Congress largely rejected those cuts the last time around, but the administration is trying again, hoping to bully Congress into further weakening the management and protection of our public land.

A major part of Burgum’s strategy has been to continue the administration’s policy of driving out the people who do the work. Over the past year, Elon Musk’s DOGE-driven firings and buyouts gutted the Interior Department’s workforce. About a quarter of National Park Service employees have left since January 2025, including rangers, biologists, historians and maintenance workers, all pushed out through waves of terminations and early retirement offers. There’s also been the slow demoralization of being told your life’s work doesn’t matter.

This month, Interior announced yet another round of buyouts, the latest effort to thin the ranks of the people who keep trails open and fight wildfires.

What’s almost hard to believe is the policy of erasing history itself. Under orders from Secretary Burgum and President Trump, the National Park Service has removed or flagged for removal hundreds of interpretive signs and exhibits across the country.

At Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia—the birthplace of the 250-year-old democracy that we’re about to celebrate—an exhibit about enslaved people at the President’s House has been removed. At the Grand Canyon, signs acknowledging that white settlers displaced Native American Tribes were taken down. At the Selma to Montgomery National Historic Trail, some 80 items have been flagged for removal. At Stonewall National Monument, the Pride flag came down.

Climate science has been banished from Glacier National Park, and Grand Teton removed a sign about an army officer who bragged about the massacre of more than 170 Piegan Blackfeet people. The stories of Japanese American internment in the western states, of women’s suffrage, of labor rights—all deemed unpatriotic by an administration that believes you can only honor America’s 250th birthday by pretending half of its history never happened.

At the end of March, Burgum also convened the “God Squad,” officially known as the Endangered Species Committee, for the first time in more than three decades. Its meeting lasted less than 30 minutes, yet the committee voted unanimously to exempt all oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico from the Endangered Species Act. The decision will almost certainly doom the Rice’s whale, a species found nowhere else on Earth, of which roughly 50 remain. It was the first time national security has been invoked to override the Endangered Species Act, and conservationists warn that it will not be the last.

As for the U.S. Forest Service, draconian cuts in its staff are planned along with wholesale closings of regional offices and dozens of research stations. The agency’s reorganization also includes moving its main headquarters from Washington, D.C. to Salt Lake City, Utah.

This administration has made its intent clear: Cut budgets, drive out the workforce, erase history, greenlight extinction. Energy extraction is paramount, while conservation, research, and preservation are all values that can be discarded.

These are not disconnected policy decisions. They are part of the coherent vision of a cabinet secretary who sees public lands as surplus inventory and history as a branding problem.

But this is what Doug Burgum will learn: Americans are not going along with it. Polling shows that nearly 80 percent of the public opposes removing factual history from national parks. More than 99 percent of public comments opposed rolling back roadless protections for national forests. Congress rejected the worst of last year’s budget cuts, and it will be pressed to do so again. When the administration, aided by Senator Mike Lee of Utah, tried to sell off public lands through the reconciliation bill, bipartisan outrage killed it.

Doug Burgum can propose all the budget cuts he wants, but he will face determined opposition from all of us who treasure our public lands.

Aaron Weiss, director of the Center for Western Priorities, is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about Western issues.

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The BLM is America’s biggest landlord, responsible for over 245 million acres of our public lands. That’s more than 10% of the total land in the United States, which means that the management policies of BLM have enormous impacts, especially in the West where it is by far the largest landowner.

The agency’s website proclaims: “The Bureau of Land Management’s mission is to sustain the health, diversity, and productivity of public lands for the use and enjoyment of present and future generations.” BLM’s record at living up to that mission is at best debatable, given the agency’s long accommodation of ranching, timber and fossil fuel interests. What’s not debatable is that under this administration the BLM intends to go hog-wild on resource extraction.

There is no more extreme example of this than BLM’s proposal to revise the Resource Management Plans for Western Oregon BLM Lands. 

These plans cover management of some of the most diverse and ecologically significant conifer forests in the world, vital for providing clean water, carbon sequestration, and essential habitat for endangered species including northern spotted owls, marbled murrelets, and coho salmon.  Their irreplaceable importance was acknowledged in 1995’s Northwest Forest Plan, which covered both BLM and Forest Service lands in the range of the northern spotted owl. 

That Forest Plan established a network of Late Successional Reserves protected from logging, included an Aquatic Conservation Strategy to protect key watersheds, and mandated a Survey and Manage program to provide the data needed for stewardship of at-risk species.

