That experience led me to understand that the current Trump administration’s unpopular plan to move the U.S. Forest Service headquarters will be every bit as destructive. It will hurt forests, wildlife and communities that rely upon our public lands and waters.

In 2020, almost 90% of the BLM employees ordered to move West chose not to, forcing them out the door. With those seasoned employees went years of wisdom and knowledge of how things are supposed to work, of how to deliver for the American people. 

Today’s Forest Service plan goes farther, aiming to close regional offices and shutter dozens of the agency’s research centers, as we face what some say will be a horrific wildfire season.  

The Forest Service and the BLM combined manage 20% of our country’s lands and waters. These public lands, the places we camp, hike, watch birds, hunt and simply wander in nature, are truly one of America’s best ideas. For Westerners, they are a deep part of our identity.

There is a reason Forest Service headquarters are based in Washington, DC. It’s where our nation’s leaders work. Believe me, I did not want to move to the capital from my home in Montana to run the BLM, but to be able to fight for Western people and places, I had to go to the seat of our nation’s power. 

I was often in the Interior Secretary’s offices. I frequently walked to work with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service director, talking through thorny problems such as how to protect wildlife while permitting transmission lines. Washington is where people manage relationships with Congress, where budgets get made.

The administration says all their changes are about bringing leadership closer to where the work happens. That’s a political talking point, and it’s false.

If DOGE’s dismantling of government agencies last year provides any lesson, then cruelty and disruption are the real point. These changes aim to create chaos, deliver the administration’s stated goal of traumatizing employees, and imperil the very existence of public lands — lands that belong to all Americans. We improve the management of our forests by giving foresters the resources they need and letting them make decisions based on sound science and collaboration, not by gutting their agency.  

Over the course of the last year, the Forest Service forced or coerced roughly a quarter of its approximately 30,000 employees to leave. In this latest round of engineered chaos, thousands of people will be reassigned and ordered to move. If BLM history is any guide, almost all will leave their positions rather than uproot their families. The agency could soon be left with roughly half its former ranks. 

Think of your job. Now, think of half of your colleagues gone. Would your organization be able to recover from the loss and demoralization to do its work? 

There are inevitable repercussions to this radical attack on our public land management agencies: Campgrounds will close. Trails won’t be maintained. High fuel loads near communities will go unaddressed. Wildfires will become even harder to fight. More sawmills will close. The health of our land, waters and wildlife will decline. With things going wrong on the ground, some will demand that these lands be transferred to states or sold to private industry.  

That’s exactly what the people in power today want. The choice of Utah for the Forest Service headquarters—home to Senator Mike Lee, who leads the charge on public land selloff, as well as to the state that is suing to try to take over millions of your public lands—reveals the administration’s true agenda.

The inevitable does not need to happen. There is one power to stop our public lands from being mismanaged to the point of selloff: It’s the outrage of the American people.

Americans overwhelmingly support public lands and want future generations to enjoy the freedoms found in them. Our public forests, rivers and deserts deserve to be treated better, and the federal land managers who work tirelessly deserve better. It’s up to us to demand it.  

Tracy Stone-Manning is president of The Wilderness Society and a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West.

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Maloy has long criticized this southern Utah national monument that was halved by President Trump during his first term, then restored under President Biden. One million awestruck visitors come here every year and spend money in the two Utah counties surrounding the monument, whose towns total less than 14,000 residents. Yet Maloy discounts data showing the economic value of preserved public lands. She neglects the world-class scientific value of these 1.9 million acres, detailed in Biden’s proclamation.

Rep. Maloy’s attack is wily. She and the rest of the congressional delegation know there’s too much public support to ask President Trump to again chop down the monument’s size. Nearly 3 out of 4 Utah voters are on record as wanting to keep Grand Staircase-Escalante protected as a national monument.

So Utah politicians are betting the public won’t pay as much attention to management retrenchment as they would to downsizing. They’re using a controversial tactic to force the Bureau of Land Management to abandon the current Resource Management Plan—a blueprint for how the BLM puts the presidential proclamation into effect on the ground.

But monument supporters are paying attention because management plans matter.

