years, our annual Summit has taken place during the first weekend of August. That’s an intentional choice. We want to end the summer on a high note while preparing our members for an exciting rest of the year.

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This year’s Summit brought our Top 50 members to Medora, North Dakota, for a weekend centered around our movement, time outdoors, and conversations with incredible speakers.

There is a lot of planning that goes into making this event special. At ACC, we pride ourselves on the member experience, and no detail goes unnoticed. From custom shirts to swag bags filled with high-quality, made-in-the-USA goods, we want our members to know that the work they put into this movement matters, and that we notice it.

But - Summit isn’t only about celebrating what our members have already accomplished. It’s about preparing them for what’s next.

One of the things we spend a lot of time focused on as a field team is fall branch planning, and we intentionally incorporate that work into our Summit programming. It’s rare that we’re able to gather so many of our top members in one place, and even more rare to have every member of the field team there alongside them to offer support in person. There’s something different about planning your semester in a room full of people who are just as excited about this movement as you are.

Our college breakout at the Summit might have been the best example of that. As a field team, we had an agenda and a presentation. We had spent several hours together preparing exactly how we wanted the conversation to go.

Then, we threw it all aside.

Once our members started talking, we realized they didn’t need us to lead the conversation. Our job was simply to sit back, listen, and step in when they needed us.

For the rest of the breakout, members traded ideas, told stories, asked each other questions, and learned from what was working on campuses completely different from their own.

Texas branch leader Nick Walker shared his plans for a back-to-school Buc-ee’s social. Our Utah members talked about the ways they connect the dots between their ACC work and other conservative organizations on campus. Our Florida members explained how inflatable sharks have somehow become a way to draw attention to their work on campus (this is the kind of thing that could only happen in Florida).

There were stories about pulling off large events, ideas for recruiting new members, plenty of humor, and moments when one person’s story immediately sparked an idea for someone sitting across the room. Staff barely had to say a word.

When the breakout ended, field staff looked at each other and laughed. We’d spent several hours preparing for a conversation that our members had just led better than we ever could have.

Our National Field Director, Hanna van Loon, said it best: “That was way better than we could have done.”

And it was. I think that’s part of what makes Summit so special.

We can create the agenda. We can bring everyone to Medora. We can find great speakers, plan the programming, order the swag, and make sure every detail is taken care of. But even with all that planning, we can’t manufacture what happened in that room.

That comes from bringing together young leaders who genuinely care about this movement and giving them the space to learn from one another. Those organic moments are where the Summit becomes more than an event.

A member from Texas hears something from a member in Colorado and takes the idea home. Someone from North Carolina shares a lesson learned the hard way that saves another branch leader from making the same mistake. Another member walks away inspired by the stories around the room, ready to get more involved with ACC.

That’s community, and ultimately what makes our movement stronger. This is where the excitement of the weekend begins turning into something tangible.

Now, we get to watch those plans leave Medora.

Over the next few weeks, our members will return to campuses. Our young professionals and hubs will host an exciting slate of events across the country. Soon, the ideas scribbled down during Summit will become kickoff meetings, tailgates, panels, hikes, cleanups, tabling events, and conversations with people who may be encountering ACC for the first time.

That’s what makes this time of year so exciting for our field team.

We know how much work has happened behind the scenes to get here. We’ve watched these members grow as leaders. We’ve sat beside them as they’ve mapped out their goals. Now, we get to see them take ownership of what comes next.

Our Top 50 left Medora energized, but the goal was never for that energy to stay with 50 people. They go back to their branches and communities. They bring in new members. Those members bring their friends. New leaders emerge. New branches grow. And little by little, campus by campus and city by city, the movement gets stronger.

This year, I’m experiencing this season from a new perspective. As a new mom, conversations about the “next generation” feel a little different than they used to. Watching young leaders take ownership of their communities, learn from one another, and choose to build something bigger than themselves gives me a lot of hope for the world my daughter will grow up in.

Maybe that’s part of why this Summit felt so special to me. We spend a lot of time talking about building a better future. In Medora, I got to sit quietly in a room and watch some of the people who are going to build it.

That’s the momentum we’re carrying into this fall. And if Medora was any indication of what’s ahead, we’re just getting started.

Lily Long is the Vice President of Grassroots at the American Conservation Coalition (ACC). She lives in Northwest Tennessee with her husband, Jordan, and their daughter, Ellie.

Sitting in my closet is a beige knitted oversized chunky sweater with an embroidered tag that reads “Ruth,” in cursive, my great-grandmother’s name. 60 years later, the imperfect knitting and thick, soft wool sits heavy on my body, carrying memories of my mother and my aunt every time I wear it. Creating quality clothing pieces with the art of craftsmanship makes clothes last and makes them hold more value than just being thrown in our landfills.

Fast fashion has turned clothing into a disposable good, and it’s filling our landfills and oceans with plastic waste at a staggering rate. But the fix isn’t simply more bans or mandates. It’s rebuilding how Americans think, creating a culture around durability, craftsmanship, and secondhand markets–tools that work with people, not against them.

Fast fashion refers to cheap imported clothing mainly produced with synthetic, plastic-based fibers such as polyester and acrylic, and these fabrics are responsible for more than 60% of global apparel purchases. Throwaway culture and overconsumption, both fueled by social media, have pushed people to buy 60% more than they used to, while wearing each piece for half as long. This result shows up directly in our landfills as the average consumer now discards 70 pounds of clothing a year, triple what it was in 2000. Moreover, the environmental consequences last way longer than the trends do, with synthetic fibers taking anywhere from 20-200 years to decompose, while natural fibers decompose in weeks.

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Natural fibers and higher quality fabrics still take energy to produce and still carry environmental costs from land and water use, but their durability and longevity offset those costs; furthermore, they do not contribute to plastic waste.

Synthetics aren’t inherently bad either. Technology has allowed us to add tear resistance, water resistance, and quick-dry properties that widely available natural fibers can’t replicate. Identifying the intent of use of synthetics is crucial, as companies often choose synthetic blends simply because they’re cheaper to produce. Without providing any user benefits, these blends create waste that lingers in landfills unnecessarily.

