Big Bend remains one of the largest and most untouched landscapes in Texas. Rugged mountains rise from the desert floor while the Rio Grande cuts a distinct path through canyons and open land. Concrete and steel don’t exactly fit in a landscape like that. It is a place defined by distance, silence, and the dramatic character of the land itself.

Recent debate over border wall construction in the region has made one thing clear: our natural heritage still matters, and Texans across the political spectrum are willing to defend it.

For years, proposals to construct a physical wall through Big Bend National Park and surrounding lands have come and gone. Each time, local communities, conservationists, and policymakers raise concerns, and have made a real impact. Most recently, federal maps removed planned wall construction within the national park itself, which the Texas Tribune reported. This decision reflects growing recognition in Washington and across Texas that although our border security remains important, some places carry a different weight. Big Bend is one of them.

More than almost anyone, Texans understand the need for a secure border, and opposition to a wall in Big Bend doesn’t undermine that. Many live with the results of border security deficiencies every day. The reality is, though, Big Bend is one of the least-trafficked stretches of the southern border. The remote, harsh landscape itself serves as a deterrent, making large-scale migration improbable. Much of this land is privately owned, worked by outdoorsmen and ranchers who have stewarded it for generations.

Ranchers, law enforcement, and local officials all carry that responsibility. In truth, a continuous physical barrier in this region offers limited strategic value but introduces numerous, lasting consequences. Technology offers a more precise approach. Drones, sensors, and mobile surveillance units allow agents to monitor activity without reshaping, scaring, or littering the landscape. This is ultimately just a matter of applying the right tool to the right place.

The costs of getting this wrong are dire. Big Bend supports a fragile and diverse ecosystem shaped over centuries. Wildlife moves freely across the river corridor and the surrounding desert. Construction on the scale required for a border wall would disrupt migration patterns, fragment habitats, and alter the overall character of the land in ways that cannot be undone. Americans set aside national parks to protect them from development and alteration for a reason. Leaders like Theodore Roosevelt understood some places carry a value that cannot be replaced once lost. Big Bend falls squarely in that category. These parks exist for a reason; they protect spaces that define the American landscape and Texas’s identity. Once altered, they do not return to their original form. You cannot reclaim them, and future generations lose connection to the lands that once were.

Voices from across Texas have come together in recent months to make this case, gathering at the state capitol to oppose construction in the region. Leaders on the right and left have called for a more measured approach. Brandon Herrera, for instance, a deeply conservative candidate running for Congress, has repeatedly elevated this issue on the campaign trail while also advocating for strong border security. Protecting Big Bend and other similar areas from a destructive border wall is not a fringe position and not just one held by left-leaning environmentalists with potentially alternative motives. It reflects a broad understanding rooted in common sense and shared values.

American border security is not reliant on a border wall running through Big Bend and Texas does not need to sacrifice its most iconic landscapes to enforce the law. Both priorities can stand together. These are not competing goals but rather responsibilities that demand careful balance. Texans have always understood how to live with the land rather than reshape it beyond recognition. That instinct remains strong today and guides the desire to see Big Bend remain what it has always been: wild, open, and unmistakably Texan.

Stephen Perkins is the chief operating officer at the American Conservation Coalition (ACC). A lifelong Texan, he now resides in San Antonio.

The rise of Ozempic is as much a story of American ingenuity as it is of our culture’s posture toward its food. For every excess pound Americans gain, the pharmaceutical industry is just a few steps behind, developing band-aid after band-aid for our crisis of chronic disease. Yet while our alarm bells only recently began sounding over the obesity epidemic and its cascade of related health issues, the roots of our disordered relationship with food run decades deeper, back to the second wave of feminism and the rise of a convenience-driven culture that ushered in mass dependence on ultra-processed foods. This deeper crisis is not one we can medicate ourselves out of: We are a nation that has deliberately forgotten how to feed itself.

Feeding America well is less about nostalgia than stopping a tangible, observable public health and environmental crisis. By now, data regarding our obesity, hypertension, and related deaths, diseases, and disorders saturates popular discourse almost too deeply to bear repeating, but the fact that our poor health has become a cliché doesn’t make it any less true. Much of this crisis, unsurprisingly, begins in the kitchen. The “cooking illiterate,” a term coined by the New York Times, is reproducing faster than ever, with younger generations decreasingly likely to know how to cook. More than a quarter of millennials say they couldn’t make a cake from a box mix, and under a third of 18-to-29-year-olds say they feel “confident” in the kitchen. It isn’t an issue of free time, either; the COVID-19 lockdowns led to a spike in DoorDash and Uber Eats, not a renaissance of home cooking.

Our obsession with convenience culture is not a coincidence. Rather, it’s the direct result of devaluing work such as homemaking, caregiving, and food preparation, traditionally women’s work, as lesser forms of work. This shift then combined with rising dual-income households to create a cultural and logistical void in domestic food production as households’ mothers entered the workforce. Industrial food companies were all too quick to rush into that void, seeking markets for post-WWII manufacturing capacity. Corporate interests aligned all too conveniently with the “you can have it all” ethos, promoting shelf-stable, processed foods as “freedom” from and “progress” beyond the home. This cultural transformation was hardly intentional; in many ways, it was barely even a conscious one. Nevertheless, markets picked up on our demonstrated preferences, and our homemade food was replaced by manufactured supplements that quickly became substitutes.

Additives and preservatives were marketed as “science,” frozen and boxed meals were sold as “liberation,” and the rise of the microwavable dinners framed speed as ingenuity. Generational skills eroded as cooking, gardening, and food knowledge were outsourced, and food quality plummeted as additives, preservatives, artificial ingredients, refined seed oils, and industrial-scale commodity crops became dietary staples. Systems once centered around nourishment came to serve America’s new favorite god: efficiency.

With our food sequestered away in boxes and plastic, cobwebs began to grow around tables where we soon forgot how to commune. Feeding ourselves became a necessary evil rather than an excuse to socialize, exacerbating America’s declining social capital along with its biomarkers. Rates of metabolic disease climbed along with the number of ingredients in our staple foods and our distance — physical and cognitive — from our foods’ origins. Today, less than a third of children aged 7-11 can identify a beet or a zucchini, though few kids have the same struggle recognizing logos for McDonald’s or M&M’s. The decline in familiarity with food may have begun with the decline in farming and cooking, but it has accelerated over just a few generations to a full-fledged outsourcing of our culinary and nutritional autonomy.

The consequences of our predicament are difficult to overstate. Our country is now unsuccessfully battling parallel rises in childhood chronic disease, allergies, autoimmune disorders, and metabolic illness, and our decline in food literacy means that children who don’t know where food comes from can’t learn from their equally clueless parents. While the biotech industry may be able to patch up some of our health issues, it cannot heal a sick culture. Our loss of connection to food is also an atrophy of cultural rituals, among them shared meals, family identity, and an intergenerational knowledge transfer we cannot rebuild with an injectable, pill, or patch. All of this is underscored by our deteriorating relationship with the land we call home, as industrial food production has increased our land degradation, reliance on synthetic inputs, and biodiversity loss, reinforcing a cycle where the cheapest calories are the least nutritious and most environmentally damaging.