After President Biden restored the boundaries of Grand Staircase in 2021, the BLM worked with the public for two years to create the 2025 Resource Management Plan, listening to every conceivable collaborative partner. Such plans guide decision-making for years, and this true compromise keeps ranchers’ grazing permits in place while also factoring in a warming planet, persistent drought, the need for biodiversity and a sustainable future.

Now, Rep. Maloy has obtained an opinion from the Government Accountability Office to treat the 2025 plan merely as a “rule” that Congress can overturn. This unprecedented allowance can’t be challenged in court and permits the Utah delegation to use the Congressional Review Act to kill the conservation-based plan and bar the agency from issuing any “substantially the same” plan in the future. The Trump-era plan that would take its place leaves much of the monument unprotected from extractive industry and off-road vehicles.

Maloy says that emphasizing conservation “undercuts rural economic development.” Frrom 2001 to 2022, however, real per capita income grew by 41 percent in the monument’s counties.

She says that local residents and “trail users” oppose the Biden plan. This is cherry-picking. Motorized trail users always want greater access, even though the Biden-era plan left more than 800 miles of dirt roads and trails open for motorized vehicles.

When Maloy talks about “deep cultural traditions” being disrupted by the current management plan, she isn’t listening to Indigenous people who have made this place their home since time immemorial. The six Native Nations of the Grand-Staircase Escalante Inter-Tribal Coalition oppose her move, noting that without the “clear roadmap for protection and conservation” provided by the current management plan, “our ancestral lands and … cultural sites within the monument would be at greater risk of looting, vandalism, graffiti, and degradation.”

To support their attacks, Utah’s politicians use their timeworn template to argue exclusively for “the needs and voices of the people who live and work on this land.” These politicians, however, listen only to county commissioners and legacy ranchers, not to a much broader constituency.

This is Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, not Grand Staircase County Park. The environmental, scientific, interpretive, and Indigenous values and potential of these public lands have national and international importance.

This new attack on Grand Staircase-Escalante from Congress—along with a parallel attack on Minnesota’s Boundary Waters—would set a national precedent with no public input that could upend public lands protection for years. Even the deeply conservative Mountain States Legal Foundation said it fears a “Wild West” for land-use planning if Congress acts on Maloy’s radical approach.

The exhausting years-long battle to protect the resources and restorative magic of Grand Staircase-Escalante can wear out supporters. But this place gives us no choice but to speak up once again. Staying silent puts federal agencies in an impossible position and places all of our public lands at risk. Let your members of Congress know that preservation of the monument requires leaving the current resource management plan in place.

Stephen Trimble is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. He’s been hiking in Grand Staircase and writing about Colorado Plateau conservation for 50 years.

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Writer Stephen Trimble called it a “Valentine’s Day Massacre” after 2,300 employees of the Department of the Interior were summarily fired, leaving the National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management, Geological Survey and several other agencies short-staffed. Eventually, the Forest Service lost nearly one-quarter of its workers.

Many rural communities reacted with shock as unemployed workers faced the sudden loss of income and benefits. Visitors were unhappy about the loss of skilled rangers and inadequate maintenance of trails and bathrooms.

As former firefighter Riva Duncan put it, the mass firings cut the muscle of the workforce, not the fat. “Cost-cutters have no idea how government works or who does what,” she said. Probationary workers, for example, were not on probation for poor performance; rather, they were simply new to their job, which might have even been a promotion.

Duncan said one fired staffer told her she was outraged by the wording of her termination, as every performance rating she’d received as a ranger on Oregon’s Deschutes National Forest was “excellent.” This was her cursory dismissal: “The agency finds, based on your performance, that you have not demonstrated your further employment would be in the public interest.” She had been making $19.10 an hour.

Stephen Trimble uncovered a threat to national parks in Utah as the administration solicited bids for coal leasing on 48,000 of BLM land, much of it on and near the boundaries of national parks such as Capitol Reef, Zion and Bryce Canyon. This made little sense, he wrote, because mining would harm the vistas of these magnificent places that attract millions of people every year. The move was part of the administration’s intent to pursue “energy dominance” on public land.

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum’s directive to all national parks to restore “truth and sanity” to the nation’s history drew scorn from writer Ernie Atencio. He noted that history wasn’t meant to accentuate the positive, it was to describe what happened no matter how dark. The signs that went up at public lands urged visitors to report unpatriotic materials that “fail to emphasize the country’s grandeur.” By all accounts, most people responding called the directive dangerous and ridiculous.