Synthetic fibers do not just linger in landfills, but they linger in our water. About 35% of all microplastics in the ocean come from washing synthetic textiles, releasing 1.2 million tons of microplastics into the environment annually. The most environmentally effective way to deal with synthetic fabrics already manufactured is to promote fashion circularity, which refers to the idea that if you are done with an item, it doesn’t become waste; it re-enters the economy through resale, renting, swapping, or recycling.

Mass TikTok shops and Shein orders, shipped in bulk from China, have made shiny synthetic fabrics the default uniform nationwide. A cultural shift must occur to preserve American craftsmanship, quality of clothing, and our environment. Durability and secondhand markets are conservation tools that outperform recycling mandates or fast-fashion bans because they work with consumer incentives, not against them.

Americans must shift from focusing on quantity to focusing on quality and longevity, working hand in hand with the desire to save money and own something well-made. Price per wear is a key idea when discussing fast fashion markets: a $5 fast fashion shirt worn once costs more per wear than a $50 higher quality shirt worn over 100 times. Investing in higher quality clothing, shopping secondhand, and reading fabric composition on tags to gauge a garment’s value and environmental impact are practices anyone can build into daily life.

Craftsmanship once defined American clothing. Garments were built with reinforced seams, durable natural fibers, and thoughtful construction that allowed them to be repaired instead of discarded. The beauty of clothes “wearing in” is disappearing. A pair of 100% cotton rigid denim jeans would slowly fade, soften, and mold to its owner’s body, becoming more personal with every year of wear. Fast fashion has traded this legacy for speed, producing garments designed to be replaced after only a handful of wears and losing the aspects of careful craftsmanship America’s clothing industry was built upon. Yet the rising popularity of secondhand clothing and vintage clothing shows that consumers still value quality and longevity.

Taking a conservative approach to fashion–buying less, choosing quality natural fibers, and utilizing a closed-loop system by prioritizing secondhand clothing and mending– will dramatically decrease landfill waste and start a new wave of fashion thinking at a time when media and advertisements are actively pushing the fast fashion system.

Buy less, buy well-made, save the art of craftsmanship, and let secondhand and mending be the first response, not the last resort. Let your clothes have a story. An article of clothing getting passed down is a beautiful thing. Patches in jeans tell stories. Resoled shoes hold memories of everywhere you’ve walked. Buying secondhand is something truly beautiful, and it’s even better when the piece was made with the American tradition of craftsmanship. I look to pass down my great-grandma’s sweater to my children, and sixty years from now, I hope my great-grandchildren wear my clothes the way I wear Ruth’s sweater today, worn in, mended, and still carrying a story.

Katelyn Leonard is a former Policy Fellow with the American Conservation Coalition (ACC).

By Brooke Ogles, Communications Associate at the American Conservation Coalition

Since becoming a parent, I’ve gained an affinity for monotony. My family thrives on a variety of routines. However, even the strictest routine cannot scratch my Type A brain quite like an upcoming trip, and ACC’s Summit is a trip I look forward to each year.

I take this preparation seriously. Packing lists are written in detail, points of interest, like the best coffees in town, are mapped out in advance, and PowerPoint presentations of wardrobe options are painstakingly edited for months beforehand, when even AccuWeather has nary an idea what the forecast could be (dress for the weather you want, I say!). It is no surprise, then, that I have never willingly checked a bag. Traveling strictly with a carry-on is a great exercise in self-control, restraint, and logic. The question is not “what is the least amount of clothing I can take to remain efficient?” though perhaps it should be. It sounds more like, “How can I Tetris all of my items around to fit my beloved set of hot rollers?”

This year’s exercise in logical practicality was completed with Elmo playing in the background while I appeased my 18-month-old daughter, who believed her toys were a travel necessity and entertained herself with her newly learned ability to somersault across the floor. She patiently watched as I arranged, rearranged, revised, and repacked my suitcase. When I finished, I had a perfectly organized carry-on and a pile of items on the bed of what I was leaving behind. Perfectly situated among these items was my daughter, the most important of them all, and the one thing that hurt most to leave behind.

Until this year, “leaving something behind” was a fairly ordinary phrase to me. It meant forgetting a pair of shoes I swore I needed, abandoning an old habit, or kissing my daughter goodbye before heading to the airport. After a close personal loss this spring, though, I began thinking differently about what, if anything, any of us choose to leave behind.

My daughter has her own method of leaving things behind: a sweet, toddler-sized mess of toys marking her presence that we have affectionately named the “Ruthie tornado.” I am not always appreciative of it, though I suspect I will miss it terribly someday.

We leave behind more than messes. We leave stories, recipes, cherished heirlooms, and traditions that we hope will give our loved ones a sense of comfort and familiarity once we have departed. After my Papa’s funeral this spring, I hastily picked flowers from his graveside and sent them to an extraordinary botanical preservationist to keep one last piece of him with us. He spoiled us throughout our childhood with roses from the bushes in his yard, and with these framed florals, each family member received one last parting gift from him.

Inheritance cannot always appear in a will. Some are recipes made from memory, stories retold around a dinner table, traditions carried into another generation, or places cared for because we believe someone else deserves to experience it someday. We spend our lives deciding what is worth carrying forward, ultimately determining what we will leave behind.

I carried that question with me to Medora: What are we choosing to leave behind, and what will the people who come after us carry forward?

The landscape surrounding the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library offered an answer. It is a living reminder of what generations of conservation can accomplish when people choose to care for something they will not ultimately keep for themselves.

Our farms, our public lands, our waters, and our wildlife are among our most important inheritances. Conservation does not exist to serve us alone; it serves generations still unborn. The defining question is not what we can take with us, but what we are willing to leave behind.

Our time in Medora offered a practical application of that idea from nearly every direction. Speakers approached conservation through policy, hunting, cooking, public lands, and the memory of Theodore Roosevelt’s legacy. The library reflects Roosevelt’s vision, and ultimately ACC’s, in its respect for carefully cultivated land that is used, not simply preserved.