Subscribe now

Making America healthy again will require rewiring the broken systems that have made her sick. We need to fix the regulatory frameworks that make it easier to produce processed food at scale than to support small farms, diversified agriculture, or nutrient-rich perishables. We need to address the permitting barriers currently hindering regional food processing, regenerative farm expansion, and the infrastructure needed for local food systems. Most of all, we need to accept that a healthy America requires aligning food policy with human health and environmental integrity — not just agricultural output — and we need to write agricultural policy that reflects that. Ultimately, success would look like an inversion of the industrial food supply chain that prioritizes export capacity and shelf-stability over nutrient density and ecological health.

And yet policy alone cannot save us. The real work begins in the home, with the deeply pro-human and pro-family pursuits of reclaiming shared meals and rebuilding a relationship with what we eat. Promoting food literacy, normalizing cooking as a basic life skill, and restoring the dignity of the farm and the kitchen are all efforts that will need to begin from the ground up, not an executive order or a farm bill. Restoring agency over the food that sustains our bodies and communities is a project that will take several generations and, if we’re successful, save several more.

America cannot be healthy again until families, communities, and institutions reclaim the ability to produce, prepare, and understand real food. We’re mistaken to believe that the fallout we’re enduring is merely biological, and equally mistaken to believe its solutions are merely political. Our country’s health is a project capable of nourishing a nation starving socially, culturally, and environmentally, if we choose to pursue it. Restoring it promises both the work and the reward of a lifetime.

Danielle Franz is the CEO and a founding member of the American Conservation Coalition (ACC). She lives in Lexington, Kentucky, with her husband and son. Follow her on social media @daniellebfranz.

Much ado has been made about the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s draft proposal to end LNT ALARA requirements in nuclear generation and research facilities. LNT ALARA stands for Linear No-Threshold, As Low As Reasonably Achievable, and it refers to safety protocols that workers need to abide by to reduce as much risk as possible to get the job done. No-Threshold means that any exposure to radiation, no matter how small, is a health risk. It assumes that there is no threshold at which radiation exposure is safe. The Linear portion means that risk increases linearly with increased exposure. ‘As Low As Reasonably Achievable’ is thus a policy that seeks to expose workers to the lowest amount of radiation that can possibly be achieved in completing a job. This involves using expensive robots for some jobs, requiring robust PPE for humans, and billions of dollars worth of duplicative infrastructure to shield communities from radiation. Sounds reasonable, right?

The strategy falls apart when one realizes that, in fact, there is a safe threshold for radiation exposure. We receive doses of radiation constantly, whether it be from medical diagnostic tools like X-rays, the radon in our homes, or from general background radiation that exists everywhere in the universe. According to the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements, one receives 1,000 millirems(mrem) of radiation in a CT scan. One can also expect to receive about 228 mrem from radon in your home each year. Surprisingly, the average U.S. adult will be exposed to 310 mrem of ionizing radiation each year simply from background cosmic radiation. To put this in perspective, living near a nuclear plant results in less than 1 mrem each year. Of course, exposure increases dramatically for workers inside these plants, but even a ten-fold increase in mrem exposure for workers doesn’t come anywhere near the normal and safe level of background radiation that we all experience each day. Thus, billions of dollars spent mitigating negligible amounts of radiation only prevent us from having affordable, carbon-free energy and do nothing to mitigate risks to workers.

Imagine, if you will, that we applied the LNT ALARA model to our own lives. We could, for example, approach germs with the same mentality. Under an LNT ALARA model, we could assume that all germs are bad, no matter the quantity or type. Therefore, we would wear a mask 24/7, reduce all personal physical interactions, never take public transportation, and constantly apply hand sanitizing gel wherever we go. This lifestyle would undoubtedly kill us; the vast majority of bacteria and viruses are benign, and many are actually beneficial. Exposure to these germs is worth the risk to live a fulfilling, normal life. On top of that, the continued cost of masks, soap, sanitizers, and other PPE would bankrupt us.

In the nuclear world, this is exactly what happens. Jobs that could be done by one person, which may involve exposure of around 300 mrem (one CT scan), are currently split between three people so as to spread the time spent exposed to radiation. This costs plants three times as much money and time. Billions of dollars are spent on duplicative shielding and concrete barriers that only reduce risk by fractions of a percentage, if at all. Workers are forced to wear PPE like gas masks in areas where radiation exposure is actually below naturally occurring background levels. ALARA also treats tools and PPE (like the already unnecessary gas masks) used in nuclear areas as radioactive waste, which requires extensive and extremely expensive decommissioning processes, despite the fact that the tools are often used in areas with extremely low levels of radiation.

The ALARA regulations, passed in 1975, had an immediate and dramatic effect. Between 1973 and 1980, the cubic yards of concrete in nuclear reactors increased from 90,000 to 162,000. The number of man-hours per kilowatt-hour of energy generated surged from 9.6 in 1972 to 28.5 in 1980. The Sequoyah Nuclear Plant in Tennessee, scheduled for completion in 1973 at a cost of $300 million, was completed for $1.7 billion in 1981, after 23 changes to structure or components were requested by the regulator.

Of course, you won’t read any of this granular thinking in the mainstream media. Let us take the opening line of a recent POLITICO article, for example:

This type of doomsday rhetoric underscores not only how little the general public understands about these regulations but also the extent to which this decision has become politicized rather than being based on scientific evidence. Removing radiation protections appears, on its face, to be wanton ignorance of the dangers of nuclear energy, and the mainstream media relishes any chance it gets to attack the current administration. By framing ALARA regulations as some sort of sacrosanct, timeless provision, they errantly show their bias. There is little reverence, and perhaps scorn, for much older laws, so this narrative very obviously shows that the clear disdain is motivated by something other than the science.

Subscribe now

Thankfully, there are incredibly smart people working hard behind the scenes on these issues. In January, Secretary Wright issued a memorandum that ended all ALARA protocols at DOE, citing a 2025 report by the Idaho National Laboratory that recommended the cessation of ALARA requirements. The Nuclear Innovation Alliance puts its best when they say we ought to “mend, and not end,” the programs. While exposure to extra levels of radiation certainly does carry a risk, there is a safe threshold at which there is a negligible risk. By reducing the draconian and costly requirements for practices under acceptable risk thresholds, we can significantly cut down on the cost and time of building the reactors our nation so desperately needs.

Taylor Tougaw is the Director of Government Affairs at the American Conservation Coalition Action (ACC Action).

Plastic waste is a growing problem. But, conversations that begin and end with “reduce, reuse, recycle” are leaving real solutions on the table.

Most of us can agree: seeing plastic in our rivers, oceans, and forests is heartbreaking. The places we love shouldn’t be trash cans, yet plastic keeps piling up. In the United States alone, tens of millions of tons of plastic are produced each year, and less than 10% of post-consumer plastic is ever recycled. The rest ends up in landfills, is incinerated, or, all too often, finds its way into our environment, threatening the health of people, animals, and the planet.