BLM never fully committed to these strong conservation protections, and the agency effectively withdrew its lands from the Forest Plan in its 2016 Western Oregon Plan Revision. Since then, it has repeatedly failed to live up to its own weakened standards. Now, it has decided that even those are too restrictive.

On February 19, the agency released its proposed new Resource Management Plan. It would open nearly 2 million acres to clear-cutting with no protections for remaining old growth. It would completely eliminate Late Successional Reserves and would further reduce 2016’s weakened riparian protections. It would open all currently designated Areas of Critical Environmental Concern for re-evaluation, potentially eliminating the designations and opening them up for logging.

And the bottom-line goal? To quadruple the logging volume on Western Oregon BLM forests, returning these public lands to the “robust” levels of the 1960s and 1970s. Those days of rampant and unsustainable clear-cutting led directly to the public outcry against the destruction of the Pacific Northwest’s ancient forests, and to the necessity for the Northwest Forest Plan. Now BLM wants to turn back the clock as if that destruction never happened.

If the landlords of a big apartment building were proposing something radical—say, the demolition of the top 10 floors—they would certainly call a public meeting, right? They’d provide ample time for tenants to make their voices heard, right? Not if the landlord is the Bureau of Land Management.

The Federal Register notice specifies a mere 30 days for public comments on this radical proposal: All must be received by March 23 and can only be provided digitally or by mail. There will be no public meetings.

We, the people, to whom these forests belong, will be given no opportunity to look officials in the eye and demand that they provide scientific or legal justification for this wholesale abandonment of responsible forest management.

These magnificent forests are not fiber farms. They do not belong to the Bureau of Land Management or to the logging companies waiting to move in and reap quick profits. They are held in trust for the American people. BLM’s proposed new plan would destroy these forests, and that trust.

Still, we can act. The following are the only available ways to comment on the proposed Resource Management Plan:

 Through BLM’s website: https://eplanning.blm.gov, Project Number DOI-BLM-ORWA-0000-2026-0001-RMP-EIS.

 Via Email: BLM_OR_Revision_Scoping@blm.gov.

 By snail mail: Attention BLM OR930: 1220 SW 3rd Ave, Portland, OR 97204.

Pepper Trail 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 ecologist in Oregon.

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In the end, public land defenders won. Confronted by an outpouring of grassroots opposition, Senator Lee removed his amendment to the Trump administration’s “Big Beautiful Bill.” But the struggle demonstrated that we need to act sooner.

Four elk hunters in Wyoming showed us what stepping up can look like. Instead of sitting back and looking sadly at a huge chunk of prime elk country blocked by a billionaire’s ranch, they built a special ladder. By climbing over it, they crossed from one corner of public land to another, setting in motion a legal process that freed up millions of acres of public land in six states.

They also shot some nice bulls.

The hunters’ creativity in the field has become an inspiration. That’s why the two of us—state legislators in Wyoming and Montana—are teaming up to fight for public land access, just as the hunters on Wyoming’s Elk Mountain did. 

Across the West, millions of acres of public land are still legally open but practically inaccessible. At checkerboard corners where public and private land meet, a person can stand on public ground, look directly at more public ground just an inch away, and still be told they cannot step from one to the other. 

In Wyoming, the question of corner crossing dragged through the courts for years. Last October, the Supreme Court refused to hear a case challenging a lower court decision allowing corner crossing. The ruling establishes that crossing between public land corners without touching private property does not constitute trespass. 

That means corner crossing remains legal in the 10th Circuit states of Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Oklahoma, Kansas and New Mexico.

In other states, a legal grey area remains.

In Montana, Governor Greg Gianforte and the director of Fish, Wildlife and Parks say that corner crossing remains unlawful under state law. That declaration puts political clout behind the status quo, where public land remains accessible to those who can buy control of key parcels and hire fancy attorneys.

The consequences are not abstract. For working families in Montana and Wyoming, access to public land is a necessity, not a luxury. It is how people put meat in the freezer as grocery prices rise. It is how parents take their kids outdoors without paying fees. It is how rural communities hold on to traditions that are increasingly out of reach.

We, as elected leaders, need to act. We can’t let confusing court decisions or laws that don’t serve the people be the last word on any issue dealing with public land.