We could not have received a clearer picture of that principle than we did at the opening reception. Medora’s finest Theodore Roosevelt impersonator stood in the very spot that originally enamored Roosevelt with the Badlands and recited the “Man in the Arena” speech.

Our members were tired. Medora is neither easy nor convenient to reach. But they could not have been more willing to stand in Roosevelt’s footsteps, listening to words written for another generation and carrying them into their own.

That spirit continued throughout the weekend. Our members at ACC are second to none. They are the heart of our conservation movement, doing the work on the ground and on a daily basis. They were engaged, asking deeply thoughtful questions of every speaker.

Then, at Saturday’s awards ceremony, we witnessed a rare phenomenon: there was absolutely no competition among nominees.

Members from every corner of the country were present. Some had just met that weekend, and others had known one another for years. Yet every nominee was earnestly cheered on, and our winners were genuinely celebrated. There was no visible jealousy or jockeying for attention, no sense that one person’s recognition diminished someone else’s accomplishments.

That sounds like a small thing. I do not think it is.

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Conservation is necessarily intergenerational and collaborative. The work is too large, the timelines too long, and the stakes too high for any one person to claim ownership of it. The members in that room seemed to understand something easy to lose sight of in a culture increasingly organized around individual achievement: the point is not who gets to say they did it. The point is that it gets done.

To anyone reading this who worries about the future of conservation, I can assure you that the kids are alright.

Carrying on a legacy does not come easily, and our group of conservationists is well aware of the fact. Jeff Zausch sent members home with the challenge to live “the strenuous life.” He implored us to love and nurture the land, seeking to deeply understand it, to remain humble, and to be ready for more to be asked of them at any moment.

Our members took that charge with open hands. They were ready to take these lessons home to their cities, campuses, parks, and communities and make them better places than they found them.

Each member received a glistening bust of Theodore Roosevelt, a sincere token of appreciation, but also a reminder of their charge. Roosevelt’s legacy is not theirs to simply admire. It is theirs to carry forward.

Eventually, the time did come to repack my carry-on. A bit tighter from some newly acquired items, including an official Teddy’s Bear for Ruthie, it required unconventional packing methods that sufficed to satisfaction upon fully zipping. Flights were boarded, and we left behind the landscape that had, quite frankly, changed many of us after a couple of days.

I thought again about the pile on my bed at home, and the things we decide are worth carrying and worth leaving behind.

Leaving something behind does not always mean abandoning it. Sometimes it means entrusting it to someone else.

That is the inheritance of conservation. The land does not belong to us, nor should it. We are temporary stewards of something far older than ourselves, with a responsibility to hand it to the next generation in better condition than we found it.

If Summit was any indication, I’m positive there is a generation ready to carry it on.

Brooke Ogles is the Communications Associate at the American Conservation Coalition. She is based in northeast Georgia.

222 years ago, two Virginia-born gentlemen–Meriwether Lewis and William Clark–embarked upon a grand journey across America’s vastly expanded and theretofore unexplored Western frontier. One that stretched, for the first time, all the way to the Pacific. What they asserted dominion over as they crossed it in their moccasins and pirogues was not just land, but a natural wonder full of beckoning adventures and incredible beauty because it was something unique: untouched and undeveloped land in which one could feel the pull of the natural world. This was something unique, and must remain protected.

The Western Difference Lewis and Clark Discovered

To explore and map the frontier was nothing new. Gov. Spotswood’s Knights of the Golden Horseshoe expedition crossed the Blue Ridge for the first time, and that frocklicksome band of adventurers drinking toasts of brandy and claret as they discovered the Shenandoah and opened it to eventual settlement. Division and settlement of the Ohio River Valley had been a focus of Virginians from Thomas Lee to George Washington, along with other colonials like Benjamin Franklin, and the British attempt to shut American settlers off from it was an impetus to war.

Young Captain Lewis’s mentor, Thomas Jefferson, was instrumental in crafting the Northwest Ordinance that mapped and divided the Northwest Territory. Lieutenant Colonel George Rogers Clark of the Virginia militia, elder brother of William Clark, launched a stunning campaign over the course of 1778 and 1779 to secure this territory for America. It was in the Kentucky region of this territory that the Rogers family moved when William was in his teens.

Throughout the colonies, such stories were typical. Explorers and frontiersmen pushed westward, perhaps on their own initiative or perhaps on behalf of their state, claiming the land and developing much on the pattern set in the Tidewater: an unbroken mixture of small and large farms that turned the frontier into the settled world.

But the expedition upon which Lewis and Clark embarked on May 14 of 1804 was different than those past expeditions and the campaigns that secured them. They were all pecuniary pursuits meant to open seemingly inexhaustible tracts of land to settlers. Spotswood’s associates traveled to and bought up the Shenandoah to make large fortunes larger, not out of a love for the Natural Bridge. Thomas Lee, Peter Jefferson, George Mason, and others engrossed hundreds of thousands of acres for the Ohio Company not to revel in the then-buffalo-trodden beauty of Kentucky’s bluegrass, but to turn it into riches through the planting of tobacco.

The expedition that Peter’s son Thomas organized and sent Lewis and Clark upon was to be different. It was to be scientific and a grand adventure. It was to map the West and catalogue its riches not just so that some of them might be exploited, but so that they might be known and that the American nation could appreciate the glory of that which it had gotten from Napoleon for cents an acre. Such was why they catalogued, sketched, and preserved so many species. Even those with little commercial use had much beauty, and that beauty was in itself a good thing to be appreciated.

The scenes Lewis stumbled upon as Clark and the men painstakingly pushed, paddled, and sailed the keelboat and pirogues up the muddy Missouri before marching through the Lemhi Pass and over the Bitterroots were incredible. Entire landscapes swathed in buffalo. Vast throngs of pronghorn dotting the plains. Nary a man-made structure in sight. No boundary lines bringing fencing and fields of tobacco or grain to the virgin soil. Just nature, and its beauty. A world full of opportunity spread out beneath his feet, and stretched from horizon to horizon.