It was the push to sell off public lands to the highest bidder that most alarmed the public. Utah Republican Senator Mike Lee introduced that notion several times, but hunters, hikers and environmental nonprofits pushed back hard, and his plans were defeated. Then there was Trump’s nominee to head the BLM, former New Mexico Republican congressman Steve Pearce. According to Aaron Weiss of the Center for Western Priorities, Pearce was a terrible choice because he had co-sponsored several bills to “dispose” of vast public lands he called useless.

Tracy Stone-Manning of the Wilderness Society eloquently explained why public lands were so valuable to all Americans. She called them “one of the country’s great equalizers,” and said that selling off public land ought to be unthinkable.

Other opinions included Laura Paskus documenting the climate change affecting New Mexico and Arizona. Recurrent drought dried up rivers, causing hotter heat waves and consistently warmer summers.

Pepper Trail denounced the Colossal Biosciences corporation for its boast that it had used gene editing to create three dire wolves, a species that went extinct some 10,000 years ago. Trail wrote that “the most basic goal of conservation is not to preserve individual animals; it is to help populations sustain themselves in their native habitats.” Trail called the company’s claims a “delusional fantasy.”

Marjorie “Slim” Woodruff listed some of the many ways hikers screw up in the Grand Canyon, leaving plenty of traces behind. One found object was unusual, though—a vial of someone’s ashes. “I reported finding the urn to park rangers,” she wrote, “and for the next month was identified as ‘the lady who found the body.’”

A final word for Thanksgiving came from ecologist Pepper Trail, who wrote about nature’s cycle of gift exchange. “The world we inhabit is a web of reciprocity far beyond our ability to comprehend, much less control,” he said. “To be alive seems a miracle.”

Betsy Marston is the editor of Writers on the Range, subscribe at writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. She lives in rural western Colorado.

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A member of the Northern Cheyenne Tribe, Campbell grew up poor and spent part of his childhood in a California orphanage, yet he led a life of excelling. He became a judo champion in 1963, winning a gold medal at the Pan-American Games; served in the Air Force for four years where he earned his GED; went on to get degrees in physical education and fine arts at San Jose State University; and honed skills as a silversmith and jeweler. His Western belt buckles were prized.

He entered politics in 1982, first serving as a state legislator. He was next elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, serving rural Western Colorado from 1987 to 1993, then was elected to two terms in the U.S. Senate.

When Senator Campbell switched from being a registered Democrat to a Republican on March 3, 1995, “the switch was shocking and traumatic to his staff,” said Ken Lane, his longtime chief of staff. He quit soon after Campbell’s announcement.

Lane said there was lots of speculation about why Campbell became a Republican. A major irritant for Campbell, Lane recalled, was what the senator called the “elitist” attitude of Democratic leaders in Denver and Boulder, who found him too moderate. Campbell’s main support always came from the union stronghold of Pueblo, in southern Colorado.

It was known that Republican Senator and majority leader Bob Dole courted Campbell to make the switch, and once he did, Campbell was appointed chair of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee. Campbell relished the job, advocating for Tribal rights and spurring the creation of the Sand Creek Massacre National Historical Site in Colorado, where two of his ancestors had been killed by U.S. soldiers.

Dea Jacobson, who worked in his Grand Junction, Colorado office when he was a Democrat, called him a force of nature. “He could do anything he put his mind to,” she said. He was a licensed pilot, and he also earned a commercial driver’s license, which he used in 2000 and 2012 to drive huge Colorado Christmas trees to the Capitol in Washington, D.C.

Though his party changed, Jacobson said, Campbell’s politics remained the same: “He was pro-choice, pro-union and, despite criticism from some environmentalists, he backed key legislation protecting Colorado’s public lands.” Over the years, Campbell became known as someone who’d horse trade to get the bills he cared about passed.

One of his major victories was passage of the Colorado Wilderness Act of 1993, which designated or expanded 19 wilderness areas. The landmark legislation had been 13 years in the making. Campbell also worked on the creation of Great Sand Dunes National Park and helped make the Black Canyon National Monument a national park.

