Speaker 1 0:01 Hi, I'm Alejandro jaquero from silts, Colorado, and you're listening to the wild idea. Bill Hodge 0:08 Welcome to another conversation for a wild and connected world what we call the wild idea Podcast. I'm Bill Hodge, and along with my co host, Anders Reynolds, we bring a passion for and a history of working for wild places, and here we're exploring the ideas at the intersection of wild nature and human nature. And we're starting off 2026 with a month long dive into some of America's most at risk, wild lands, our system of roadless acres, administratively protected by what is called the roadless rule. And if I can channel the talking heads, you may ask yourself, what is the roadless rule? Well, the roadless rule is policy as established by the United States Forest Service 25 years ago, in 2001 as a way to recognize there are roadless acres managed by the United States Forest Service that maybe need to be left alone. Maybe we don't need to punch more roads when we already couldn't maintain the road system we have. So way back in June of last year, we had an incredibly important conversation with Chris Wood, one of the primary architects of the roadless rule, which is celebrating, as I said, 25 years this month of protecting some pretty spectacular landscapes and critically important ecosystems. Anders Reynolds 1:27 Yeah, Bill June was an important month for the roadless rule, because it was then that the Secretary of Agriculture, Brooke Rollins, announced that the Trump administration had an intention to rescind the roadless rule, which, as you mentioned, is an incredibly powerful and popular tool, first implemented in 2001 and it's still preserving watersheds and backcountry experiences today. You know, you may not even know if you're listening to this, you've been in a roadless area, and that's part of the problem, and it's what Bill and I hope to combat with a month long tour of the roadless rule and the landscapes it protects. But first to level set, we thought we'd offer an edited, clean version of an earlier conversation we had, what Bill calls a remaster, but what I call a remix with Chris Wood, a co author of the original rule, and one of its preeminent defenders today in his role as president and CEO of trout, unlimited. Speaker 2 2:22 Throughout this month, we're going to want to hear from you. So please, if you have questions or some of your own personal experiences in roadless areas, we'd love to hear from you. Please visit the wild idea.com and you can contact us through our contact us tab. But we hope that you enjoy this conversation we had last year with Chris Wood. We're really excited today to welcome Chris Wood, who is the president and chief executive officer at Trout Unlimited, to our podcast. But before coming to Trout Unlimited, he was a Senior Policy and Communications advisor to the Chief of the Forest Service, where he played a pretty instrumental role and what we're going to talk about today, which is the roadless rule, and why the roadless rule has been in the news this week, and why we thought it was important to have this conversation, because it is probably in jeopardy, as it has been in multiple iterations over the last 24 years, but maybe more so than ever. So Chris, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for joining us today. Chris Wood 3:23 Thanks guys. It's a it's an honor to be here. Speaker 2 3:26 So Chris, we turned around and scheduled this conversation in the in the release of this episode pretty damn quick after sort of picking myself up off the floor when I read Secretary Brooke Rollins announcement of the Department of Agriculture's plan to resend the long established roundless rule from the Forest Service. My first thought was, we have to raise the awareness and rally the troops. What was your What was your gut reaction when you first heard it? I mean, we kind of thought something might be coming, but sort of, what? How did it hit you out of the gate? Chris Wood 3:57 Yeah, you know, Bill, it's such a good question, you know, I had, I had heard it was coming for a couple of weeks, but I almost went through this, you know, suspension of my disbelief, just because it's, we're not talking about the same forest service that we were 25 a quarter century ago, when we promulgated the roadless rule. You know, back then. You know, the history. This is a long winded way of getting to your answer. But from 1960 to 1989 the Forest Service cut anywhere from nine to 12 billion board feet of timber a year. It was their reason for being and and the reality is that the way they paid for a lot of their biologists and archeologists and all the you know, the soft sciences that weren't involved in engineering roads and cutting trees was through that, through receipts from timber sales. So the whole thing was dependent on this edifice of building roads and cutting trees, generating revenues to then pay for all these things that we like, and that all came crashing down in 1990 90 with the spotted owl decision out of the Pacific Northwest. And then from 1990 to, basically 97 when Mike dombec became chief, the Forest Service was in this very strange period of transition where they were cutting, you know, between, you know, three to 4 billion board feet, so in order of magnitude less, you know, four times less than they had been cutting, and they were really casting about for a new direction, and I think the roadless rule put them on that new path. And the agency today is not the same agency it was 25 years