That’s why the two of us support state legislation in both Wyoming and Montana that will clarify the law and protect public access. The stakes are high and rising. Land prices have become astronomically out of reach for most people, outside wealth continues to pour into our states, and politicians in Congress and our state legislatures increasingly side with wealthy landowners.

Unless public land supporters in office act to clarify corner crossing in law, access will continue to shrink. The result will be a two-tiered system: a West for people who can afford exclusive access, another West that’s diminished for everyone else.

Corner crossing may be ingenious, but it is not radical. It is a straightforward affirmation that public land needs to be available to the public. We don’t think this is a partisan issue. Hunters, anglers, hikers, conservationists, landowners, and working families span every political stripe in our states. Fair access to public land for future generations is a shared value.

The choice ahead is simple. We can defend public land as a public right for our children and grandchildren, or we can allow the West to slide toward a situation where those with wealth continue to block vast swaths of public land.

As legislators from Montana and Wyoming, we know which side we are on.

The writers are contributors to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conservation about the West. Karlee Provenza is a Democrat serving House District 45, Laramie, in the Wyoming House of Representatives. Democrat Joshua A. Seckinger serves House District 62, Bozeman, in the Montana House of Representatives. For information about the bills they propose, contact Karlee.Provenza@wyoleg.gov or Joshua.seckinger@legmt.gov. The Wyoming Legislature convenes Feb. 9 and plans to consider corner crossing.

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The pair that found each other to form Washington’s first wolf pack came from far-flung places: the Canadian Rockies and the British Columbia coast. The spontaneous recolonization has become a notable success story.

Washington now has more than 230 wolves in at least 43 packs, living mostly in the northeastern part of the state. This area makes sense, as it is adjacent to wolf-populated wildlands in both Idaho and Canada. Wolves are amazing and ecologically vital, but also a challenge for the people they live among.

One rancher I know said, “When wolves first showed up, it felt like they were managing my cattle.”

The rancher finally regained control of his herd by using labor-intensive practices that deter wolves from preying on cattle. One of the most effective tools was a rider patrolling on horseback.

Range riders are specialized cowboys who keep the peace by providing a human shield. The riders bunch herds up at night when wolves are most active, and they make sure calves stay close to their moms.

While not infallible, range riding works well in keeping attacks on livestock relatively low while also reducing opposition to wolves. Human deterrence is costly, though. Contracting and managing range riders has cost up to $1 million each year. Washington has chosen to share the burden by funding ranchers willing to use these practices. Public and private dollars are funneled through two public agencies and the nonprofit I direct, Conservation Northwest.

“Washington has more range riders than any other state,” said Jay Shepherd, who directs Conservation Northwest’s wolf field program. As a result, Washington has the fewest depredations on livestock among states with established wolf packs, which means fewer wolves killed.

When wolf attacks do occur, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife may help a rancher use nonlethal tactics to deter wolves, ranging from fancy flagging to rubber bullets. If the incidents cross a certain threshold, the department may act to kill one or more wolves.

The response is guided by a protocol negotiated by an advisory group of stakeholders, ranging from wolf advocates to ranchers. The group determined that preventing problems was most effective; prevention was also appreciated by ranchers who didn’t like the compensation process after they’d lost cattle.

Sharing the cost of deterrence makes sense. Collaborating to fund peacekeeping tactics has also been a good way to bridge the persistent urban-rural divide.

Elsewhere, in states like Idaho and Wyoming, people kill more than a third of their wolf population each year. In Washington, that mortality rate is under 5 percent.

Oregon has almost as many wolves as Washington, but combativeness is more the norm than collaboration in that state, resulting in twice as many dead cows and wolves. Bitter political conflict about wolves is also more evident in Oregon than in Washington, where the state’s bipartisan focus has been on funding deterrence.

California, with about 50 wolves, is newer to the arena. Its initiation to wolf drama came last year, when the Beyem Seyo pack killed more than 80 cows despite an expensive, but late, attempt at nonlethal disruption. The state ended up killing five wolves and relocating two more. Media reports described the wolves as “euthanized.”

In Colorado, a 2020 ballot initiative directed the state to bring wolves in from Canada. Although 25 wolves have been released, the effort has now been stalled by political polarization, which cost the head of the wildlife agency his job.

On the whole, if you’re a wolf, the best state to start a family is Washington — for now. Facing a tight budget, Washington halved its wolf funding in 2025. That means fewer range riders, more livestock depredations and angrier ranchers, along with litigation over a wolf-removal order.