Campbell had a major impact on Colorado’s Four Corners region. Working with the Tribes he changed the Animas–La Plata water project to protect the free-flowing Animas River, despite criticism from environmentalists over the pumping of water uphill into a dry basin. The deal fulfilled long-overdue water rights held by the Southern Ute and Ute Mountain Ute Tribes.

I’d called Campbell last October when I was writing a column about changes coming for the reservoir named after him—Lake Nighthorse—authorized by Congress in 1968 as part of the Animas-La Plata Project. I’d been told Campbell was in poor health, but he answered the phone, later telling me, “I’m suffering from old persons’ problems so I’m not following water wars these days. But don’t forget what Mark Twain said about water: ‘Whiskey is for drinking and water is for fighting.’”

Jacobson wasn’t surprised that Nighthorse was affable in our conversation. “He loved newspaper people,” she recalled, and when they were on the road in rural Colorado, “he liked to stop in at a town’s weekly paper.” Though he didn’t drink, he might also visit a local bar or café to start a conversation with locals. Before long, she said, “he was holding court.”

Lane’s recollection was equally warm. “Ben was funny, irreverent and endearing, and he connected with people of all backgrounds.”

A private memorial service will be held by his family at their ranch in Ignacio, Colorado. He is survived by his wife Linda, his children Colin and Shanan, and four grandchildren.

Dave Marston is the publisher of Writers on the Range, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. He lives in Durango, Colorado.

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Throughout his political career, Pearce has worked to privatize and undermine our public lands. As a New Mexico congressman, he co-sponsored several bills to dispose of national public lands. This alone ought to disqualify him from running the agency charged with stewarding 245 million acres for current and future generations.

In a 2012 letter to House leadership, Pearce argued that the federal government owns “vast” land holdings, “most of (which) we do not even need,” and called for a massive sell-off to pay down the national debt. Pearce’s vision for our public lands is not conservation or even balanced management—it’s liquidation.

President Trump has been down this road before: During his first term, he nominated anti-public-lands zealot William Perry Pendley to run the BLM. Pendley never even received a hearing, and the White House dropped the nomination after his record was revealed. Pendley went on to write the public lands chapter of the now-notorious Project 2025 blueprint for a second Trump administration.

Pendley spent his career as a lawyer arguing that the federal government should not own public lands. Steve Pearce has gone even further. From inside Congress, Pearce spent 14 years undermining public lands, seeking to gut wildlife protections and sell off huge amounts of public land.

Pearce’s nomination comes as our public lands are being attacked from all sides. Over the last 10 months, President Trump has elevated officials such as Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, both of whom view our public lands as nothing more than assets to monetize through drilling, mining and logging.

These officials are currently working to execute Trump’s vision of selling out public assets for private profit. Pearce would accelerate this effort, liquidating lands to the highest bidder—including corporations and luxury developers.

Even by recent standards, Pearce’s public lands record is radical. It is also unpopular. This spring, Utah Republican Senator Mike Lee tried to include a public land sale provision in the sprawling budget bill, framing it as a housing solution. The measure would have mandated the sale of 2-3 million acres of BLM and Forest Service lands.

But Lee’s amendment triggered immediate backlash from hunters, outdoor recreation groups and Western lawmakers. Within days, he abandoned the effort. If the Senate rejected Lee’s market-rate sell-off as radical, it should be easy now to reject a nominee whose goal is to get rid of even more public land.

That brings us to the Senate Stewardship Caucus, co-chaired by a Republican, Tim Sheehy of Montana, and a Democrat, Martin Heinrich of New Mexico. It launched last month to “advance bipartisan efforts to conserve the nation’s lands and waters” with science-based policy. The caucus has been applauded by hunting, outdoor recreation, and conservation organizations as a promising start for defending public access and wildlife.

Pearce’s nomination is the caucus’s first real test. If its members cannot draw a bright line at a nominee who has worked tirelessly to sell off public lands and weaken laws that protect them, then its vision of “stewardship” is nothing but empty branding.

The stakes are immense. BLM’s multiple-use mandate requires balancing energy, grazing, recreation and conservation under long-term land use plans grounded in science and public input. That mission collapses if the agency’s leader believes we must “reverse this trend of public ownership” of the very lands he is charged with managing.

Westerners understand what happens when responsible stewardship is abandoned. Rural communities lose the long-term economic engine that healthy public lands provide. Hunters, anglers and campers lose access they have relied on for generations.