This is a serious problem, and something needs to be done. But the solutions people talk about are often overly simplistic, like banning plastics. On paper, that might sound good, but in real life, plastic is everywhere for a reason. It keeps our food safe, helps medicines stay sterile, makes cars and electronics lighter and more efficient, and so much more. Taking plastic away wouldn’t just be inconvenient—it could make life harder in ways most of us don’t even think about.

Plastics themselves provide important benefits. What’s troubling is how easily they find their way into the natural world. If we could change that, we wouldn’t have to choose between the benefits plastic provides and protecting the places we love.

This is where advanced recycling—an innovative recycling technology—begins to change the story. Instead of treating plastic as something destined to become waste, it offers a way to start over. Through a different process, plastic can be broken down into its basic building blocks and remade into new materials. In some cases, these can approach the quality of the original plastic, though this depends on the process and type of plastic.

That matters more than it might seem. Traditional recycling does what it can, but the process often wears materials down, limiting what they can become next. A bottle might not become another bottle, and many products can’t safely be reused for purposes like food packaging or medical supplies.

Less than 10% of post-consumer plastic waste is ever recycled in the United States. Some of that comes down to everyday realities: how people sort their waste, whether recycling is even accessible, and how complicated plastics can be to separate. But part of the challenge runs deeper: traditional recycling can only do so much. It depends on very specific types of plastic, carefully sorted and relatively clean. Anything outside of that narrow window is often left behind, with nowhere to go.

Advanced recycling can help fill those gaps. Right now, the technology is only addressing a small share of our plastic waste. But it’s still early, and as the technology grows, it has the potential to take on much more. It’s not a silver bullet, and it isn’t meant to be. But it can be an important part of a larger, more thoughtful approach to reducing plastic waste and keeping it out of the places it doesn’t belong.

Subscribe now

Of course, like any new technology promising to tackle a big problem, advanced recycling has its skeptics. People wonder whether it’s truly viable, economical, or effective. Critics claim it’s just incineration in disguise, that it worsens climate change, or that it isn’t profitable. In reality, advanced recycling is focused on turning hard-to-recycle plastics back into high-quality materials, keeping waste out of landfills and the environment. In many cases, producing plastics from recycled waste often has a smaller carbon footprint than making them from virgin materials.

The potential is already being realized in real-world projects. Wendy’s partnered with Berry Global and LyondellBasell to create a circular supply chain expected to divert 10 million pounds of plastic in just two years, while ExxonMobil’s Baytown facility expects to recycle 80 million pounds annually into new products.

We shouldn’t stop reducing plastic use where possible, improving traditional recycling systems, or exploring alternative materials where they make sense. But, advanced recycling opens the door for more honest conversations about plastic—about how we use it, how we manage it, and how we can keep it out of the environment—without vilifying a material that makes so much of modern life possible.

Sarah Rosa is the Policy Director at the American Conservation Coalition (ACC).

Last year, the Trump White House established the Make America Beautiful Again (MABA) Commission by executive order. This was a major step toward restoring America’s natural heritage and renewing conservation leadership, highlighting conservative leadership in the spirit of Teddy Roosevelt. While executive orders like this can spark monumental change and create the appropriate permission structure, Congressional support is what truly makes it last.

This week, ACC’s sister organization is hosting a fly-in for grassroots members to come engage constructively with Congress about implementation.

“Make America Beautiful Again” is more than just a slogan for the front of a hat. It is a governing vision rooted in stewardship, access, and abundance, a vision that requires tangible policy to expand, steward, and protect Americans’ access to the outdoors. This vision means the balance of energy abundance that strengthens our grid and powers the American Dream, while minimizing our environmental impact. It also means improving wildlife health, building forest resilience to prevent catastrophic wildfires, securing our water systems against drought, and creating economic opportunities in rural areas tied to conservation and resource management.

This agenda is informed by the conservation ethos championed by President Theodore Roosevelt, who rejected preservationist ideals in favor of active stewardship. His work to expand the National Park Service, for instance, was done to further connect Americans to their natural heritage and manage it effectively. This is a far cry from the brand of environmentalism that was popularized in the 1970s, which has tended to shut down needed conservation management projects and detaches humans from nature. Modern conservative conservation should be a vision of protecting what we have while responsibly developing what we need, true to President Roosevelt’s vision so many years ago.

Ensuring Access to Our Public Lands

The protection of our natural resources begins with the connection between Americans and their land. Conservation is strongest and most durable when people feel a firsthand connection, when parks are accessible for families, when wild habitats are well-maintained for sportsmen, and when farmers and local communities can experience the direct benefits of responsible land management. In practice, this looks like addressing deferred maintenance across our parks and public lands, ensuring that land use designations are clear and evidence-based, and making federal land management decisions more transparent to the public.

Addressing Deferred Maintenance at National Parks

During President Trump’s first term, he signed the largest investment in conservation and public lands in U.S. history, permanently funding the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) and establishing the Legacy Restoration Fund (LRF). The LRF was created to address the billion-dollar backlog of deferred maintenance at national parks and other public lands. More people visiting our National Parks is welcome news, but we need the resources to keep them beautiful for generations to come. The fund supports projects such as preserving historic and cultural sites, modernizing visitor centers and facilities, and improving trails to promote safe and responsible recreation. Through the Great American Outdoors Act, $1.3 billion was made available annually for five years to address delayed or postponed maintenance at National Parks. In September 2025, congressional authorization for the Legacy Restoration Fund (LRF) expired, meaning that once the funds are spent, there will be nothing left. It will be critical to reauthorize and fund the LRF to ensure Americans can continue to enjoy their national parks while protecting their beauty for generations to come. The America the Beautiful Act, introduced by Senators Steve Daines (R-MT) and Angus King (I-ME), is one effort aimed at doing so.

Subscribe now

A Foreign Visitor Fee to Increase Funds for National Parks

While reauthorizing and funding the LRF is critical to the stewardship of America’s “best idea,” finding creative ways to increase funding without raising government spending is how we make the most of American taxpayers’ dollars. As it stands, Americans pay twice to support the stewardship of our National Parks, once through taxes and again at the gate. Foreign visitors, however, only pay at the gate. A modest surcharge for foreign visitors could generate significant revenue that can bolster funding for our national parks. In fact, a $100 surcharge could generate more than $1.2 billion for national parks annually, or nearly as much as was provided by the Great American Outdoors Act.

This policy idea has already gained momentum with the Administration and in Congress. Following an executive order, Secretary Burgum announced a $100 surcharge at 11 of the most visited national parks, which went into place starting January 1, 2026. Foreign visitors will also pay more for the annual pass. In Congress, Senator Jim Banks (R-IN) and Senator Tim Sheehy (R-MT) along with Representative Riley Moore (WV-02) and Representative Ryan Zinke (MT-01) introduced the PATRIOT Parks Act, which would codify the President’s executive order to implement the fee.