If Washington can’t resume proper funding, our sterling record could end. If we can’t find the grace to continue the collaborative approach that from experience we know works, everyone will lose.

Especially the wolves.

Mitch Friedman is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit spurring lively conversation about the West. He heads Seattle-based Conservation Northwest, which he founded in 1989 after years organizing Earth First! protests.

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The Forest Service manages about 194 million acres. About 58 million acres of national forest are relatively undeveloped, and the rule applies to about 45,000 acres. These lands are generally remote and rugged and defined by what they don’t have—roads. They’re mostly accessed by trail, except in winter when they might be approached with snowmobiles.

Since the Clinton Administration, roadless lands have largely been left alone under the policy called the Roadless Rule. No one has complained, as there is plenty of work to do elsewhere. Leeway for management was written into the Roadless Rule, allowing the U.S. Forest Service to manage roadless areas where conditions merit.

So why is the current administration so eager to rehash pointless battles? I’m scratching my head.

Perhaps this and other moves take our attention away from the current purges, budget and staff cuts that have left the agency a shambles. Perhaps the political appointees at the head of the Forest Service are themselves stuck in the past, trying to drive forward by looking in the rear-view mirror. In any case, there is a wiser way forward.

That is, to stop creating controversy where none exists. This September, the public was given just 21 days to weigh in on the government’s intent to repeal the rule. The response demonstrated that no one was asking for the changes the Administration is pushing. Over 99 percent of the 183,000 comments submitted argued against removing the public land protection, according to the Center for Western Priorities, which evaluated the response.

The many conservationists who defend roadless areas tend to do so because these often-remote areas of our national forest are fine as they are and need to be left alone. They provide world-class wildlife habitat, havens for recreation and clean water.

During the Clinton Administration of the 1990s, the Forest Service created an administrative rule that basically said it would no longer build new roads into pristine forests, focusing instead on maintaining its existing backlog of 370,000 miles of roads. Any frequent visitor to our national forests will tell you that many existing roads are fraught with ruts, deadfalls and washouts.

High-elevation roadless areas never had roads built through them for the simple reason that it’s grossly impractical to build roads there. To do so would require massive government subsidies—first to build the roads and then to maintain them after floods, wildfire or freezing wipes them away.

The administration’s attempt to rescind the Roadless Rule of 2001 is basically a distraction. It takes us away from dealing with the long and time-sensitive “to do” list that hangs over the Forest Service—managing wildfires, clearing trails, fighting flammable weeds, fixing access roads.

Likewise, the extensive trail system of the Forest Service badly needs tender loving care, as do its campgrounds and other infrastructure. Foresters will tell you that many of our national forests have become overgrown because of generations of fire suppression. They need selective logging. But the practical place to begin addressing that expensive but crucial need is at the interface of wildlands and developed lands.

Idaho, a Republican state with more roadless lands than just about any other state, decided to do its own analysis of roadless lands during the 1990s. Idaho found it was fiscal folly to build roads on 99 percent of Idaho’s roadless lands. For context, the review also revealed that Idaho roadless areas support some of the state’s best big game hunting while also providing cold, clear water that native trout, salmon and steelhead need to spawn.

Moreover, the roadless lands tended to be poor at growing trees. Finally, Idaho’s review called for strict protections of some of its roadless lands—stricter that what was allowed by the Clinton Administration.

Most Americans want our national forests to be well-managed and open for people to enjoy. Roads are an important part of that. But pushing to build new roads in our most rugged areas is a fool’s errand and not a serious solution.

Let’s restore the national forests, trails and access roads that we’ve allowed to deteriorate. Ben Long is an outdoorsman, conservationist and longtime contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. He lives in Kalispell, Montana.

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We feel empathy toward others inside our comfortable corrals. But too often, mutual support doesn’t reach outward. Mistrust replaces compassion.

I spent late April in my conservationist bubble. Since the first Earth Day in 1970, I’ve tried to take stock of how we’re treating our home planet. For this year’s “Earth Week,” I celebrated past successes rather than present catastrophes.

I was on a radio panel recounting unlikely partnerships that led to the protection of public lands. I attended an event honoring Dave Livermore for a lifetime of Nature Conservancy triumphs in Nevada and Utah. And I delighted in an exhibit of photographs of Glen Canyon, emerging from drought-diminished Lake Powell.