Steve Pearce’s nomination is a referendum on whether Congress believes our shared lands still belong to all Americans. The Stewardship Caucus and every senator who claims to care about the West’s outdoor heritage should reject Pearce’s nomination. America’s public lands are a unique legacy we pass down to future generations, not a portfolio to liquidate.

Aaron Weiss is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. He is deputy director of the Center for Western Priorities and co-host of The Landscape podcast.

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Hours earlier, I scrambled up to this cliff to watch the sunset. A lot of people take in the play of light over the red rocks every evening. But the route up a boulder wall that seemed so clear in the daylight was no longer obvious in the twilight. I was stuck.

Count me as one of the many hikers who’ve found themselves in a pickle. I was lucky, though, and finally found my own way down to the trailhead below. 

These days, I’ve been researching how the busiest search and rescue team in Utah, based in Moab, responds to an average of 130 calls per year from people who are not so lucky. This team has to be ready for urgent calls from climbers, mountain bikers, off-roaders, backcountry skiers, hikers, BASE jumpers and river rafters. The team handles it all.

“A lot of emergency situations are like improv because you don’t get to say no,” said Grand County Search and Rescue member Jordan Lister. “It’s just ‘Yes, and…we will get through this together.’”

Lister is one of the dozens of first responders who share their personal stories in a new podcast series that I’m producing, called Back From Beyond. The 60- to 90-minute episodes are a collaboration between the search and rescue team, Grand County tourism and trails staff, and Moab-based KZMU community radio.

In the episode “Hiking Behind the Rocks,” hiker Jason Goldsmith talked about how he got turned around in the maze-like terrain above Moab’s rim. With a fast-moving winter storm approaching, he said he had no choice but to find shelter.

“It was a huge emotional roller coaster,” he recalled, “and I don’t recommend it to anybody.” 

Like most people who call Moab’s search and rescue for help, he didn’t get in trouble by pushing a sport to the limit. Instead, something unexpected happened and the person is unprepared. Perhaps a route takes longer than anticipated, they twist an ankle a few miles in, get turned around and lost, their climbing rope gets stuck or they didn’t pack enough water.

“When I was younger,” said Grand County Search and Rescue member Michelle Leber, “I would hear about accidents and think, ‘Oh, that would never happen to me.’ But small decisions can add up to a miserable day outdoors. I mean, how many things have we all gotten away with and we didn’t even know it?”

The podcast has covered climbers stuck on Castleton Tower, one of the most challenging desert monoliths in the world; a backcountry skier tells of coping with an injury in the remote La Sal Mountains; and an off-roader recounts what happened after flipping their vehicle off a 150-foot cliff. All the stories in this first season of Back From Beyond serve to remind people how quickly things can go south, and how much we depend on somebody helping when they do.

“Outdoor recreation is a community,” said Rachelle Brinkman, recounting her mountain biking accident in the episode, “The Whole Enchilada.” Brinkman suffered injuries after crashing her bike in technical, rocky terrain around Moab. A lot of people came to her aid that day, she said, and she now makes sure to check on any rider who might need a hand.

“We look out for each other,” she said, “and we help each other, whether you’re in search and rescue or not.”

By now I’ve talked to many people about their trips in the backcountry, and it still amazes me how many times they recall saying to themselves before setting out: “Better grab an extra layer, this battery charger, a headlamp, and also tell someone where I’m going.” They realize that one small, smart decision before heading outdoors can save the day.

If you’re exploring the rugged outback of Moab someday and need to make an emergency call for help, you’re in luck. A team of seasoned professionals with Grand County Search and Rescue will work hard to get you home safe.

Molly Marcello is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. She directed KZMU News in Moab for more than six years and is the producer of the new documentary podcast series, Back From Beyond.

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Such quiet is a rare gift. I haven’t been in Goodall’s Tanzanian rain forest, but recently shared Utah’s Capitol Reef National Park with a 25-year-old cousin visiting from urban America. Once in the canyons he kept pausing to say, “it’s so peaceful, so still.” He was astonished and renewed by that quiet.

This canyon country stillness is under attack. The assaults come in waves powered by motorized vehicles, engines revving.