Improving Federal Management of Public Lands

Drawing on President Theodore Roosevelt’s foundational view that conservation “means development as much as it means protection,” federal land policy has long been guided by the principle of “multiple use and sustained yield”—a careful balance between responsible use and conservation. In recent years, however, some environmental advocacy efforts have shifted too far toward preservation, limiting active management and constraining the ability to responsibly develop and steward public lands. To restore this balance and ensure public lands are managed for both use and conservation, policymakers should pursue the following reforms:

• Replace the current broad definition of Areas of Critical Environmental Concern (ACECs) under the Bureau of Land Management with a clearer, evidence-based standard. ACEC designations should also require state affirmation through the relevant state legislature, with no designation absent such approval. Without a clear standard and meaningful input from state and local partners, situations like the Rock Springs Resource Management Plan (RMP) in southwest Wyoming will continue to occur. In this case, designated ACEC acreage increased from 226,000 acres in the previous plan to 935,000 acres in the new plan—despite objections from local officials. Locking land away for its own sake does not advance the goal of multiple use, underscoring the need for a more transparent, consistent, and collaborative approach to ACEC designations.

• Policymakers should continue using existing FLPMA authorities to strategically enhance the overall value of our public lands through targeted land exchanges, acquisitions, and sales, and reinvesting proceeds into higher-priority lands via the Federal Land Transaction Facilitation framework. Public lands are a national treasure and should remain in public hands for the benefit of all Americans. Rooted in FLPMA principles, these lands are meant to be actively managed to serve both present and future generations. Thoughtful land exchanges, acquisitions, and sales allow agencies to enhance access, conservation outcomes, and long-term stewardship without diminishing the value of these lands.

• Require the Bureau of Land Management to maintain a detailed, centralized, and publicly accessible database of all proposed and complete land acquisitions, exchanges, and disposals. While BLM has the authority to acquire, exchange, and dispose of lands, current tracking systems are limited. This makes it difficult to monitor progress, identify barriers, and address complex issues such as checkerboarding—where public and private lands are interspersed in a way that complicates management and conservation. Tools like a centralized database can help highlight these challenges, improve transparency, and guide more strategic land management decisions.

• Clarify and strengthen Congress’s oversight role in national monument designations under the Antiquities Act. While the Act was originally intended to give presidents limited authority to protect historically and scientifically significant sites, its broad language has increasingly allowed unilateral designations that lock large swaths of public land away. True conservation requires thoughtful, active management—not just locking land away in the name of preservation at the expense of the multiple-use mandate. Legislative efforts, such as the Ending Presidential Overreach on Public Lands Act and the Congressional Oversight of the Antiquities Act, aim to balance presidential authority with Congressional oversight and support more strategic land management.

Bolstering State Land Access

Support grant programs for states to purchase, maintain, or expand wildlife management areas, coastal bird hunting zones, suburban archery programs, and other related activities, ensuring hunting and fishing access is statutorily guaranteed. Much of the nation’s public land is concentrated in the Western states, while the majority of the population lives in the East. Expanding and maintaining state-managed wildlife areas, hunting zones, and related programs is an effective way to increase access for hunters and anglers. Federal support through targeted grant programs should prioritize Eastern states, helping ensure that more Americans can enjoy the outdoors close to home.

Active Management of Our Landscapes

Stewarding our natural heritage requires more than preservation for its own sake; it demands proactive conservation and active management of our lands. To achieve this, the implementation of many landmark environmental laws should be updated to reflect modern priorities and address the most pressing conservation challenges of our time. Forest health, for example, requires a shift from reactive fire suppression to building long-term resilience. This includes expanding prescribed fire where appropriate, supporting active forest management, setting clear tree-stand density goals, and empowering locally led restoration projects to reduce catastrophic wildfire risk before it starts.

Managing Our Forests

Decades of poor forest management, characterized by hands-off preservationist policies and an emphasis on wildfire suppression, have left forests unhealthy, overgrown, and increasingly prone to severe wildfire. While well-intentioned laws like the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) were designed to improve environmental decision-making, they are now hindering our ability to complete critical forest management projects. In fact, wildfires in the West are burning forests at a rate 3.5 times faster than the U.S. Forest Service can treat them. Course correction will require policies that expedite the permitting of these projects. One approach is to expand the size of forest health projects eligible for categorical exclusions under NEPA from 3,000 to 10,000 acres. This approach helped save South Lake Tahoe after Congress approved a 10,000-acre categorical exclusion for a forest health project in the Lake Tahoe Basin. An example in Congress is the Fix Our Forests Act led by Representative Bruce Westerman (R-AR) and Scott Peters (D-CA) and Senators John Curtis (R-UT), Tim Sheehy (R-MT), John Hickenlooper (D-CO), and Alex Padilla (D-CA).

Additionally, policies should encourage states to implement prescribed fire by exempting planned burns from counting against air quality standards, allowing third-party contractors to propose stewardship contracts with the U.S. Forest Service, and directing the agency to set tree stand density goals in line with historical averages to address overgrowth in national parks and national forests. This is noted in another bill, the Locally Led Restoration Act, championed by the late Representative Doug LaMalfa (R-CA).

Empowering Ranchers to Support Conservation and Stewardship on Public Lands

Outcome-Based Grazing Authorizations (OBGAs), first piloted under the first Trump administration at the Bureau of Land Management, provide a framework for linking grazing permits to measurable conservation outcomes. This approach enables ranchers and land managers to collaborate on maintaining rangeland health, promoting stewardship, and adaptively managing public lands while balancing operational and environmental goals. The Operational Flexibility Grazing Management Act is one congressional proposal focused on advancing this approach.

Conserving Our Nation’s Wildlife

America’s wildlife is a vital part of our natural heritage, and protecting them requires more than just preventing extinction. While the Endangered Species Act has been highly effective at keeping species from disappearing, only around 3% of listed species have been fully recovered in the past 50 years, showing that avoidance of extinction alone is not enough. Currently, incentives are misaligned and often fail to encourage voluntary conservation.

At the same time, we must address ongoing threats such as invasive species and wildlife diseases. Policymakers should consider the following:

• Support grant programs to states to reduce zoonotic diseases such as Chronic Wasting Disease and Blue Tongue, which threaten wildlife populations, disrupt ecosystems, and pose risks to agriculture and public health. While many programs focus primarily on human health, it is equally important to address the damage these diseases can cause to wildlife populations and overall ecosystem stability.

• Modernize the Endangered Species Act to better align incentives and focus on fully recovering species—shifting the approach from defense to offense. Representative Bruce Westerman (R-AR) has proposed potential solutions to help make this a reality.

• Support grant programs to reintroduce native species, such as the iconic American Chestnut. While current policies focus on protecting existing species, there are few pathways for actively restoring species that were once part of our landscapes.

• Implement a liability shield for non-governmental organizations to voluntarily remove invasive species. Encouraging voluntary engagement in landscape conservation is critical, and protecting these organizations from liability removes a key barrier to their participation.

Managing Precious Water Resources

Finally, conservation cannot be separated from water security. The Colorado River Basin is experiencing some of the lowest snowpack levels on record, and iconic ecosystems like the Great Salt Lake face unprecedented challenges, drawing national attention from President Trump, who vowed to “Make the Lake Great Again.” Ensuring long-term ecological and economic stability in these drought-prone areas requires embracing innovative solutions, fostering strong partnerships, and promoting resilient ecosystems. Specifically, policymakers should consider the following:

• Unlock the use of existing funding for the most innovative water management technologies, such as cloud seeding, by directing federal support toward reviewing and integrating cutting-edge approaches within existing water programs to address drought nationwide. Technologies like cloud seeding are already being used in states such as Utah to increase precipitation and enhance water availability.