What’s more, so much land had been acquired so quickly that it could not be engrossed by rapacious landlords nor settled by stolid farmers any time soon. Eventually, civilization would march across it as thin arteries of wood and steel linked East to West. But not for decades after Lewis and Clark pointed the way to them.

What unfolded in the West was different than the East. Vast forests, mighty mountain ranges, arid plains, and valleys so beautiful they could represent Arcadia sat untouched for generations with nary a soul nearing them. The tyranny of distance meant that these glorious lands, far from those hostile waterways Lewis and Clark attempted to use in the desperate and futile search for a Northwest Passage, would remain virgin for many decades.

Protecting Our Heritage

Then, as the frontier closed and Americans turned inward, the rapacious claws of ever-marching industry tried to grasp them. To fell the redwoods, dam the rivers, exploit that which was beautiful so long as it was unexploited. Fortunately for America, Teddy Roosevelt was there to protect a slice of America and keep it beautiful so that we might get a glimmer of that untrammeled charm of the American landscape that Lewis and Clark’s expedition first set sight upon. Not all of America could–or should–be kept in such a state. But a few of the more beautiful places would be, so that the sense of adventure into the unknown and unsettled that had always been part of our national heritage could be preserved for future generations.

At Yosemite, Glacier, Yellowstone, and elsewhere, we can experience just a bit of what our ancestors did as they built the world anew. We too can hike to fish in pristine rivers. Instead of gazing upon endless stretches of strip malls and apartment complexes, we can get a burst of adrenaline if a bear or moose wanders near. Lewis and Clark too had their troubles with bears! We can see those herds of bison, and be reminded of the dangers they pose as well as their stunning–and distinctly American–beauty.

To hike to the top of a peak and look out upon nothing but nature is an experience now rarely available, but is one our ancestors experienced and, hard as exploring and settling the frontier was, one they cherished.

A century and a quarter after Teddy Roosevelt protected that uniquely American birthright from the rapacious plutocrats who would have wiped it away for a bit of oil, cheap lumber, or ore and coal, the vultures are once again circling. They enviously gaze upon what remains of the untrammelled American Western wilderness, scenes the likes of which Lewis and Clark first saw and countless Americans have since been inspired by. Petitioned by developers and like special interests, the usual suspects in the Senate attempted to sell it off, claiming that studding the wild hills with yet more strip malls and condos would be the “American” thing to do. It would not be. It would be an act of rank and gross betrayal, a stunningly Esau-like casting away of the birthright for a bit of temporary gain.

The frontier is part of the American soul. We no longer have a real frontier, but we have been left with a few reaches of land that represent it. A few places left unengrossed, undeveloped, and untouched.

To walk through them, to fish in them, to look out upon them with wonderment is what was first done when Lewis and Clark expanded the American dominion with their march to the sea and back. We must preserve that for future generations, as it has been preserved for us, so that future generations of Americans too can look out upon the incredible and be inspired by it.

Will Tanner, a graduate of Washington & Lee University and the Wake Forest School of Law, is the author of The American Tribune newsletter. You can follow him at @Will_Tanner_1.

In 2017, conservatives didn’t talk about the environment. The Sierra Club and NRDC dominated conversations about energy production, public lands, and most of all, climate change.

That didn’t sit well with a group of young conservatives who asked a fundamental question: if we aren’t conserving our natural wonders, what are we conserving?

So, on July 26, 2017, the American Conservation Coalition, ACC for short, was born following an early debut at the Western Conservative Summit.

From the start, ACC was a scrappy operation fueled by dedicated volunteers, countless coffee runs, and social media momentum.

Our goals were simple: get conservatives talking about conservation and energy. Show the establishment that young conservatives craved leadership on these issues.

As time went on, our ranks of volunteers, spread out across the country, grew. We spent hours and hours on FreeConferenceCall.com and were a virtual workplace before it was cool. We threw everything at the wall: flashy events, local petitioning, social media campaigns, and more.

The pandemic happened just as ACC was hitting its stride. We had begun hiring some of our volunteers for full-time, salaried positions. No more working 80 hours a week for free! But, the world had other plans. Still, we didn’t slow down, growing a nonprofit organization while others were forced to downsize. This unexpected growth was only proof that we were onto something. We were doing work that mattered, even at a time of deep uncertainty and fear around the world.

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As lockdowns lifted and the world slowly reopened, we worked hard at ACC to continue our trajectory toward institutionalization. Frankly, it wasn’t a straight line. Political winds shift. Funding can be fickle. But, happy warriors are never deterred.

In the summer of 2022, we hosted the first-ever ACC Summit in Washington, D.C. For the first time, 300 young conservatives gathered, joining us for a three-day conference. This was truly a conference for young people, put on by young people. By the last evening, our team was exhausted, yet so fulfilled. We had done it. Imperfectly, sure, with many lessons learned for next time. But we did it.

Since that first Summit, we’ve hosted thousands of events across the country, from big national Summits to local service projects. I’m constantly impressed by the students and young professionals who dedicate their time and energy to building this movement with us. Our grassroots is not only why we do this work, but how we’re able to do it at all.

At the end of last year, we hit a major milestone: 100,000 grassroots members. Our work has been featured in countless media outlets, from national outlets like The New York Times to small local newspapers. It’s hard to comprehend how a concept conceived on a merged phone call more than nine years ago has turned into a cultural movement.

Not only has ACC grown from that little scrappy team of college students to a full staff of nearly 40 employees, but our lives have changed greatly. In addition to doing such important work together, we’ve achieved major life milestones together: marriages, graduate school, moving cities, adopting pets, and even welcoming more than 10 babies!

Becoming a wife and mother myself has only strengthened my conviction that conservative conservation leadership is essential, not just for my generation, but even more so for my son’s generation. Calvin has already gotten involved as ACC’s littlest intern.