ago. There were a lot of people back when we promulgated the roadless rule that they wanted to return to the bad old days of being able to pump roads into these back high elevation, back country areas with erosive soils, and, you know, go in there and get the cut out and bring it to market. But those people are long gone, and the strongest advocates today for back country protection in America work for the Forest Service. It's a completely different organization than it was a quarter a century ago. And so the secretary described the roadless rule as, you know, a relic of the past. But in reality, the anachronistic thinking is the notion that the Forest Service wants to go in and invade these pristine back country, roadless areas that are so important as sources of drinking water, there's nothing more important in terms of native trout than these back country areas. They all of our native trout assemblages that are left in the West. All of them depend on roadless or wilderness areas to some extent. And there's some of they have the longest center fire rifle seasons in the West, you have your best opportunities for big game, you know, in these back country roadless areas. So, you know, I, I think, because I knew it was coming, and because I live in DC, you know you're, you know you're, nothing comes as a surprise, really, but my, my hope is after the, you know, sort of picking myself up off the ground, my hope is that the country has changed, and, more importantly, the Forest Service has changed from where they were a quarter century ago. And give I said this when this came out, Gifford Pinchot once famously, it's, it's funny, what he did was he he wrote something for the secretary of agriculture by way of instruction from the Secretary to Gifford Pinchot. So Pinchot wrote the direction that the Secretary, Secretary Wilson gave to him. And what he wrote was, conservation can be defined as the application of common sense to common problems for the common good. And my hope is that when we go through this rule making process that we have to go through to undo the protections of the roadless rule, common sense will prevail, and as Gifford Pinchot would say, and we will not give up protections of these places that help to define America. Speaker 2 8:08 Well, but well, well put I, you know, you were there at the beginning. You just sort of gave a precursor to the question I wanted to ask you, which is like, what, you know, the agency had evolved, either by force or by by other forces, to the point where these places were not candidates for for getting the cut out, as they say. But I'm wondering for our audience members who maybe don't know what it is you were there at the beginning. Some might even call you the godfather of the roadless rule for our audience, how about a quick summary of what the rule is and the history of the rule? Because if I go back and I look at the history of since it was first rolled out, there have been milestones multiple times, almost every year, major milestones, maybe once every year or two. But could you give our audience a summary of what the rule is and sort of the history since that time. I know it's asking a lot, Chris Wood 9:05 but no, no bill, it's it's the right question. I mean, it's a very the rule itself is like a page and a half. It's got a preamble of hundreds of pages. But the rule itself is very simple. It basically says that the Forest Service will no longer build roads in about 58 and a half million acres of these back country roadless areas. These are lands that were identified through without getting into the, you know, archaic process, or the arcane process. They were defined through these two processes that the agency went through in the 70s called Rare rare one and rare two, where they basically identified lands that were eligible for wilderness for Congress to designate, because only Congress can designate wilderness, as you guys know. And so these were what were left of those lands, the rare two lands that typically they're 5000 Acres or larger, at least in the West, they are. They're smaller in the East and in some cases, but you know, they're they don't have roads. They don't have a lot of development because they don't have roads. And you know, they're in relatively good shape compared to the rest of the landscape. It The rule also said that timber, commercial timber sales would be prohibited in those areas, except to accommodate valid existing rights. And one of the other exceptions, which is really noteworthy here, because I think it undermines the entire rationale for eviscerating the rule to begin with, if you needed to do forest health treatments that would help to ameliorate the effects of wildfires. That was one of the other exceptions that were noted in the rule. It's spelled out in black and white. And so that was basically the background, the that's or that's not the that's not the background, but that's what the rule does. And and this wasn't some idea that, you know, sprung out of our head, like, you know, Athena from the head of Zeus. This had been a long time coming since, you know, the early 80s. These so called roadless areas were the sources of the bitterest, most contentious timber sale proposals in the country. They were all held up in court. The Forest Service had this huge backlog because they, you know, kept trying to get into these places that people didn't want them to get into. And, you know, the agency effectively cut the face of the National Forest. They took all the easy stuff, you