• Advance the full authorization and funding of programs aimed at restoring and protecting America’s major watersheds, including the Chesapeake Bay, Ohio River Basin, Delaware River, Long Island Sound, the Great Lakes, the Upper Price River, and key estuary systems.

• Extend the Bureau of Reclamation’s pilot program funding voluntary water conservation projects in the Colorado River Basin, supporting local stakeholders in reducing water use, enhancing drought resilience, and protecting critical ecosystems across the basin.

• Provide adequate funding to address the challenges facing the Colorado River Basin and the Great Salt Lake. These iconic landscapes are under unprecedented stress from drought, declining water levels, and ecological disruption. While these challenges are not insurmountable, protecting and restoring them will require sustained investments in water conservation, ecosystem restoration, and strategies that strengthen resilience to ongoing drought pressures.

It is my hope and belief that “Make America Beautiful Again” is evolving beyond a one-time executive order into a generational call to action. My generation of conservatives believes in real, tangible conservation, advancing toward a vision of patriotic stewardship with pro-human abundance. This vision requires the durability only Congress can provide to ensure that MABA’s impact on American lands is more than a single-administration project. We cannot afford for conservation priorities to live and die by executive pen. It is time they are written into law.

Chris Barnard is the president of the American Conservation Coalition (ACC) and our sister organization, ACC Action.

When Theodore Roosevelt first arrived in the Dakota Territory in 1883, he did not come as a conservationist.

He came as a hunter.

At twenty-four, he was already a rising political figure in New York, restless and ambitious. The Northern Pacific Railway had opened the Badlands to Eastern investors, and Roosevelt, drawn by both adventure and opportunity, traveled west to hunt bison. What he encountered instead was something far more consequential: a landscape that would fundamentally reshape his understanding of power, responsibility, and the limits of abundance.

Roosevelt would later write, “I never would have been President if it had not been for my experiences in North Dakota.” That statement is often quoted. It deserves to be taken literally.

The Hard Lessons of the Open Range

The Badlands of the 1880s were not a postcard wilderness. They were volatile, wind-carved, economically unstable, and ecologically fragile. Roosevelt invested in the Maltese Cross Ranch and, after the deaths of his wife and mother on the same day in February 1884, returned west to immerse himself in ranching life. He later established the Elkhorn Ranch along the Little Missouri River.

Out there, he rode alongside cowboys, tracked thieves, managed cattle, and endured brutal winters. He also witnessed firsthand the environmental consequences of unchecked expansion.

The cattle boom of the mid-1880s had drawn speculators eager to profit from open-range grazing. Grasslands were overstocked. Few understood the carrying capacity of the land. When the catastrophic winter of 1886–87 struck – bringing deep snow, sudden thaws, and plunging temperatures – the weakened herds perished by the thousands. The open-range system collapsed.

Roosevelt absorbed the lesson.

The West was vast, but it was not inexhaustible. Land abused would not endlessly replenish itself. Wildlife overhunted would not automatically rebound. The mythology of limitless American expansion collided with ecological reality on the frozen plains of Dakota.

This experience did not make Roosevelt anti-growth or anti-development. It made him skeptical of waste and deeply aware of stewardship.

Subscribe now

From Naturalist to Conservation Leader

Roosevelt had loved nature long before he set foot in Dakota. As a boy in New York City, often confined indoors by severe asthma, he obsessively studied birds and animals, creating what he proudly called his “Roosevelt Museum of Natural History.” He read voraciously, cataloged specimens, and trained himself as a serious amateur naturalist.

But intellectual fascination is different from lived experience.

In the Badlands, he saw ecosystems under strain. He experienced drought cycles, grass depletion, river fluctuations, and the fragility of wildlife populations. He saw how market forces could push land past its limits.

Years later, when he entered the White House, those memories shaped policy.

As president, Roosevelt protected approximately 230 million acres of public land. He established 150 national forests, 51 federal bird reserves, four national game preserves, five national parks, and 18 national monuments under the 1906 Antiquities Act. He created the United States Forest Service and elevated conservation to a national priority.

His conservation philosophy was neither preservationist in the absolute sense nor laissez-faire exploitation. It rested on a principle of responsible use. Natural resources were to be used wisely, scientifically managed, and preserved for future generations.

In a 1907 message to Congress, Roosevelt wrote:

The seeds of that conviction were planted in Dakota soil.

Conservation as Civic Duty

What is striking about Roosevelt’s conservation legacy is how closely he tied it to citizenship. He did not frame conservation solely as environmental protection. He framed it as a moral obligation of self-government. In his worldview, a democratic republic required citizens capable of thinking beyond immediate gain. Stewardship of forests, waters, and wildlife was a test of national character.

Roosevelt believed Americans held the land in trust, not only for themselves, but for generations yet unborn. That idea, now foundational to environmental policy, was radical in an era defined by rapid industrial expansion.

The Badlands had shown him something essential: if individuals pursued only short-term profit, the common good suffered. Conservation became, in his mind, an extension of civic responsibility.

It is not accidental that the same president who advanced trust-busting and regulatory reform also expanded federal protection of natural landscapes. In both cases, Roosevelt sought to balance individual enterprise with collective responsibility.

The Badlands as Crucible

Standing today along the Little Missouri River, it is possible to see why the landscape left such an imprint on him.

The Badlands are beautiful, but not indulgent. They demand attentiveness. Weather changes quickly. Distances deceive. Grasslands that appear resilient can erode under pressure. Life persists, but only in balance.

Roosevelt arrived as a young man seeking adventure. He left with a philosophy forged in experience: that strength without restraint leads to depletion; that leadership requires foresight; and that national greatness depends, in part, on how we treat the land beneath our feet.

North Dakota did not simply heal him after personal tragedy. It molded him.

Why It Still Matters

Today, debates over public lands, resource extraction, wildlife management, and environmental resilience continue to test our ability to think long-term. Roosevelt’s model does not provide easy answers to modern complexities, but it does offer a framework.

He believed in science-informed policy. He believed in federal leadership when national interests were at stake. And he believed conservation was not a partisan cause, but a patriotic one.

His experiences in the Badlands remind us that conservation policy is rarely abstract. It emerges from lived encounters with land, economy, and community. Roosevelt’s conservation legacy was not born in a committee room. It was forged on horseback, in blizzards, amid failed cattle ventures and fragile prairie grass.

Theodore Roosevelt National Park now preserves part of that landscape. The Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library, currently under construction in Medora, stands within sight of it – a reminder that the story of American conservation did not begin in Washington, but in the West.

In keeping with that legacy, the Library has launched on-the-ground conservation initiatives in the Badlands, including a large-scale native prairie restoration effort using locally sourced seeds to rebuild biodiversity on degraded grasslands. The project emphasizes ecological resilience, long-term stewardship, and scientific partnership—principles Roosevelt himself championed. It is a modest but tangible way to ensure that conservation remains not just a chapter in history, but a lived practice.