For a few moments, my compatriots and I relaxed inside our green bubble.

Then we looked outward and found Interior Secretary Doug Burgum operating from starkly different values. As a wildly successful businessman, Burgum lives in a bubble of unimaginable wealth and power. In his confirmation hearings, he called America’s public lands “assets” on the “national balance sheet.”

Secretary Burgum had no qualms about delegating nearly all administrative decisions to a former oil executive turned DOGE operative. His Interior Department has abandoned regulations that protect our health, water and land in order to fast-track mining operations to demonstrate compliance with decades of settled environmental law.

The secretary is preparing to eviscerate six national monuments. He’s talking about transferring public lands to the states for development and disposal. He sounds eager to turn our cherished public lands into cash cows churning out billions to cover a national debt accelerated by tax cuts for the wealthy.

Ensconced in a bubble of their own, Trump administration officials believe they have a mandate to act without opposition. Their certainty is an illusion. Four in five self-identified MAGA voters want to keep existing national monuments, and 85 percent of Utahns prefer rangers, scientists and firefighters to make decisions about public lands, water and wildlife, not political appointees from industry.

Every day brings new blows to our nation, and not just to public lands and national parks. Scientific research, the arts, the humanities, veterans’ health, services for Medicare and Medicaid clients, food for the hungry, international aid, climate action—all are all under attack.

President Trump’s supporters cheer his actions, paying attention to media that mostly tell incomplete stories. Their opponents, turning to legacy media for their news, rally against what seems the president’s vindictiveness. The courts push back against the administration’s disdain for the law, pausing 180 of their initiatives.

We won’t escape this impasse until we somehow pop our bubbles. We won’t be able to resist Trump’s drive toward authoritarianism without talking to each other, young and old, finding shreds of common ground across the infinitely varied spectrum of America.

To create a national movement to counter Trump’s chaos and cruelty, our society needs more of what Robert Putnam, author of Bowling Alone, calls “social capital.” We’ve lost the cross-bubble associations we had in the mid-20th century, the clubs, churches, unions and neighborhoods that connected us across class and culture.

Putnam documents today’s “political polarization, economic inequality, social isolation and cultural self-centeredness,” the consequence, in part, of our separate bubbles—and major reasons that Donald Trump won the election. To connect, to pierce our bubbles and build social capital, Putnam advises us to “join or die.” Reciprocity builds social capital, and social capital builds trust.

What makes democracy work? Community. But now, AmeriCorps volunteers have been terminated. The Peace Corps may be next. We are losing every program that brings us together.

Still, the diversity and number of citizens who have resolved to march in protest give me hope. Their chants ring in our streets:

“The people united will never be defeated.”
“The power of the people is greater than the people in power.”
“Democracy is not a state, it is an act.”

An act takes actors, and every one of us has a role. I’m taking heart in this cast of millions. We’re connecting, we’re finding allies. And as we do so, the people in power will have no choice but to listen.

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 who lives in Utah.

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The reality is that long after I’m gone, most or all of those wells will remain unplugged. The companies and people who once owned them will have been allowed to walk away from their responsibility to clean up their mess.

Uncapped wells are what happens when the federal government enables the fossil-fuel industry to dominate energy policies, as is happening again now, both in the Interior Department and Congress. The policies emerging would allow companies, including many foreign ones, to profit from public lands and minerals that all Americans own. They would also leave taxpayers holding the bag for cleaning up leaking wells.

These abandoned wells already have consequences for wildlife, air, water and rural people. Kirk Panasuk, a rancher in Bainville, Montana, said: “I have personally experienced serious health scares after breathing toxic fumes from oil and gas wells near my property. And I’ve seen too many of my friends and neighbors in this part of the country have their water contaminated or their land destroyed by rushed and reckless industrial projects.”

Republicans and Democrats in previous administrations and Congresses took pains to reform this historically biased federal energy system because of the damage done to rural communities and American taxpayers. Now, the federal government is rolling back those reforms.

Recently, the Interior Department announced that “emergency permitting procedures” were necessary when carrying out NEPA, the National Environmental Policy Act. Timelines for environmental assessments for fossil-fuel projects were changed from one year to 14 days, without requiring a public comment period. The timeline for more complicated environmental impact statements was cut from two years to 28 days, with only a 10-day public comment period.