know, from the 60s into the early 90s. And so they, you know, they were trying to get back into those backcountry areas where you have these higher elevations, where, when you build roads in high elevation areas, you dramatically increase the risk of erosion. And in a lot of these places, like the Idaho batholith, you're talking about, these highly erosive granitic soils that, you know, you pump a road through there, and the road has a tendency to want to fall off the mountainside. And what's down below the mountainside, well, a river, and so these had become incredibly controversial, and the entire agency was getting wrapped around the axle, but we weren't able to do anything because of the controversies over these roadless areas. And compounding all that was the fact that we had a eight and a half billion with a B, A, eight and a half billion dollar backlog on our 386,000 mile road system. That's how many miles were on the national forests at the time. And so, you know, we were kind of governed by, you know, we called it the rule of holes. And the rule of holes is simply, when you dig a hole that's so deep that it's over your head. Put the shovel down. Stop digging. Because, you know, the agency just kept, you know, we just kept going after these, these roadless areas, and people were making it clearer and clearer that. And then, then the the timber values were low and the expense was really high. So you've got high expense to get in there. Low value wood fiber hugely controversial, and so the roadless rule was basically born out of the necessity of trying to bring some order. It was two things, really. It was re establishing the conservation leadership of the Forest Service, and it was trying to move the agency beyond this incredibly contentious period from the early 80s through the 90s that basically had tied the Forest Service up in knots. The Forest Service went from being, you know, an agency that people wrote books about because of the fabled esprit de corps and the high morale of the agency to the fact that they had some of the lowest morale in the federal government. And what, what, what I think the roadless rule did was it said, No, we're not a bunch of nameless, faceless bureaucrats. We are conservation leaders, and we the Forest Service, believe that these places are some of the most important fish and wildlife habitat and sources of drinking water in America, and we will protect them. We don't need to be told by anybody to do it. We're going to do it because we think it's the right thing Anders Reynolds 14:12 to do. I love all this background because I'm someone who's grown up with the roadless rule, who almost takes it for granted. You know, for decades, the roadless rule has protected some of the hidden gems of the federal estate, and I'm not sure many people even know about them. You know, these are some of the last wild landscapes in America, forests where Grizzlies still roam, and waters where wild salmon still run. As you mentioned, these are places where your neighbors hike, hunt, paddling, fish, where veterans go to heel, where kids learn the meaning of awe and risk. They're absolutely priceless. So of course, this administration wants to put a price tag on them. And Chris, you mentioned the ground on which Secretary Rollins. They doubt the argument about which they're going to try to sell this rescission to the public, namely, that it's necessary for wildfire mitigation. I'd respond to anybody saying that by saying I actually agree with folks who want to see responsible removal of timber for fire prevention. In fact, the robust rule allows exceptions for that. As you mentioned, this rule doesn't prevent timbering. What it does is prevent timbering everywhere endlessly until we don't have any places left for back country recreation. But I guess my question to you is, is that an argument that can win, or is there a better counter pitch that folks can use? Chris Wood 15:38 Well, I mean, this is, this is one of the sources of my frustration. I mean, look, if the Forest Service had come out and said the roadless rule is nearly a quarter of a century old, you know when, when that rule was, when we developed that rule, I had a full head of brown curly hair, you know. So it's 25 years old, almost. There's been a lot of advances in science. The agency has pioneered new and different techniques for keeping communities safe. We know a lot more about managing risk and and how to keep watersheds intact. And so we want to revisit the rule with the goal of leveraging what we've learned over the past quarter century to increase or improve the protection of these backcountry areas for all the reasons that you stated. Andrews and many more. Trout Unlimited. Chris Wood, we would be on board with that. Okay, let's have that conversation. That's a good conversation. That's that's a noble objective of public policy. We should always try to use new information to make better decisions, so that, you know, in my case, it's my kids, and someday I hope, if I have grandkids, my grandkids, that they'll be able to enjoy those lands as well. But even if it's not about your kids, we should be willing to take new information to try to make better decisions, because we're optimists, and we believe that there will be successive generations after us, and we want to leave the world a better place for them. I mean, that's you don't have to be a dad to feel that way. It's just, you just have to believe in, you know, this enterprise of being human and trying to pass it on