Looking ahead, the institution is also developing a TR Conservation Scholars program to support emerging leaders working at the intersection of land stewardship, public policy, and civic responsibility. Plans are underway for a recurring Conservation Summit in Medora, envisioned as a national forum for serious, cross-partisan dialogue on conservation—much as the Reagan Defense Forum has become a convening space for national security at the Ronald Reagan Library. The aim is not ceremony, but substance: a place where conservation policy and civic leadership met in the landscape that shaped Roosevelt’s thinking.

If we want to understand Roosevelt’s conservation achievements, we must look not first to the White House, but to the Badlands.

That is where the transformation began.

Robbie Lauf is Executive Director of the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library. A North Dakota native, he writes and speaks on Theodore Roosevelt’s life, leadership, and conservation legacy.

Ever since I was a young boy, I have loved nature.

Playing in creeks, walking through the woods, catching a glimpse of a trout in a river, seeing a group of deer at the edge of a forest.

My favorite book of my childhood was Hatchet by Gary Paulsen. I remember being unable to put it down, totally enthralled by the story of a boy surviving on his own in the Canadian wilderness.

In high school, on my bulletin board, I had photos of my favorite hockey players (Jeremy Roenick, Mats Sundin, and Bobby Orr). I also had a photo of a grizzly bear.

As the years passed, my love of nature deepened. And, by the end of high school, I started to become aware that all was not well in the natural world. This concerned me, and the more I learned, the more it upset me.

For this and other reasons, I went to law school. And in the spring of my second year, I read A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold. I consumed it in a day or two. Or, more accurately, I devoured it, like that grizzly on my bulletin board would take to a winter-killed carcass in the spring.

To this day it is, without question, the best and most impactful book I’ve ever read. And it still blows my mind that Leopold wrote that book in the 1940s. (He died in 1948.)

Leopold was a radical. And a poet. And a genius.

One of the primary points he makes in the book is that all of nature matters. Every bird, bug, tree, plant, fungi, and fish. It’s a connected system, and all parts matter.

Always.

The more we can let natural systems do their thing, the better off we all are.

This and many other of Leopold’s teachings struck hard, and I have never looked at the natural world the same.

Today, 20 years after first reading A Sand County Almanac, I own and operate a regenerative bison ranch in Montana’s Shields Valley called North Bridger Bison. My wife, Sarah, and I started the ranch from scratch in 2018.

We have two kids, a boy named Otto and a girl named Greta.

From June 2009 to October 2021, we had a bird dog named Aldo.

At first glance, my path into ranching is non-linear and untraditional. I grew up in suburban Chicago and have no background in agriculture.

Some (most) people thought we were nuts for starting a bison ranch.

But, as I think back over the 45 years that got me here, I see a line of connectivity that runs from my childhood in the Midwest to my right now in the Northern Rockies. Sure, it wobbles at times, but there’s a distinct line. A trajectory, even. Something that makes sense of it all.

The line starts with a love of the natural world, moves forward with becoming a conservationist, keeps going when I was introduced to hunting in college, and then gets straighter and straighter with a deep, deep love of landscapes and the ecology that holds it all together.

While I was also in law school, I came across a listing for a unique piece of land in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. It was in the back of a newsletter from a northern Michigan land trust. I didn’t have any money—I was a law student—but I daydreamed of owning that land, trying to improve it, and watching it change over the years.

Leopold made me fall in love with land in a different way. A deeper way. A more intimate and connected way.

He had his farm and his shack in Wisconsin. (Yes, I’ve visited as a pilgrimage to Leopold.) And I dreamed of something similar. Nothing fancy. But a real patch of land that you could touch, feel, work, and watch through the seasons.

During that same year in law school, I wrote my “note” (similar to a thesis) on conservation easements. I had learned about them through that same northern Michigan land trust, and I thought they were incredible.

This simple way to protect land—be it farm, forest, wetland, or ranch—from being developed. Forever.

I loved the idea, and I did a deep dive into conservation easements while researching and writing my note. My love for conservation easements blossomed.

I graduated from law school in 2005, and after working three years in Chicago, Sarah and I quit our jobs, got married, and moved to Bozeman in 2008.

Soon enough, I landed a position at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), doing non-litigation policy and advocacy work.

It was a dream job for me, advocating on behalf of wildlife and wild places. That grizzly bear on my old bulletin board was no doubt smiling.

The primary issue I dealt with focused on the management of wild bison. The more I learned about bison, the more I fell in love with the species.

I spent a decade at NRDC. It was a great job, and I worked with a lot of wonderful people, both internally and externally. But something was missing.

Altruism aside, I had an office job doing policy work. It lacked control. It lacked tangibility. You couldn’t touch it or feel it. It took 13 years of doing it for me to realize that sitting in an office was simply not for me.

In my free time, I gravitated towards tangible activities. I hunted, I gardened, I cut firewood. I sweat, I felt my muscles work. I physically enjoyed the fruits of my labor. And I craved something similar in my work life.

I’d had an entrepreneurial itch for some time, and my dream was to find something tangible, conservation-based, and land-based. More and more, I questioned the non-profit environmental world, and the more I questioned it, the more shortcomings and flaws I saw.

At the same time, I found myself more and more interested in business. Businesses have big impacts. They make the world go round. I decided that I could make more of a positive impact in the business world. Even if it were a microscopic impact, it would be tangible and it would be real.

And then one day in 2017, I read an article about bison-ranching. It grabbed my attention, but I didn’t take it too seriously. Again, I’m a kid from suburban Chicago. But many weeks later, I was still thinking about bison-ranching. At some point that fall, I read Buffalo for the Broken Heart by Dan O’Brien, and the fuse was lit.

I attended a Holistic Management workshop in Wisconsin, worked with a ranching consultant, and put a business plan together. I was excited, and it felt fulfilling to be working on this crazy dream.

Land was the toughest part of the equation. We searched and searched and couldn’t find anything that would work for us. But I kept looking, and we eventually found a needle-in-the-haystack property in the Shields Valley on the east side of the North Bridger Mountains.

It’s the only property we looked at in person. We fell hard for it, and we got it under contract in early June 2018. We closed that fall and almost immediately started working with a fencing contractor. My last day at NRDC was in December, and the bison arrived in January 2019. It’s been a wild-ass ride ever since, and I love it.

This ranch has challenged me and pushed me like nothing else in my life. We’ve made lots of mistakes. I burned a truck to the ground, and I horribly dislocated and broke my ankle. I could go on and on with humbling tales of struggle and challenge.

But here we are, raising bison, field-harvesting them with our own hands, and providing food. When I step back and think about it, we’ve delivered thousands of pounds of delicious, healthy, regenerative, wildlife-friendly, bird-friendly, land-friendly food to hundreds of people across the country.

It’s tangible. It’s real.

Subscribe now

And then there’s the land. This beautiful, wild expanse of sagebrush, grasses, creeks, ponds, and springs. It teems with life, and we have an intimate relationship with it. It has become woven into the fabric of my family. Until the day I die, I’ll still be learning about this land, my relationship with it growing ever deeper.