In May, the House Natural Resources Committee unveiled its piece of the House budget bill, which enables the federal government to expedite oil, gas, coal and mineral development. It gives Americans basically no say on whether those projects should move ahead, while keeping taxpayers from receiving a fair return on the development of publicly owned lands and minerals. 

The administration’s justification for expediting permits is that we face “a national energy emergency.” No such emergency exists. The United States is currently the world’s biggest exporter of liquified natural gas and is producing more oil than any other country on Earth.

Both the House bill—just passed and now before the Senate—and the Interior Department’s policies, ignore the long-standing mandate to manage public lands for multiple uses. Instead, the new policies:

• Drastically reduce the public’s role in the permitting process.
• Allow large corporations to pay to evade environmental and judicial review.
• Exempt millions of acres of private lands with federal minerals and thousands of wells on these lands from federal permitting and mitigation requirements.

The House bill would also slash the royalty rate for oil and gas production from 16.67% to 12.5%, depriving state and local governments of funding they depend on for schools, roads and other essential services. An analysis by Resources for the Future found that the proposed lower royalty rates would result in a loss of nearly $5 billion in revenue over the next decade. 

The Interior Department’s emergency permitting procedures and the House bill are assaults the federal government has waged on public lands since January. The public has been shoved to the side as oil and gas drillers enjoy their energy dominance throughout our public lands.

Now, it’s up to the Senate to strip out these gifts to the fossil fuel industry, and it’s up to us tell our elected Senate representatives that these policies ignore the wishes of Westerners. We have told pollsters innumerable times that we support conservation, not exploitation of public lands for private interests. What’s happening now is radically wrong.

Barbara Vasquez is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. A retired PhD

biomedical researcher and semiconductor engineer, she is board chair of the Western Organization of Resource Councils and a board member of the Western Colorado Alliance.

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But in 1990, Congress amended the Clean Air Act, requiring gasoline to be spiked with an oxygen-containing compound to reduce carbon monoxide. With the help of corn-belt farmers and public officials, the oxygenate of choice became corn-based ethanol. Now, most gasoline sold in the United States contains at least 10 percent ethanol, also called “gasohol.”

Fifty ethanol plants produced 900 million gallons of ethanol in 1990. In 2024, 191 ethanol plants produced a record 16.22 billion gallons. From the corn belt, ethanol production has spread West. Today, ethanol is produced in Oregon, Idaho, Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming, Arizona and California.

Though it is hyped as an elixir for what ails the earth, ethanol has long been a disaster that we can’t seem to remedy. Calling it wasteful and inefficient doesn’t begin to list its drawbacks: It costs more to produce than gasoline, reduces mileage, corrodes gas tanks and car engines, pollutes air and water, and, by requiring more energy to produce than it yields, increases America’s dependence on foreign oil.

While gasohol releases less carbon monoxide than gasoline, it emits more smog-producing volatile organic compounds. And ethanol plants produce more pollutants than oil refineries, including high levels of carcinogens, thereby routinely violating already relaxed pollution permits. In 2007, under industry pressure, ethanol plants were exempted from the EPA’s most stringent pollution regulations.

Of all crops grown in the United States, corn demands the most massive fixes of herbicides, insecticides, and chemical fertilizers, while creating the most soil erosion. Producing each gallon of ethanol also results in 12 gallons of sewage-like effluent, part of the toxic, oxygen-swilling stew of nitrates, chemical poisons and dirt that gets excreted from corn monocultures.

From Kentucky to Wyoming, this runoff pollutes the Mississippi River system, harming aquatic animals all the way to the Gulf of Mexico, where it expands a bacteria-infested, algae-clogged, anaerobic “Dead Zone.” In 2024, this Dead Zone was about the size of New Jersey.

Thanks to billions of dollars in tax credits, rebates, grants and other subsidies pumped into corn ethanol production, farmers are motivated to convert marginal ag land to corn plantations. Some farmers even drain wetlands, the most productive of all wildlife habitats.

Cornell University professor David Pimentel, who died in 2019, was the first agricultural scientist to expose ethanol production as a boondoggle. While his data are old, they provide a snapshot of our current situation and a valuable model for groups like the Environmental Integrity Project, a nonprofit “holding polluters and government agencies accountable under the law,” as it digs out the real costs of gasohol.

Without even factoring in the fuel required to ship ethanol to blending sites, Pimentel found that it takes about 70 percent more energy to produce ethanol than we get from it. Then, figuring in state and federal subsidies, he found that ethanol costs $2.24 a gallon to produce, compared with 63 cents for gasoline.