This work is not easy. No one promised it would be. But it is worth it. As we kick off our 10-year celebration, I am in awe of what a tiny group of college students has built. From the bottom of my heart, thank you to everyone who has played a part in ACC’s success. Every single person who has entered the arena with us has made their mark.

Our first decade is only the beginning. We are proud of the work we’ve done, but we recognize we’ve only scratched the surface.

Danielle Franz is the CEO of the American Conservation Coalition (ACC). She lives in Lexington, Kentucky, with her husband and young son.

On an ordinary day, the world’s dirtiest air is over places like Delhi or Dhaka, not Detroit and DC. This past weekend, however, smoke had drifted down from the 900-some Canadian wildfires, which are currently burning out of control across the country.

For me, it was strange to see a familiar old haze creep into America’s capital city. I’ve only ever experienced something similar in the camps I used to spend my summers in, working as a firefighter across northern Canada to pay my way through university. Back then, it didn’t seem like our work would be upstream of international politics and very real personal health concerns; it was just a fun way to sidestep student debt.

But in the years since, wildfires across North America have become an ever-greater hazard, one that is currently affecting over 100 million people from the Great Lakes to the East Coast and will require commensurate political will and funding to address. Even the President agrees, in his way: as the smoke settled over Washington, Trump took to Truth Social to accuse Canada of “Willful Negligence,” blaming its refusal “to engage in basic Forest Management” for the filthy air and threatening to add the cost to Canada’s tariffs. The President is right that under-investment in forest management produces exactly this, which makes it strange that his administration is cutting support for the people who do that work, right when we need them most.

In back-to-back budget requests, the administration has proposed zeroing out the Forest Service’s entire research program, its restoration grants, and the State, Private, and Tribal Forestry account, which helps fund essential state and volunteer fire departments, while shifting firefighting itself to a new agency at Interior. Congress rejected these cuts last year; the White House simply asked for them again this year. And despite the passing of the much-needed firefighter pay fix in 2025, over 25% of Forest Service firefighting positions remained vacant as of last summer. Nearly 6,000 employees, or 16% of the total workforce, left the Forest Service last year due to layoffs, deferred resignations, and early retirement offers. Around 700 of those cut were wildfire support staff, some of whom work in “militia” type roles, jumping out of the office and onto the front lines when needed. Even those who never hit the line still help take care of America’s parks and wildlands — and in their absence, firefighters are now cleaning campsites and building trails instead of clearing decades worth of built-up fuel and cutting firebreaks. While administration officials claim that firefighters were not directly targeted and that recruitment is on par with stated goals, former Forest Service chiefs have called the layoffs “incompetence at best and mean-spirited at worst.” Reporting has shown that the recruitment goals are set well below the numbers needed to operate effectively.

There’s not just a recruitment crisis but an escalating retention issue. In my experience, the hardest thing about firefighting is not the long hours in the heat doing hard labor, but the unpredictability. At least in Canada, most firefighters work seasonally, starting around May and leaving by mid-September. During this time, they pray for fire, because all the money is in the overtime hours they work while on deployment, money they typically need to help support them until the next season. It’s hard on the body, and on relationships as well; your partner might be punted out to some remote forest for weeks on end, working in dangerous conditions with very few (if any) opportunities to call. Add to this the knowledge that the smoke and strain are all having real long-term effects on your physical and mental health, and it’s no wonder why so many churn out of firefighting after a few years, just like I did. It’s not that hard to find more stable, year-round jobs that don’t involve sucking in smoke.

The reason people stay in firefighting is that it is incredibly fun and meaningful work. There aren’t many other opportunities that can have you jumping in and out of helicopters as you fly through remote mountain ranges, digging trenches, felling trees, calling in (water) bombing runs, and building out campsites with your buddies all over the course of a couple of hours. There are millions of unemployed or underemployed young people across the US and Canada; you’d think selling them on some relatively well-paid adventure wouldn’t be too hard. In fact, much of the infrastructure built by young men during the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), a program FDR created as part of his New Deal to address mass youth unemployment, is still in use. The parks, camps, trails, fire roads, and watchtowers they built could probably all use some rehabilitation. A new 21st-century CCC, driven by an ambitious administration that has already shown immense interest in revitalizing public monuments and restoring civic order, could be of great service here. Given that North America seems on course for some smoky summers for the foreseeable future, it might not be a bad idea to equip our younger generations with a prevention-and-suppression skill set.

Given that air pollution seems somewhat indifferent towards political borders, it might be in both countries’ best interests to work together on this one. While Washington and Ottawa renewed a long-standing wildfire cooperation agreement in 2023, and continue to work together in forecasting, monitoring, and mutual aid, the political posturing on both sides seems to be getting stranger. For years, American lawmakers have pressured Canadian politicians to do more when faced with the threat of out-of-control fires, and for years the Canadian government has responded that it is doing all it can. While this is not entirely true — there’s a lot more the Canadian government could do to drive up recruitment, training, and retention (personally, I think paying firefighters in a timely way would go far) — the reality is that the Canadian wilds are too vast to properly control, and once fires up there get big enough, it’s common to simply wait them out. I was once posted to a fire in the Yukon that was nearly as big as Nantucket… by myself. All I could do was block traffic on the one road it was burning over and tell annoyed travelers that yes, it would actually be very dangerous to drive through a firestorm.

But this doesn’t mean that America and Canada can’t work together on what can be controlled, and that’s quite a lot. The two countries will need to sort something out, as costs and casualties continue to rise. Nature has published a study estimating that the 2023 Canadian fires contributed to over 80,000 premature deaths worldwide, including some 33,000 in the US alone. Another study projects that annual smoke-related deaths across the US could rise by more than 70% by 2050. And this is just the smoke; fires are now frequently destroying huge swaths of towns and cities from Los Angeles to Lytton, British Columbia. These catastrophes cost lives, displace entire communities, and destroy capital investment. And yet, while we’ll never be able to completely stop them, we could be doing a lot more to prevent them. There is overwhelming evidence that fuel thinning plus prescribed burning can help reduce fire severity by over 60%. Not only that, but a Stanford analysis has found that prescribed fire appears to reduce overall net smoke emissions by 14%. Fire prevention is also much cheaper than direct suppression, with some estimates indicating that every dollar spent on preventing fires saves $3.75 down the line. When there are lives on the line, it’s not the time to be pointing fingers.