for other people. And so we would have been just fine with that. We would have been a fulsome participant in that process. We're still going to be a fulsome participant in this process, but, but that's not what they did. Instead, they came out and they said, this thing is a walking anachronism. And you know, you know, we got to get back in there. And if it's not about getting the cut out, it's about forest health treatments, and it's about fire risk. And again, we're all for that. We're all about healthy forests and we're all about minimizing risks to fires. The thing I would say is that, you know, 90% of the fire ignitions that threaten communities happen in forests adjacent to those communities. And by definition, roadless areas are typically, not always, but typically not adjacent to communities. So let's focus on those places that actually threaten the communities you know and and if there are roadless areas that are adjacent to communities that do need to be thinned. Well, let's look at the language of the rule, and if it's not flexible enough, let's to allow those treatments to occur. Let's talk about that. But unfortunately, that's not what they're doing, and I, I do think this is going to it's going to burn a lot of capital. The Forest Service has a lot on their plate right now. I can tell you from experience, rule makings are not easy. They take a lot of time and a lot of money and a lot of energy, and right now, the Forest Service would be much better spent helping to you know, use that time, use those resources, to actually work on communities that are at risk of fire, to work on forests that are adjacent to those communities to work on, you know, dealing with their decaying trail system and their, you know, backlog on deferred maintenance, on their recreation system, sites all across the National Forest System, there's just, you know, and the other thing, I mean, not, not to, I don't want to get political here, but I mean, we've Lost, there's a huge amount of brain drain that's occurred at the Forest Service in the past year. Really, really good people have either left or been forced out. And I just, I mean, I think this is the wrong rule at the wrong time for the Forest Service. Anders Reynolds 19:36 So I want to dig into something you mentioned about fire mitigation just a little bit more. A recent guest that Bill and I had on the podcast, Dr Andy serieta, really challenged us to consider just how devastating roads are for forest ecology, and it's an argument I've encountered in a book by one of his colleagues, Ben Goldfarb, who wrote the book crossing. Yes, and it sort of reveals something illogical about Secretary rollins's announcement. Namely, you can claim that we need more roads to better mitigate fire, but the truth is that the vast majority of fires occur near roads. So I wonder if you could talk about that. Chris Wood 20:16 You just, you just did. You just, you just did. I mean, what do fire ignitions across the National Forest System have in common the proximity to roads, because most fires are started by people. Now that doesn't mean that there aren't wilderness you know, there aren't fires that start from lightning strikes in wilderness areas or roadless areas, and that's going to happen because it's happened since there were forests. Fire is a natural part of these systems. What's not natural is that we've allowed these human communities to be built up in these fire prone areas. They're going to burn. They're going to burn one way or the other. And the question is, if we're not willing to, and I know we're not, if we're not willing to have zoning that discourages people from building in areas that we know will burn, well then we need to really be aggressive about treating those forests adjacent to those communities and to take steps in the communities themselves to make those homes and properties more fireproof. That's where the emphasis of the Forest Service should be, not in looking at these back country areas, you know, places like, you know, you know, I think about a trip I took not long ago in the Bob Marshall we which is surrounded by a series of roadless areas. And, you know, we're catching west slope cutthroat trout. We were off the South Fork of the Flathead and bull trout. And you know, it's all that pristine landscape that makes that fishing and recreation opportunity possible. It's also a system that you can see the effects of historic fires in there. And it's not a bad thing to have landscapes like that that we allow to sort of evolve as they would not in a natural setting without us having come in and built a bunch of roads and built a bunch of homes your guest previously was exactly right. Roads are a scourge. I mean, they're vectors for invasive species. They they cause erosion, they're expensive to maintain in these harsh environments that you know. It's almost like, you know, a for a high elevation forested system, which is what a lot of our national forests are. They don't want a road like they. They sort of defy roads. And we, we, because we can't help ourselves. We put roads into those places, and there are a lot of human benefits that we get out of them, obviously, right? You know? We, we, we drove to a trailhead before we went into the Bob Marshall the trailhead was probably an old logging road. It's probably a landing for an old logging operation. But I think one of the, one of the things that separates humans from the rest of you know the animal kingdom is that we have the ability to say, No, right? We're, you