Last April, after over three years of work with the Gallatin Valley Land Trust, it all came full circle for me. We closed on a conservation easement for the ranch. Everything we own is now protected from development. Forever.

The deal was finalized at a title office in Bozeman, but it was later that night, during dinner at our home, that the immensity of it all finally landed. I told Otto and Greta about what we had done that day, and what that meant for our ranch and our land. It was a powerful moment on this journey, and I had tears in my eyes. It was a special night that I will take with me to my grave.

But then it was back to work.

Because we have so much more work to do here, so much more to observe
and to learn.

There is no 10-year plan or 20-year plan. This is a lifetime plan. And then some.

It’s our job to steward this place, to try to improve it, and to watch it through the seasons. It’s a special, special thing to grow with a landscape.

To let nature lead you home.

Matt and Sarah Skoglund started North Bridger Bison in 2018. Matt is a board member of the Western Sustainability Exchange and the Bozeman Community Food Co-op, and he is the former Vice President of the Montana Bison Association. For more on North Bridger Bison, click here.

Every few weeks in my neighborhood, the same ritual repeats.

A storefront window is shattered overnight, and by morning, a dejected owner throws up the plywood. A quick Sorry for the Inconvenience! is taped to the door. A few days later, shiny new glass. A few weeks after that, the 7-11 gets hit. Next month, it will be the Japanese market down the block.

No one is surprised anymore. Yes, frustration is there, from business owners, compassionate residents, but it’s resigned. The damage feels ownerless, not due to an unrecognizable, supernatural force. No, this force is man-made.

Neglect is a slow, creeping energy that happens one broken window at a time, chipping away at the belief that our communities are worth protecting in the first place. Beauty cannot coexist with neglect. The two are inherently repellent forces.

One can mitigate decay without prioritizing beauty, of course. This looks like increased policing, enforced codes, and constrained expression. While efficiency underlines this method, so does a lack of vision. When there is no hope, all that is left strong enough to mobilize people en masse is rage; a culture fueled by frustrations rather than a vision for a better future.

Subscribe now

As it stands, beauty is treated as a decorative afterthought to conservatism despite the inherent contradiction. We cannot conserve what is good, true, or inherited if we no longer believe it is beautiful enough to defend.

There is a pervasive myth that the “serious” folk deal in power and pain, leaving beauty for the unserious. This flattening of what it means to protect and proliferate the beautiful ignores the morally significant power of beauty to captivate and pull our attention away from ourselves. This admiration shatters our ego and redirects our gaze toward a world bigger than ourselves. Maybe even better?

A person, a poem, a landscape. Once we love something beautiful, we want it to endure, and we want it to be known. Beauty, by design, prompts protection and distribution. We invite others to see a painting, hike our favorite trail, or visit the hidden gem with the best barbecue. Beauty expands our circle of concern and care for one another.

Policy is not the operative force behind the conservative instinct toward stewardship. The need to conserve our country and leave it in a better place for future generations comes from affection. It is love provoking the conviction that something is magnificent enough to safeguard. The early days of the American conservation movement understood that implicitly.

“Here is your country. Cherish these natural wonders, cherish the natural resources, cherish the history and romance as a sacred heritage, for your children and your children’s children. Do not let selfish men or greedy interests skin your country of its beauty, its riches or its romance,” declared President Theodore Roosevelt after designating 230 million acres of public land to what is now known as the modern-day National Parks Service. The framing of these early federal victories focused on awe and beauty, not policy and, very rarely, efficiency.

This week in Washington, D.C., a large print ad commissioned by the American Conservation Coalition went up on the side of a building depicting a horse-riding Roosevelt overlooking the landscape that bears his name. The design intentionally draws from the visual language originated by the 1930s National Park Poster series commissioned by the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Nearly a century later, those bold compositions– shaped by the Bauhaus, European Modernism, and limitations with silkscreen printing– still anchor conservation in the American imagination. Revisiting this language in 2026 is a declaration that conserving what is beautiful is the most reliable path to inspiring a culture of stewardship that goes beyond nature.

Subscribe now

Many conservatives today are deeply attuned to the aesthetics of cultural drift. We see our civic spaces devolve to brutalism, the “inspired” art that favors irony over meaning. Commentators will flock to the Internet, declaring cultural decline at the sight of these choices. The diagnosis is often right, but culture needs more than critique to move forward.

Culture shifts when people are brave enough to push a compelling vision of society forward. A song, a film, or even a single image to remind people what inspiration feels like. A legacy built to last is one fortified by admiration. If beauty is the engine of care, then a culture of stewardship requires more than a policy platform. We must provide the public with ample reminders that what they are protecting is sublime.

Our national parks are magnificent.

Our freedoms are glorious.

Our citizens are inspiring.

Neglect is patient, always lying in wait for lowered expectations. When we stop creating beautiful things, we quietly concede that nothing around us rises above bare minimum maintenance.

Lucero Cantu is the Creative Director at the American Conservation Coalition.

Try to remember the last time you read a newspaper or scanned X or LinkedIn and did not see a discussion about America’s insatiable appetite for energy. Over the weekend, even reserved Hoosiers openly questioned their utility provider about 300% increases in electric bills (WNDU). Every corner of the country appears slated for a proposed data center, raising concerns over land and water use and energy consumption and prices, while local officials rub their hands together gleefully, thinking of ways to spend property tax windfalls such projects would provide.

American energy is national security. It is economic security. Most important of all, it is family security. It’s why the Trump Administration is laser-focused on energy abundance and America First energy resources. The Administration is working day and night to reduce decades of red tape that impede energy infrastructure projects. You cannot walk anywhere in D.C. these days without overhearing someone dropping “permitting reform” into sidewalk conversations. Thankfully, President Trump, Energy Secretary Wright, Interior Secretary Burgum, and EPA Administrator Zeldin have made great strides in unleashing American energy abundance over the past twelve months.

But…

In the U.S, there are always ways for litigious-minded folks who oppose lower electric, heat, and gasoline prices to hinder progress. For decades, the Endangered Species Act has been the preferred cudgel to slow or stop new energy infrastructure projects. Go ahead and Google any proposed energy project of which you are aware, and you can almost guarantee someone has filed a lawsuit against it, arguing an endangered species will be irreparably harmed if the project goes forward. If the project is eventually approved, it will be years and years later, and millions upon millions of dollars will be spent in legal expenses by the project sponsor and the opposition.

Wildlife, including flora and fauna, is top of my mind every day. I live on the side of a mountain in Montana, keep a daily phenology, and wake up every morning hoping “this is the day that the grizzly that was sighted on the other side of the mountain wanders through our property”. This past fall, I passed up at least a dozen ‘lay-up’ shots at trophy mule deer because mule deer populations are down in the region, and no one can quite figure out why. I live here because of my love for wildlife and the landscape.