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In 2023, the US sent around 2,800 firefighters to help Canada suppress its out-of-control wildfires. But this was only possible because America was having a below-normal fire season of its own; had it been otherwise, there would have been no spare bodies to ship north. Given that raging wildfires and impenetrable smoke now seem to be an annual affair, it’s a little frightening to think that the margins on deployable first responders can be measured by a couple thousand. Both countries need to come together to combat this problem by drafting new, collaborative policies on increasing prevention, recruitment, retention, and joint rapid response. Every year we wait brings more smoke — a lingering reminder that there is a very human cost to treating fire as someone else’s problem.

Evan Riggs is the Director of Operations at the Bull Moose Project. Before entering politics, he was a wildland firefighter in northern Canada. He writes at The Burn.

It was 5:30 a.m. in rural Southwest Utah when I first saw what enhanced geothermal energy was really about.

I had just started my job at Fervo Energy in September 2025 and visited Cape Station, the company’s flagship project near Milford, Utah, about 200 miles southwest of Salt Lake City. I woke up early to catch the drilling crew’s shift change and meet some of the men and women bringing a new industry to life. Standing there in the unexpectedly cold, predawn quiet, watching workers rotate out under floodlights and listening to a morning safety briefing, I was captivated by the scene: hard hats, the rumble of heavy equipment, and the organized buzz of a well-run industrial site in the high desert.

It looked like an oil and gas operation, because in many ways, it is. But what I was witnessing was something new. Fervo is building America’s next great energy industry, and it’s doing it the American way: with proven technology, a homegrown workforce, and a domestic resource that can deliver for every American, no matter what your energy priorities may be.

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Innovation Built on American Expertise

Cape Station is Fervo Energy’s first commercial-scale Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS) project. EGS has the potential to elevate geothermal from a niche regional resource into a backbone of reliable electricity generation across the United States, by engineering the subsurface to harvest heat from the earth and convert it into clean, reliable, affordable, and abundant power.

This is possible because EGS is built on innovations from the U.S. oil and gas sector. Fervo uses the same horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing technologies that powered the shale revolution to unlock heat stored miles beneath the Earth’s surface, bringing the same workforce and supply chain with it. More than 90 percent of on-site labor hours at Cape Station have come from oil and gas workers, and more than 60 percent of Fervo’s employees are former oil and gas professionals. The project is supplied by companies like Baker Hughes, Vallourec, and Halliburton (among others), giving Fervo confidence that equipment and resources will arrive on time via a proven domestic industrial base.

Just like with natural gas, progress is accelerating rapidly. Since 2022, Fervo has cut drilling time by approximately 75 percent and per-foot drilling costs by approximately 70 percent, mirroring the early shale revolution’s learning curve almost exactly. Cape Station is contracted to deliver first power to the grid later this year, reaching approximately 100 megawatts of operating capacity by early 2027, with permits in place to expand to 2 gigawatts. The geothermal resource beneath that single project alone exceeds 4 gigawatts, roughly equivalent to the entire traditional geothermal industry in the United States today. And Fervo’s existing lease holdings across the American West represent the potential to unlock 40 gigawatts, enough to power more than 30 million American homes.

The same domestic assets — the innovation, the workforce, the supply chain — that once unlocked an era of energy abundance through shale are now launching the next great American energy industry in geothermal.

Checking Every Box

What makes geothermal so compelling is that it checks every box, no matter what you care about most.

If you care about affordability: Americans want electricity that is both reliable and affordable. Geothermal delivers both. Cape Station’s power is already cost-competitive with other clean baseload sources, and costs are continuing to fall, driven by the same learning curve that made shale gas affordable. The market has noticed: traditional utilities and hyperscalers have signed long-term contracts to purchase geothermal power. When buyers of that caliber commit to long-term deals, it’s a signal that the economics are real and improving.

If you care about conservation and environmental impact: Geothermal produces electricity without combustion, with no fuel burned and no emissions at the source. And because the infrastructure primarily lives underground, the surface is minimally impacted. That means geothermal can deliver large-scale clean baseload power while leaving the landscape, along with the habitat, open space, and natural character that come with it, nearly untouched. Fervo’s projects run on a closed-loop water system using non-potable water sources that dramatically reduce consumption compared to conventional power plants. The projects are clean across every metric: emissions, land use, and water.

If you care about reliability: The United States faces an energy reliability crisis. Aging baseload plants are retiring faster than replacement capacity is being built, creating a potential 98-gigawatt shortfall by 2035, precisely as AI data centers, advanced manufacturing, and broad electrification are pushing demand to new heights. Geothermal produces power continuously, regardless of weather, filling the baseload gap where it’s needed most. Speed is another advantage. Fervo’s Cape Station is delivering first power in approximately three years from groundbreaking, and a modular, standardized approach is designed to shorten that timeline with every successive project.

If you care about national energy security: The heat beneath our feet cannot be embargoed, disrupted by a foreign adversary, or delayed by a pipeline failure. With EGS technology, this resource is no longer confined to Nevada and California. The Department of Energy projects geothermal opportunities in at least 18 states by 2050. True energy independence looks like an energy source secured under American land, built by American workers, and deployed with American technological expertise.

The Scale of the Opportunity

This is not a niche story. Across multiple reports and Presidential administrations, the DOE projects that the United States could deploy 90 to 300 gigawatts of geothermal power by 2050, a twentyfold increase from today. Three hundred gigawatts would make geothermal a cornerstone of American energy, representing roughly a quarter of the entire U.S. electric grid.

The Big Thing Standing in the Way

While the technology, workforce, capital, and supply chain are in a good place to scale geothermal, the single biggest bottleneck is our outdated system for permitting energy projects and building electric transmission infrastructure.

