The Roundup: National Parks, a Grand Canyon Loss, and Illegal Fencing
Some news and reading about the public lands for your Monday morning.
In late 2024, the residents of Mancos, Colorado, tore down miles of illegally constructed barbed wire fencing put up by a religious sect in San Juan National Forest that blocked grazing, recreation, and logging activities. Known as the Free Land Holder Committee led by Patrick Pipkin and Bryan Hammon, the group claimed a tract of land they insisted was sold to an illegitimate government. The federal government sued the group in November 2024. The suit is still ongoing:
A magistrate judge on Thursday recommended a federal judge deny several challenges to the court’s jurisdiction filed by a group facing trespassing claims for their occupation of land in the San Juan National Forest in southwest Colorado.
“The court finds that the United States has alleged facts sufficient to show it owns the land and that Mr. Pipkin and Mr. Hammon violated the Unlawful Inclosures Act,” wrote U.S. Magistrate Judge N. Reid Neureiter in a 10-page report.
Ultimately, Donald Trump-appointed U.S. District Judge Daniel Domenico will decide whether to adopt Neureiter’s recommendation.
Neureiter said he found the defendants' challenges to the court's jurisdiction difficult to untangle from the bible verses and maxims cited in the briefs he interpreted as motions to dismiss.
Ryan Booth, Remembering What the Parks Forgot:
When I began working as an intern and later as a National Park Service ranger in the 1990s, the remnants of this history found in old museum exhibits and other interpretive materials was beginning to disappear. The old line “Indians were here once but have moved on” was on its own journey into oblivion. With the impetus for government-to-government consultation between tribes and the NPS, the agency shifted the official perspective as they listened to the tribes.
Historic lodge destroyed in Grand Canyon blaze:
A raging wildfire near the Grand Canyon in the US has destroyed dozens of buildings - including a historic lodge that was the only accommodation available within the surrounding national park's North Rim.
The fire that destroyed the Grand Canyon Lodge is one of two that has swept across tens of thousands of acres in the area.
The blazes have also forced the closure of the North Rim for the remainder of the 2025 tourist season.
Mass layoffs can move forward, with devastating impacts for conservation and science:
“The Trump administration is pushing fast forward on the extinction crisis,” Noah Greenwald, the Center for Biological Diversity’s endangered species director, said about the plans in May. “If we get rid of the science that shows (environmental) problems, we won’t have to think about it, but that won’t make them go away.”
How conservatives beat back a Republican sell-off of public lands:
To his surprise, Patrick Payne had ended up in a group text with Mike Lee.
Payne is a conservative Idaho outdoorsman who voted for President Donald Trump. Lee is a Republican senator from Utah. The group was organized by an acquaintance Payne made online, and the topic was home schooling.
But Payne saw an opportunity to directly challenge Lee on his proposal to sell up to 3.3 million acres of federal land in 11 Western states for the construction of affordable housing. He texted the senator that Washington was “better than BlackRock,” the global investment firm. Lee’s response — that he’d “trust anyone owning that land more than the U.S. government” — floored Payne. Several days later, he posted a screenshot of the exchange on X.
“I thought it was important to let people know where he really stood,” said Payne, who spends much of his free time camping and hunting on federal backcountry in Idaho.
Trump pitches public lands commission, higher entry fees for foreign visitors:
One day before signing his “One Big Beautiful Bill,” which contains a handful of measures boosting resource extraction and impacting national park funding, President Donald Trump signed two public lands-oriented executive orders.
One order would increase entry fees for foreign visitors to national parks, a move proposed last month by the Department of the Interior. The other would establish a “Make America Beautiful Again” commission to advise Trump on how to “responsibly conserve” America’s natural resources.
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The ”One Big Beautiful Bill” orders the U.S. Forest Service to increase logging, calls for more drilling in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge, requires quarterly lease sales for onshore oil and gas, and rescinds a moratorium on new coal leasing. It also rescinds about $300 million in Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act funding for National Park Service and Bureau of Land Management conservation projects and staffing. The bill does, however, appropriate $150 million to the Park Service for next year’s celebration of the nation’s 250th anniversary.
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They also come a week after the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced the end of the Roadless Rule, a Clinton-era law that prohibited road construction and timber harvest on 58.5 million acres of federal lands.