know, we're not a wolf that's going to take down, you know, a white tailed deer and eat the entire deer and then have to go lay down for four days because we've just gorged ourselves. We have the ability to say, You know what, there are some landscapes that we're just going to leave intact. And one of the things that I think is uniquely American is when you look out across other countries, almost every other country, they all have incredible hallmarks that distinguish their civilizations. But what we have is this national network of public lands, and many of them are either in wilderness or they're roadless. And you know, those are the landscapes that are quite literally the anvil upon which the character of the nation was hammered out as we migrated West, and we should leave those places intact, we should have the temerity and the wisdom to simply say we can leave those Speaker 2 24:11 so I want to talk about actually rule making itself. Obviously, it's not the same as legislation. What is your particularly with what we're probably about to go through with their decision to rescind the roadless rule. What is your view on the durability of rules and rule making? Chris Wood 24:29 Well, I mean, they're pretty durable. You know, the roadless rule has been intact, you know, for 24 years through boy, at least 15 different, you know, legal attacks. I remember, you know, when we sort of came up with this hairy idea of like, well, why are we building roads and roadless areas? Like, should we do that anymore? Does that make sense as a nation? Does it make sense for us to do that? And we sort of came to the conclusion, well, not. Really, it doesn't actually, when you think about it, for all the reasons, all the social, economic, social reasons, the economic reasons, the other things we talked about earlier and early on, I was one of the voices who said, well, let's just have the chief come out with a policy that says we're not doing that anymore, right? He's the Forest Service is a really funny. They're a really funny agency. They they call the CEO of the agency, the chief. It's very unique among government agencies, and I know of one other agency that does that, and and the chief has this sort of, you know, it's fabled status. And you know, the lawyers convinced me, well, we could do that. We could do it tomorrow. You could probably go home and write up the policy tonight, but it could be overturned by the next chief with another letter. And if you want to make this durable, you need to make it into a we need to do a regulation. We need to do a rulemaking, because you have to follow the something called the Administrative Procedures Act with you have to follow something called the National Environmental Policy Act, which these these laws that require notice and comment so that the three of us can make our voices heard. Americans around the country can make their voices heard. You know, when they did, we did the initial roadless rule, we had 1.8 million Americans engage in that rulemaking, 97% 97% of whom said it's the single largest engagement we've ever had in rulemaking. And 97% said, protect these areas. So you've got to go through that process. Then you have to actually go through and the government has an obligation, a legal obligation, to analyze the effects of their actions in a public forum so that we can, you know, see them and question their analysis. And that's the beauty of a rulemaking. You can't this isn't a willy nilly stroke of a pen kind of thing. You know, they have to go through a very disciplined and orderly process to rescind the roadless rule. And as I said earlier, I mean, the Forest Service is full of good, great government employees, but I don't know that they, that the agency itself, has the stomach for this. I don't, I don't, I don't see, based on the people that we work with, you know, a big sentiment to want to return to the 60s and the 70s where, you know, it's, you know, run and gun forestry, you know, let's just get in there and pump those roads into those high elevation areas and the fish be damned. I just that that Forest Service is long gone. Anders Reynolds 27:45 I want to ask you about that, Chris. I want to ask you about what happens after any rescission might be made official. So you know, projects in areas previously protected by the roadless rule in that case would still undergo case by case scrutiny under the National Environmental Policy Act, although I guess the Trump administration has taken steps to streamline NEPA and scale back those reviews that'll all be further informed by all the typical challenges that face any Forest Service, lodging project, limited staffing, ever more limited staffing again, thanks to Trump complexities of environmental review, unpredictability of timber markets, all that stuff. I guess this is a leading question, but do those legal benchmarks offer opportunities for resistance, or is this all about the politics? Is this all about creating a political cost that is impossible for this administration and its allies in Congress to pay, and if so, what role does something like the recently introduced roadless area Conservation Act play in that? Chris Wood 28:53 You know, I think the answer is both right. I think it's both the politics and and the process. I mean, so just to answer your process question first, because I was uncertain about this. So in the intervening 24 years, all of these forest plans. So each National Forest has a forest plan, a Land and Resource Management Plan, they're