Geothermal projects on federal public lands currently face overlapping environmental reviews that the oil and gas industry is not subject to in the same way. And even after a project is permitted and built, transmission and interconnection backlogs can delay grid connection by several more years.

Both the Biden and Trump administrations have taken meaningful steps through executive action, and bipartisan legislative momentum is building. The Geothermal Energy Advancement Act and the CLEAN Act, which recently passed the House with overwhelming bipartisan support, would modernize leasing timelines, consolidate redundant reviews, and ensure agencies can keep pace with a growing industry. This is about modernizing, not eliminating, environmental review to ensure a clean, reliable, American-made energy technology isn’t unnecessarily delayed for years.

The Next Chapter

Standing at Cape Station that September morning, it’s clear I wasn’t witnessing a science experiment. I witnessed an industry being born, built by the same American workforce that built the last one, running on a resource that has been waiting underground since long before any of us were here.

The geothermal revolution can do what the shale revolution did: transform America’s energy position and provide a long-term solution to the nation’s energy affordability challenge. And it can do it while delivering for every constituency. Lower prices for ratepayers, pristine landscapes for conservationists, reliable power for grid operators, new opportunities for workers, and true energy independence for our national security. It checks every box.

What happens next depends on how many Americans are willing to put their skills, voices, and passion to work to accelerate the nation’s next great energy industry. Come join us.

Tom Erb leads Federal Affairs at Fervo Energy, a leading next-generation geothermal energy company.

There exists today a pervasive myth that environmentalism is a priority of the left and that conservatives are the antagonist to all things good and just in the environmental world. This couldn’t be further from the truth, and it’s time to end this trope once and for all.

Many attribute the true beginning of the American public land system to Teddy Roosevelt and his creation of the National Park system and Forest Service. Roosevelt, as the thinking goes, was a progressive in his time, and so the creation of public lands is a progressive milestone. The reason people view him as a progressive is quite an interesting example in cherry-picking; It is true that he had significant impacts in breaking up corporate monopolies, advocated for minimum wages, and employed aggressive use of bureaucratic red tape in reining in railroads and food safety standards. However, his Progressive Party, created to run against President Taft, was progressive in the same way that the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is truly Democratic. Roosevelt was a fierce champion of military intervention all across the globe and was a big fan of hunting rare species, including killing nine white rhinos, which are now extinct. He was also the architect of a federal land system that was intended to be used for sustained yields of timber and other resources. It seems odd that progressives don’t claim this portion of Roosevelt’s legacy.

It is this world–the practical, real world–in which modern progressives are entirely alienated. The Forest Service today was created by Roosevelt, but largely designed in form and function by Gifford Pinchot, Roosevelt’s first forester. Pinchot was a true conservationist in that he believed in maintaining lands for the continual use of the American people. Therefore, the intent of the Forest Service was to maintain a consistent yield of timber for generations in perpetuity. In other words, the sole reason for its creation was sustained logging–not camping, not hiking, and not scenic views or biodiversity. It is timber sales that initially drove the funding of the Forest Service today–not progressive activism. When the Forest Service began collecting more revenue than expected in its first couple of years, Congress grew uncomfortable with an executive bureau having its own independent “blank check.” Congress quickly passed legislation requiring all timber and grazing revenues to be deposited into the U.S. Treasury, forcing the Forest Service to rely on annual congressional appropriations for its budget.

The Bureau of Land Management dwarfs both the National Park Service and Forest Service in acreage and designated usage. Originally created as the General Land Office, the intent of this office was to get rid of land by selling it to homesteaders. Yes, the original intent of the BLM was to dispose of land. It was combined with the U.S. Grazing Service in 1934 and maintained a broad scope of functions, including livestock grazing, mineral extraction, railroad construction, and permanent housing settlement. Any other use, like hiking, camping, hunting, or general biodiversity, was secondary. It wasn’t until 1976 that the BLM gained its multiple-use designation which put other uses on par with–not above–the originally established goals.

Environmental activists have gone to extreme measures to prevent Roosevelt-style conservation from taking place. In the 80’s and 90’s, radical environmentalists engaged in what is called monkeywrenching to prevent the logging of old-growth forests. This involved sabotaging logging equipment, tree spiking (which is incredibly dangerous), and living within tree canopies for months. While perhaps a noble goal, any claim that the creation of public lands was a progressive policy platform by modern-day standards is nonsensical. Today’s progressives vehemently despise any form of public use or benefit on public lands that were designed for that very thing. Just look at President Biden’s attempt to implement the Landscape and Conservation Health rule which would have allowed conservation leases on BLM land, far outside what BLM is currently allowed to be used for. While we at ACC think that rule was actually onto something good, it just goes to show that progressivism has nothing in common with Roosevelt’s ideal of land management.

Let us pause for a moment to make it clear where ACC stands on these lands. Our nation has come far from Roosevelt and we have learned much about biodiversity and have come to appreciate the natural wonders of our public lands. I personally have hunted BLM land, hiked Forest Service land, and have camped and fished all of them and more. We support the multiple uses offered to us on all of these lands.

Tragic examples of misaligned environmental priorities abound today. A poignant example is the Ballona Wetlands Restoration project. This was a state-led plan to restore over 400 acres of the heavily degraded Ballona Wetlands near Los Angeles. The goal was to remove millions of cubic yards of dirt which had been dumped there during the construction of Marina del Rey, thereby returning the area to a tidal wetland, and reestablishing the endangered species that call tidal wetlands home. Unfortunately, a coalition of right-wing interest groups funded by millions in dark, foreign donations blocked the project.