Pimentel determined that allocating corn to ethanol production also raises ethical questions: “Abusing our precious croplands to grow corn for an energy-inefficient process that yields low-grade automobile fuel amounts to unsustainable, subsidized food burning.”

And Pimentel chided the U.S. Department of Agriculture for taking planting and yield data only from states with the best soils and productivity. The Department also didn’t fully take into account fossil-fuel expenditure for operation and repair of farm machinery or for production of fertilizers made from natural gas.

What stymies reform? Agricultural communities have built valuable support from the bottom up—from local agricultural communities and regional politicians to U.S. presidents such as Ronald Reagan, Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Donald Trump. The beneficiaries of America’s ethanol addiction have become behemoths that get bigger and hungrier with each feeding.

If President Trump really wants to cut wasteful and inefficient spending, decrease our dependence on foreign oil and prove that he wants America to have “among the very cleanest air and cleanest water on the planet,” he needs to end what now amounts to government-forced gasohol use.

Ted Williams is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. He is a longtime environmental writer.

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For decades, my husband has specialized in producing high-quality health products, from protein or energy powders to supplements with vitamins and custom ingredients. We sold our products in the United States, but as the market became saturated, we exported to Poland, Brazil, Thailand and Australia. Margins were tight, but we paid above-average wages to the four employees we depend on.

A few weeks ago, a Chinese company requested products from us that it was unable to make. Despite the trade war, many Chinese consumers prefer American foods and supplements because they view them as superior in quality. But Trump’s ever-changing tariffs killed the deal—145% tariff coming in, 125% tariff when exported.

That wiped out the profit we needed and seemed certain to put us out of business.

Agriculture in Idaho now faces similar problems of survival, especially because of tariff uncertainty. Economist Brett Wilder of the University of Idaho told Boise State Public Radio: “We’re in this window where people are deciding what crops they’re going to plant. People have to make that decision right now and live with that decision through the rest of the year, even if something changes next week.”

Idaho ranks third in the United States in dairy production and grows two-thirds of sweet corn seed worldwide, along with potatoes, wheat—50% of which is exported—onions, food trout and barley. USDA data reported by the Idaho Farm Bureau Federation show that from 2016 to 2019, Idaho’s agricultural exports grew each year.

But in 2018, Trump added tariffs for China, and China reduced its purchases of American soybeans, corn, and pork, mostly grown in the Midwest. Many farmers lost their land, while others received some of the $23 billion in subsidies that the first Trump administration doled out, courtesy of taxpayers like you and me.

But ask any farmer, and they’ll tell you they’d rather grow food than take welfare.

It’s been hard to keep track of which tariffs are on and which are off, but Trump has eased many tariffs from most countries, including Mexico and Canada, for 90 days. Yet he initially increased tariffs on most Chinese products, causing China to retaliate. Negotiations started up this past weekend, but these latest tariffs need to be reduced substantially before business with China will be rational again.

Even though Mexico and Canada receive the greatest share of Idaho’s farm products, in 2022 China accounted for 8% of Idaho’s agricultural exports, or $231.2 million. Our biggest ag export to China is whey from Idaho’s dairy farms. These new tariffs will hurt.

“The Farm Bureau supports the goals of security and ensuring fair trade, but farmers and rural communities often bear the brunt of tariffs and tariff retaliation,” said Sean Ellis, spokesman for the Idaho Farm Bureau Federation. “We’re hopeful President Trump can limit trade disruptions, and at the very least, make sure farmers who are already operating on thin margins aren’t caught in the crosshairs.”

President Trump has offered varying justifications for imposing tariffs on some 90 countries around the world, now “paused,” but his basic explanation is that they will “bring manufacturing back home.” That will take time. Meanwhile, the world economy has become less stable, and predictions are for much higher prices here at home. I am afraid that from cars to appliances, we will all be shocked at how much more everything will cost.

Meanwhile, I’ve been calling and writing my Idaho members of Congress: Senators Jim Risch and Mike Crapo, and Congressman Mike Simpson, all Republicans.  I ask them to stand up for my family, other Idaho families, and our farmers.

As for my family, without our Idaho-based manufacturing company, three generations of my family will be scrambling to keep our homes. It’s a blow, and it’s no joke to say that many businesspeople are feeling what I can only call “tariffied.”

Crista V. Worthy is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. She writes in Idaho.

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