The report recommends four policy steps that can put an end to the zero-sum game of adversarial litigation and shift from a reactive to a proactive method of endangered species management. Research behind the report proves that energy companies could invest a fraction of the cost of normal litigation up front, eliminating delays in action to protect species and achieve much more favorable outcomes for endangered species. (Not to mention more productive ways plaintiffs could invest the tens of millions they spend every year in litigation in more positive ways, like conservation easements or habitat restoration!) Coupled with common sense solutions, like a Recovering America’s Wildlife Act (RAWA) to empower state wildlife agencies to focus on collaboration rather than litigation, tax incentives and safe harbor provisions for private landowners, and leveraging the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation to scale up private land programs, ConservAmerica believes America First Energy Abundance and recovery of endangered species are not mutually exclusive.

In fact, America First energy policies, heeding ConservAmerica’s recommendations, could launch the most successful era of the Endangered Species Act in history.

Rob Sisson is the President Emeritus of the Michigan-based environmentalist nonprofit ConservAmerica and a member of ACC’s Board of Directors.

A few years ago, my wife and I purchased the forested acreage surrounding my childhood home. Deep in the forest on a hill were two large, rundown trailer campers the previous owner had dragged in there thirty years prior. They were an eyesore and, more importantly, a blight on the landscape full of plastics, chemicals, and stuff that just does not belong in the woods.

We were executing our forest management plan at the time and had hired a logger with a cable skidder to take out some large white pine trees nearing the end of their lives. I griped to our logger about the camper trailers and how I needed to make a plan to get them out of there. He shrugged and said he could drag them out that afternoon with the skidder for free; he liked our vision of the forest and agreed that they didn’t belong. It took him no time at all, and the forest is healthier for his efforts. This was probably one of the first real challenges my wife and I overcame with managing our forest.

When I write about it online though, I inevitably receive a couple of comments stating naively that the project could have been done more sustainably with a couple of draft horses and a sledgehammer. I am always taken aback by these comments, as I imagine the absolute disaster dismantling those campers would have been for the environment; insulation, plastic particles, chemicals, and more would have become part of the ecosystem in my family’s forest forever. It’s hard for my online detractors to imagine, but a few gallons of diesel and one man’s labor were the most environmentally responsible solution here.

Subscribe now

This causes me to reflect, though, on how we live in a moment increasingly animated by the anxious language of limits, where restraint is framed as moral clarity and less is presented as the responsible choice. The story of the skidder is a good parallel to these anxieties, and the naive degrowth-blighted mindset of “just use horses” is alive and well in the form of our reaction to new technologies as they arrive already burdened with suspicion. Artificial intelligence, in particular, is just the latest technology to be treated as a force that will hollow out work, displace judgment, and sever people from meaning before it has even been put to use. This anxiety is treated as wisdom, caution is praised as virtue, and the future is described as something to be managed downward rather than built toward. Luckily, the story and history of rural life in America offers a different inheritance: life in the country and on the frontier has always been shaped by applied ingenuity, faith in improvement, and a durable optimism sharpened by necessity.

As much as we like to romanticize the country idyll, rural life has never been preserved through sentiment. Farmers have always adopted new tools early because efficiency determined survival. Rural communities learned energy, water, and land management through daily use long before these subjects became abstract policy debates or crunchy lifestyle choices. Decisions were shaped by weather, margins, and time rather than theory and capitalism in these places functioned at a human scale. It rewarded innovations that produced results and quietly discarded the tools that failed. Pessimism or rampant anxiety had little purchase because it could not feed a family, power a mill, or carry a community through winter. Rather, progress emerged through trial, use, and retention while improvement was judged by real consequence. Tools spread because they solved problems, saved labor, reduced waste, and increased yield. Markets reinforced this discipline by sustaining those who adapted well and exposing those who did not. Like it or not, conservation and stewardship grew from the same pattern: productive land required care, water required management, soil demanded attention. Abundance followed from continuity, competence, and a willingness to test what was new without surrendering to fear. That inheritance remains instructive today. When unfamiliar tools arrive, the task is neither to romanticize the past nor to panic about the future, but to put them to work under real conditions and let results speak.

Energy follows this same logic. Power was never abstract in rural places. It was tied directly to work, continuity, and endurance. We like to romanticize a pre-electrified time, but when electricity reached farms and small towns, it arrived as relief rather than spectacle. Lights extended the working day, refrigeration stabilized food, motors replaced hours of manual labor, and Communication tightened bonds across distance. Electrification took hold because rural communities wanted it, invested in it, and organized around it, often building systems themselves when distant utilities or centralized efforts saw no profit in serving them; power succeeded where it was durable, affordable, and controlled close to the ground. Electricity was treated as infrastructure meant to last and aid in human flourishing, not a lever for some kind of centralized social planning. That same reasoning still governs how rural communities evaluate energy today. Systems are judged by reliability, cost, and whether they strengthen life over time. Clean energy fits within this tradition when it is developed with attention to place and consequence. Wind, solar, nuclear, storage, efficiency, and modern grid management function as tools within a working system, and adoption only follows performance. We can theorize all we want about the best systems, but at the end of the day, people in the country will look at you with a skeptical eye and say, “show me what it does.”

Modern cultural narratives often mischaracterize this history. Rural America is frequently portrayed as resistant to technological progress or hostile to innovation but truth be told, when our skepticism does justifiably appear, it is always aimed at abstraction rather than advancement. Systems imposed without regard for local conditions and human flourishing invite resistance, while degrowth arguments land poorly in places where survival has always depended on doing better over time. Asking communities to permanently accept less ignores the reality that abundance has historically been built through disciplined expansion and stewardship rather than some kind of centrally-managed scarcity.

Artificial intelligence is worthy of our skepticism but also belongs within this same evaluative tradition. Tractors once raised fears about labor, and electrification reshaped work without erasing it. Each tool extended human capacity while demanding judgment and responsibility. AI holds similar promise in agriculture, energy management, logistics, and land stewardship: predictive tools can reduce waste, precision systems can lower inputs, and smarter infrastructure can improve resilience. None of this means new tools are harmless however. Powerful technologies carry real risks because they amplify human intention, for good and for ill. Artificial intelligence can be used to manipulate, deceive, or centralize control just as machinery once displaced labor and industrial processes scarred landscapes when handled without restraint or virtue. Rural America has never been naïve about power but it has insisted on responsibility, demanded accountability, and corrected course when consequences became clear. The answer has never been paralysis. It has been a disciplined use guided by people who remain morally awake to what their tools can do.

American flourishing depends on recovering this way of thinking. Rural life has always required people to work under uncertainty, refine their methods through repetition, and prepare for futures they cannot fully predict. That habit produces abundance because it treats tomorrow as something worth investing in now. Clean energy, modern agriculture, conservation, and emerging technologies belong within this tradition when they are judged by use, consequence, and durability rather than ideology. What carries forward is not nostalgia but continuity: ingenuity applied where it matters, markets rewarding sound judgment, and optimism practiced through preparation. This is how a future capable of holding more people, more prosperity, and more life is actually built.

Ryan Anderson is the Stakeholder Communications Manager at the American Conservation Coalition (ACC) and the author of Echoes from an Old Hollow Tree. Follow him on X @OldHollowTree.