called, that govern how that forest is managed for a 10 to 15 year period. And and those are all developed under the same process that we talked about, the rule making process. There's notice and comment, there's environmental analysis, etc. Since the roadless rule was promulgated back in 2001 all the forest plans across the National Forest System have been amended to comply with the roadless rule. And so what will have to happen is they will have to rescind the roadless rules. So you got the forest plans down here? I guess we're you guys can see me, but our listeners may not be able to. You've got, you know, the base on the base of the edifice are the forest plans above the forest plans are this just. To torture this analogy is this roof of the roadless area conservation rule of 2001 if they take away the roadless area conservation rule, which is what they're proposing to do. All of those forest plans still have to be amended again now to allow for road construction in roadless areas. Anders Reynolds 30:20 And famously, that's very, very easy to do. Chris Wood 30:24 Exactly I will say this, Woe to the forest supervisor who chooses to say, Oh, the gloves are off. I'm going to now amend my forest plan to allow for unfettered access into roadless areas. You know what? That ain't gonna happen. It's just not gonna happen. Those people are long gone. Those forest supervisors aren't in the agency any longer. Now, I'm not suggesting that there won't be some, you know, I wouldn't be surprised if the hands some of these good public servants are forced and, you know, they're made to do things they otherwise probably wouldn't do, but left to their own volition. I think most forest supervisors, the ones who are in charge of those forest plans that create the base they're going to say, All right, well, I don't want to do that. I don't want to go through the heartache of and the legal risk and the cost and create all this rancor in my community to open up some low value timber in these back country areas that are really important to my constituents. I just don't think that's going to be a priority for most forest supervisors. I really don't now that doesn't mean that we shouldn't take this effort to rescind the roadless rule very seriously. We should, because it's, you know, not. I mean, I have to be careful here because, you know, I don't want to sound like I'm just a Homer, but you can make an argument that that's one of the most significant conservation achievements in the past 100 years. In this country, we protected 58 and a half million acres of, you know, a forest that are literally the best fish and wildlife habitat in the country, some some of the finest Fishing and hunting in the country. So if you're a sportsman or woman and you're not thinking that I'm going to get personally involved in the development of this rule and make sure that those places are defended, you're missing the boat. Now there may be that you know. You may be lucky to be one of the wealthy ones who can afford to hunt on private land, or afford to fish on private land, but for those of us, who you know, for those of us, for most of us, the public lands are the most land we'll ever own. It's the only land will ever own. And I think those of us who are in that camp who can't afford to fish and hunt on private lands, and we need those public lands, not just for fishing and hunting, but for places to take our family, for for for solace, for places to find solace and marvel at the wonder of God's creation, get involved. Don't sit this one out. Anders Reynolds 33:02 That is a fantastic call to action. Chris, and you know, for our listeners who haven't heard our episode with Randy Newberg, he talks a lot about that, about public lands, ownership and access. And I would encourage folks to check that out if they haven't yet. Yeah. Speaker 2 33:16 And I would add, and I'm curious your response to this, Chris, it is not just a chance and a moment for resistance. It is a chance to help people engage in how to make situations better, right? You illustrated earlier, frankly, that, yes, most of these roadless acres are out up in the high elevation areas, not adjacent to communities. But there are exceptions to that. I worked on that in the community of Lincoln, Montana, we have a couple of roadless areas west of Lincoln that are full of a lot of dead and diseased lodgepole and honestly, what we can do is remind the agency the tools to have within the framework of the roadless rule. This seems like a moment to do that, because the work we were doing within the community there was to say, Yeah, we all agree those would be problematic areas to go up in flames on the wrong day, because it puts the community at risk. But we have the bandwidth within, within the roadless rule, to do that work, and we were going to codify it, and still working to codify it in legislation, and working with the delegation here in Montana. But so it's not we're not just always asking people, Oh, you just have to jump up and say, No, you can jump up and say, this is working. Here's how we want to see you implement it better. Is that right? Chris, do you think I'm right in thinking about it that way? I think Chris Wood 34:37 you're 1,000% right. I mean, and lodgepole is a tough one too, because you know, the way lodgepole evolves in nature is that there's catastrophic fires that burn into the ground every 75 years. But when you're in a place like Lincoln, yeah, you've got to go out there and treat that lodgepole, because you can't