First, the Trump administration proposes abandoning the 2023 Bureau of Land Management travel plan for Labyrinth Canyon. This 300,000-acre Utah wildland along the Green River just north of Canyonlands National Park is a gem—a fretwork of slickrock canyons along the river. Labyrinth preserves quiet for rafters, hikers, and bighorn sheep. No death-defying rapids here on this lazy, looping stretch easily paddled by families in canoes.

In a model compromise, the current Labyrinth plan maintains access to more than 800 miles of off-highway-vehicle (OHV) routes, closing only 317 miles to vehicles. In the surrounding Moab region, more than 4,000 miles of routes remain open. OHVs have plenty of room to roam.

But moderation is never enough for Utah politicians determined to motorize every inch of our public lands. They are pushing to reopen 141 miles of closed OHV routes at Labyrinth and hoping for even more. You can comment here before October 24.

In another backtrack on conservation in Utah, the administration has solicited bids for coal leasing on 48,000 acres of BLM land, much of it on and near the boundaries of national parks. The big views from Capitol Reef, Zion, and Bryce Canyon don’t stop at the park boundaries. Visitors, many from other countries, would be horrified by such industrialization of these world-class destinations. Rural Utah depends on these tourists to survive economically.

These are lands that even the conservative second Bush administration deemed unsuitable for mines. As Cory MacNulty, with the National Parks Conservation Association, said of the proposed leasing, “It’s absurd.”

Now the OHV battalions are threatening to overwhelm Capitol Reef National Park.

Utah Republican Senators Mike Lee and John Curtis introduced a bill on October 5 to open virtually every road in Capitol Reef to off-roaders. They claim that disabled Americans need this fundamental change to park policy, though even the park’s back roads are currently accessible by moderately high-clearance cars and trucks. There’s absolutely no need to permit noisy and destructive OHVs.

The senators’ second bill would potentially open other national parks to OHV use. Lee tried to pass nearly identical bills in 2021 and encountered a buzzsaw of resistance from national park advocates.

As retired Capitol Reef superintendent Sue Fritzke said, “OHVs would denigrate the very resources those sites have been set aside to protect, with increased dust and noise and impacts on wildlife, endangered species, and visitors.”

At each mile farther into remote corners of the park, off-highway vehicles become more problematic. Even though a majority of riders obey the rules, some will go off-road. They just will. Their vehicles are designed for this exact purpose. In Capitol Reef’s considerable backcountry—as in all underfunded national parks and monuments— staffing does not allow for constant patrolling to apprehend and ticket wrongdoers.

Capitol Reef is a place to slow down, not speed up. To revel in quiet, not reach for earplugs. To share the healing land with tenderness and restraint.

Lee disrespects national park values with these twin bills, and Curtis, who likes to tout his nature sensitivity on hikes with constituents, should know better. Their misguided proposals should be left to wither in committee and die. Those of us who love the restorative peace of national parks will just keep fighting such regressive bills.

In her last interview, Jane Goodall asked us to never give up: “Without hope, we fall into apathy and do nothing. If people don’t have hope, we’re doomed. Let’s fight to the very end.”

We will.

Stephen Trimble is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. He is a writer and photographer in Utah.

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As Miracle’s story spread, the cub became the object of fascination for thousands of people. Perhaps that’s no surprise, as many of us are intrigued by the grizzly’s power and strength, along with the reality that it’s an apex predator, like us.

Miracle’s survival is precarious. Since she left the protection of her mother so early, she’s on her own finding food before hibernating. Seventy-seven grizzlies died in the Yellowstone area last year—the highest number yet. As of September 2025, 63 bears had been killed; at this rate, the number of dead bears will surpass last year’s record. What’s going on?

You could say that grizzly bear recovery in the Lower 48 is a success story. Prior to European settlement, an estimated 50,000 bears roamed throughout the Lower 48. By 1970, though, only about 800 remained, with perhaps 130 of them in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.

In 1975, grizzlies were listed under the Endangered Species Act, which ended their indiscriminate slaughter, and bear numbers slowly rebounded. Today, the Forest Service says an estimated 700 grizzlies live in and around the Yellowstone area, with maybe 1,000 more in the Northern Continental Divide region of Montana. Despite the increase in numbers, mortality rates are on the rise.

Most wildlife managers say the current rate is not a matter of concern. They say the species is stable.