Just kidding! That was actually the Sierra Club, champions of the environment, through a subsidiary they created called Ballona Wetlands Restoration Committee, and they blocked the project in tandem with other “environmental” groups like Animal Protection and Rescue League and Grassroots Coalition. They claimed that, by using a bulldozer to restore the wetlands, it would cause more harm than it would solve. You cannot make this up. In reality, today’s leftists align much more closely with John Muir, whose descendants at the Sierra Club, Center for Biological Diversity, and Environmental Defense fund continue to make a mess of public lands and environmentalism as a whole. Perhaps my favorite example of this behavior is the prevention of removing dead trees. Following catastrophic wildfires in states like Montana, Oregon, and California, the U.S. Forest Service frequently introduces “post-fire restoration” projects. These involve logging dead trees, replanting native trees, and thinning dense forests to prevent future fires. Groups like Center for Biological Diversity routinely sue these projects to block them, claiming that “thinning” is just a euphemism for commercial logging on public lands. Perhaps my favorite quote from CBD in the above link is: “We’ve known for a long time that burned forests are great at storing carbon, but not when they’re logged.”

Yes, these progressive groups claim that lumber mills are actually interested in logging dead, burnt-out husks of trees, and that burnt-out husks of trees are better at storing carbon than…alive trees. Nevermind the fact that wildfires release 5 to 8 billion tons of carbon every year. The scar on the landscape from the 1996 Buffalo Creek fire in Colorado has still not recovered. There is no new growth, and the dead trees were not removed. It’s been thirty years, but we can thank the environmentalists for preserving its “natural state.”

Environmental groups are also to thank for suing clean energy projects like the Biden Administration’s Western Solar Plan, SunZia’s “Green Energy Super Highway” transmission line, and shutting down the nuclear plant in New York. When it was closed, they claimed that its energy would easily be replaced with renewables. Instead, every watt that the nuclear plant produced was replaced with natural gas and New York’s emissions rose by 29%.

Funding

Conservatives are almost entirely to thank for the funding and maintenance of public lands as well. Virtually every single state Department of Natural Resource budget is funded primarily, if not entirely, by hunters and anglers, of which almost all are conservative. Idaho receives 57% of its total department budget from a combination of resident and nonresident tag and license sales alongside taxes on sporting goods. This includes federal funding from Pittman-Robertson (PR) and Dingell-Johnson (DJ) taxes. PR taxes are levied on shooting supplies like guns and ammunition, and DJ taxes are levied on fishing tackle, both almost exclusively paid for by conservatives. Tennessee’s state DNR budget, managed by the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency, operates on a similar model. Tennessee receives 81% percent of its wildlife agency’s operating budget directly from hunting and fishing license fees and federal allotments from PR and DJ excise taxes. Every single wildlife management area, all of which have proved to be the single most effective tool in amazing restoration success stories like the white tail deer and turkey, are funded by hunters. Activists will often protest and block hunter’s access to public lands to the point of being arrested, despite hunters providing 70% or more of state DNR budgets.

These are just examples, but the formula stays true for every single state in the union. Colorado, Mississippi, Virginia, Montana, Wisconsin, Utah, and everywhere in between are entirely funded by state models that are overwhelmingly comprised of hunting and fishing conservatives.

At the federal level, conservatives are again to be thanked. The Land and Water Conservation fund was permanently and mandatorily funded by Republicans at $900 million per year. The Legacy Restoration fund was also created by Republicans. The Good Neighbor Authority, largely hailed as one of the country’s best stewardship programs, was created by Republicans. The Good Samaritan Act, a genius way to incentivize abandoned mine cleanup, was a Republican bill. Both the BLM and Forest Service create billions for the federal treasury via extractive resources which progressives seek to block, but conservatives actively encourage and promote.

This matters because oil and gas revenues pay for the $900 million in mandatory spending (that Republicans mandated) every year that goes directly to the Land and Water Conservation fund, used to buy more public land. When liberals block oil and gas projects, they are blocking the largest source of public land funding that exists which is, once again, overwhelmingly operated by conservatives. At least 50%, some figures put it higher, of deep blue New Mexico’s state budget is funded exclusively through oil and gas.

Without conservative initiatives, we would have no public lands at the state or federal level.

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Land Sales

A persistent critique of Republicans is that we want to sell off our public lands. Simple logic would dictate that this would make no sense since conservatives are the primary beneficiaries of public lands, but we don’t do common sense these days. The reality is that a significant amount of BLM land in the west only exists because no homesteaders wanted it and it was never claimed. It’s very poor quality land and offers few, if any, recreational or commercial value. Today, we pay BLM staff to monitor martian, barren land. This isn’t true of all BLM holdings; I have hunted gorgeous and stunning properties in Northern Colorado. However, saying that Republicans want to sell off these gorgeous and productive lands is completely false.

Likewise, Democrats love selling land. President Biden’s Secretary of the Interior, Deb Haaland, put up tens of thousands of acres for disposal through the Resource Management Plan (RMP) process and nobody batted an eye. The Bears Ears National Monument RMP would have transferred 1.3 million federal acres to tribal authority for management. The aforementioned Western Solar Plan would have allowed 31 million acres to be developed for solar panels. The Royal Gorge/Lakeview RMP would have sold 19,000 federal acres outright. The Colorado River Valley / Grand Junction would have disposed of 10,000-15,000 acres. The Lakewood Field Office RMP would have sold 7,500 acres. The Rock Springs RMP would have sold ~2,500 acres. The Royal Gorge RMP would have sold 12,000 acres. Comically, the Biden admin opened 27 million acres of pristine Alaska wilderness so that tribal Vietnam veterans could each have 160 acre plots of housing. The absurdity is beyond belief. Land sales are bad when Republicans do it, but it’s okay as long as it’s millions of acres in Alaska for urban sprawl.

Closing Thoughts

Conservatives have always–from the very start–been true conservationists and have contributed significantly to the health of our lands. Conservatives also know how to engage with the land directly rather than from behind a computer screen. It is hunters who know how to track a deer; anglers who can find a trout in a hole; ranchers that can read their horse, and grizzled backpackers who know never to sleep under a widowmaker.

Taylor Tougaw is the Director of Government Affairs at the American Conservation Coalition Action (ACC Action). He previously worked in the House of Representatives for six years working on conservation and energy issues.