wait for a catastrophic fire to come through. And the agency does, in fact, have the tools to go in and treat those landscapes. They absolutely. Do. They don't require roads anymore. This is in the 1950s but they have feller bunchers that can creep around in there and, you know, create small, clear cuts that would replicate what a fire would do. So absolutely, Bill, you're totally on the right path there. But the one thing I wanted to say, you know, I've heard now a couple times the word resistance come up, and I balk at that just a little bit, and I'll tell you why. You know, the fact is that conservation is a really, really long game. And, you know, it's, it's, I loved starting my career. It was kind of at the beginning of my career, and I loved being able to cut my teeth on the roadless rule. Because, you know, I was a wide receiver in college, and, you know, it felt like a long ball. You know, it's like, you know, go deep, 58 and a half million acres, boom, you know. But what I've learned in the intervening years is that doesn't, that's not really how it works. You know, typically it's, it takes time, and it takes patience, it takes building relationships. And, you know, I look at this as less about resistance than I do democracy in action. Because, you know, I think it's easy, over like, a 24 year period, to sort of take for granted the roadless rule, right? Like Andrews, you were saying you grew up with this. It was part of the rubric of your it was in the background of your life. You just knew that you could go to these areas and you wouldn't see, you know, tags on the landscape indicating a road was going to be put there, or paint on trees, indicating those trees are going to be cut. You knew that those were intact systems that you could hike and fish and hunt in. Well, you know, it's kind of like, I'm torn right now between using an analogy about like clay being fired to be made into something beautiful, or watering a garden, but every once in a while, it's like we need to have our assumptions challenged. And my hope is that this, this will be an opportunity to sort of reawaken America to how important these back country areas are, and how important it is to make your individual voice heard because, you know, I don't, I'm really trying to avoid being political. And you know the difference between us and England. Back in the day the common the commons were known as the king's land. These aren't the king's lands. These are our lands, and we get to tell the people who manage these lands for us how we want them managed. And so, if nothing else, I think this gives us a chance to remember that and to make our voices heard again, not in a in a form of resistance, but in a form of in an optimistic way that demonstrates as I to go back to what we started the conversation with it, we have confidence that our way of life will continue and that it will, it will pass on to those who we know will follow because we've made prudent decisions that have kept intact resources that will sustain the people who follow us. Speaker 2 38:01 I can't think of a better way to wrap that up. That was like putting the perfect bow on the conversation. So Chris, we'll wrap it up there. But again, we've been talking to Chris Wood, who is the president and CEO of Trout Unlimited, and as I said, unofficial title for some, the godfather of the roadless role. So what a perfect guest. So Chris, thanks for joining us. This has been fantastic. Chris, thanks Anders Reynolds 38:25 so much. We really appreciate this. Chris Wood 38:27 Yeah, thanks. Bill, thanks. Andrews, I appreciate being on with you guys. Bill Hodge 38:31 We hope you've taken something from this conversation with Chris and that you'll join us throughout the month as we visit with local voices for critical roadless landscapes on the wild idea podcast, we will be hearing about the landscapes protected through the roadless rule, the communities that are grounded in those landscapes. And we'll have a chance for you to ask questions and share your thoughts. It is going to be a month that takes us from the South to the largest intact rainforest in North America, to the ancestral lands of the Blackfeet and the birthplace of the wilderness idea Tehila in New Mexico. If you like the wild idea, we hope you'll subscribe, give us a review on your favorite podcast app, and we hope you'll take a minute to recommend Anders Reynolds 39:09 this to a friend. But most importantly, we want to hear from you. Go to our website, the wild idea.com, and use the contact us form to share your stories about roadless areas, or to ask questions about what comes next in the effort to defend them, or just to share any embarrassing stories you have about Bill whether or not they even happened in a roadless area. Y'all, we're so thankful to you. Thanks for listening. We really hope you enjoy roadless month on the wild idea. Announcer 39:40 The wild idea is a production of wild idea media and hosted by Bill Hodge and Anders Reynolds. Production and editing by Bren Russell at podlad Digital, support by Holly wilkeshevsky at daypack digital. Our theme music Spring Hill Jack is from railroad Earth and was composed by John skihan, our executive producer and. Ringleader is Laura Hodge. You can find the wild idea wherever you listen to or download your favorite podcast. If you have a minute, please take a minute to give us a rating, and if you really like us, we hope you'll subscribe. Learn more about us at the wild idea.com you. Transcribed by https://otter.ai