And yet, is it? Roughly 200 cubs are born in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem recovery area each year, but of those, only around 40 survive. Wildlife managers assure us bears are doing well, but is this sustainable—especially when the mortality rate keeps inching upward year after year?

The most obvious reason for bear deaths is us. We are everywhere. 2024 marked the second-busiest year in Yellowstone National Park’s history with more than 4.7 million visitors. In August of 2025, the park was on track to see a 2% visitor increase over 2024.

On top of increased visitation, the human population in the Rocky Mountain West where grizzlies roam is growing steadily. Teton County, Wyoming has seen a 10% increase in residents over the last decade. The population in Teton County, Idaho is up 74% since 1990. Gallatin County, Montana has grown about 40% in the last 10 years.

On the ground, you can’t miss the impacts of growth: Trails are crowded. Parking is at a premium. You need reservations at restaurants, and the traffic is often stop and go. Not surprisingly, bear-human conflicts are more frequent: Vehicle collisions kill bears, interactions with landowners kill bears.

Grizzlies might do fine with more people if their habitat were intact and healthy, but much of their home ground has been in moderate to severe drought for several years, according to U.S. Drought Monitor. This year’s berry crop was dismal. Whitebark pines, whose seeds are an important food source for bears, are threatened by beetles and blister rust.

All this forces grizzlies to search out new food sources, and some of the best ones turn out to be ours. Our cows and sheep. Our apple trees. Our bee hives.

Wyoming U.S. Representative Harriet Hageman has introduced legislation to take away endangered species protections for grizzly bears, which would be a major blow to their survival. “People shouldn’t have to live in fear of grizzly bears rummaging through their trash or endangering their children,” Hageman said. Such comments are deliberately inflammatory.

I have heard three people describe surviving a bear attack decades ago. All three insisted that the bear was only acting in self-defense. One even remembers how awed he was by the diamond-like glint of water droplets on the bear’s fur as she ran toward him.

I’m not sure what would happen if I faced a charging bear. I just want enough wherewithal to pull out my bear spray. While I hope I never have to deploy that spray, I am willing to take the risk to know wild bears roam the landscape. If grizzlies were gone, something vital would be missing from our world.

While grizzly bear mortality may not yet be alarming wildlife managers, I hope we’ve gotten a wakeup call.

Molly Absolon is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. She hikes and writes in Yellowstone bear country.

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Because my mind lives in a spiral of political doom, it sped to: “Canadians hate America and they’re giving up on Burning Man.” Even worse, I thought, “The next thing you know, there won’t be a Swedish Meatball Camp.”

Still, this past August, 80,000 people converged in the Nevada desert to set up what aspires to be a peaceful global village. The hardest part of my years of being part of this temporary city is answering the question on my return: “How was it?”

All I can say is that it’s reunion for some, tribal for others. It would be a long voyage just to get intoxicated, dance and see some art. Perhaps there’s something hopeful to it that brings together thousands of people from all over the world.

In general, it is hot, dusty and increasingly rainy. The cheapest admission price is $550.  Getting in and out of the instant town involves long waits and scary driving on Nevada State Route 447. Once there, you could feel right at home—or not.

Its origin story is that of founders Larry Harvey and Jerry James burning an effigy on San Francisco’s Baker Beach in 1986. That spontaneous whimsy outgrew the beach and ended up being planted in the dust of Nevada’s Black Rock Desert. Then, like a rhizomatous plant, its tentacles have spread, producing clones around the world. Smaller regional burns now mimic the original.

For crowd context, at least 15 college football stadiums seat more people than Burning Man’s giant campground. Of course, the football fans are only there for an afternoon while most Burning Man participants stay the seven days leading up to Labor Day. Other volunteers stay weeks after to clean it up to Bureau of Land Management permit standards, since the event takes place on public land. 

There are all kinds of reasons to avoid Burning Man, and I get an earful every year.  Even though “burning” is in the name, some hate the event for burning valuable resources. To partially address this, over the years event organizers have added composting toilets and solar to the mix. Burning Man poop will help gardens grow elsewhere. Most of the art pieces, other than the centerpiece “man,” are not burned. They live second lives at parks and town squares around the world. 

The other question I hear every year is: “Is there crime at Burning Man?” The answer, unfortunately, is yes— traffic accidents and every kind of bad behavior you would see anywhere else. In 2005, I was the victim of an assault by a bicyclist who never stopped to see who he’d run over. It was bad. It was solved. The perp was convicted. It has not stopped me from returning. 

This year there was also a rare birth, said to be completely unexpected, and a death of unconfirmed cause occurred at the time I left.

International attendance was up overall. I worked with photographers from Iran, Ireland, France and Belgium. The largest art piece on the playa was designed and constructed—inflated actually—by Ukraine. Its “Black Cloud” artwork was magnificent while it lasted, combining music and erratic bursts of light. Sadly, it succumbed to a 50-mph blast of wind.

In the midst of war, the Ukrainian artists thought Burning Man was one of the best ways to bring attention to their gallant and determined people, who have been fighting for survival since Russian troops invaded Ukraine in 2002.

There was also a 20-foot F*** You Elon metal sculpture that seemed like a profane waste of energy. People mostly climbed around on it to take their selfies. And about that missing Canadian delicacy—were the Canadians especially anti-America? Some swear the poutine crew had just planned to take a year off. I’m looking forward to Midnight Poutine next year.

Dennis Hinkamp is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. He lives in Utah.

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A fast-food burger, in the original wrapper. I suppose they left it for the timid woodland creatures, except if fast food isn’t good for us, why would critters want it?  

Someone’s last remains. When a hiker pointed out a shiny object off the trail, I clambered over rocks to find a sealed urn of cremains, which is illegal to leave in a national park. Local tribes have also asked that visitors avoid doing this for religious considerations. 

I reported finding the urn to park rangers, and for the next month was identified as “the lady who found the body.”  

A can of corned beef. We found this on day three of a seven-day backpack. Those who abandoned it surely thought, “Oh, whoever finds this shall fall upon it with glee!”  Except we had enough food, thanks. Rather than carry a three-pound can of beef, though, we ate it, and yes, it was vile. 

Balloons. I risked life and limb one day clambering down a scree slope after what I thought was an abandoned backpack only to find deflated balloons. It is a lovely thought to release balloons to honor a friend. But creatures can get tangled in the strings or eat them to serious ill effect.

Mascara wand. I understand that many women cannot bear to be without their makeup, but on the trail? For one thing, you are all sweaty and dirty, or at least, I am. In the same vein, I have come across discarded bottles of cologne. Perhaps the owners finally realized that no perfume can cover up the smell of a long hike.  

Glow sticks. Tied to the trees. Not only are they plastic, they’re toxic to any animal who chews on them.

Double boiler filled with rice.  It might make sense to find this in a campsite, but four miles up the trail?  

Underwear. I do know about these situations. Someone has an unavoidable emergency and no TP so they use whatever is at, um, hand.  

Plastic tooth floss picks. Oral hygiene is important. However, most people do not leave their toothbrush behind, so why leave the silly things that only weigh one-tenth of an ounce?  

A five-pack of beer. I assume they drank one and left the rest for later, then did not find tepid beer palatable. But stashing items along the trail is problematic. We never know if you are really going to pick it up later, or if you just got tired of hauling it around. So best keep it with you.  

Laminated photographs. These are often left as a memorial. Does your loved one really want you to honor them by littering public lands with their portrait?  

One shoe. How does one hike out with one shoe? Although I did once meet a hiker wearing a single shoe and sock, one for each foot.  Another time, we found a jacket, then a shirt, then a pair of pants, then socks. I guess they kept the shoes. 

A hemostat used to compress a blood vessel. Was someone prepping for emergency surgery?

An empty backpack. How did they get their gear out?

A full backpack, including, among other things, a queen-sized bed sheet, a beach towel, canned food, and two hardback books. Rumor has it that the hapless hiker yelled, “I can’t do this!”, grabbed a bottle of Gatorade, and threw the pack off the trail. At this point, the hiker was five miles from the trailhead. 

The first rule of “leave no trace” is to plan ahead. Perhaps one should sit down with one’s supplies and ask: Do I really want to lug these books, this frying pan, that good bottle of wine?

If yes, more power to you, and keep on lugging! Just make sure you take it all back out with you.

Marjorie ‘Slim’ Woodruff is a contributor to Writers on

The Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. She is a Grand Canyon educator.

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