Pulse of the Land | The Lights Are Dimming

Decisions made quietly in Washington this week will shape what's left of our wild places for the next generation.

May 04, 2026

"The nation behaves well if it treats the natural resources as assets which it must turn over to the next generation increased, and not impaired, in value."

Theodore Roosevelt

This Week’s Take

This week's stories share a single uncomfortable truth: the public lands system is being quietly restructured to serve extraction over the people who use and fund it, and most of it is happening below the radar. Research stations that inform how we manage 193 million acres are closing. Mining companies are being handed a no-notice back door into national forests. A premier trail in Theodore Roosevelt's own backyard is being offered up for oil and gas drilling. And the hunters and anglers who generate more than $1.5 billion annually for conservation are being stripped of the access funding that keeps them in the field, and in the fight. The one piece of good news is a coalition of 60-plus organizations proving that housing advocates and wilderness groups can find common ground, which is exactly the kind of coalition these lands are going to need.

1. Oil and Gas Leases Are Coming for One of America’s Premier Trails and the Park Named for Its Greatest Champion | April-May 2026

The Bureau of Land Management has started the process of selling lease rights to 23 oil and gas parcels in the vicinity of the Maah Daah Hey Trail, nine of which are right on top of it or very close. The trail is a 144-mile singletrack route for hikers, mountain bikers, and horseback riders that winds through the Badlands of western North Dakota, connecting all three units of Theodore Roosevelt National Park. The August 2026 lease sale includes six parcels within five miles of the Theodore Roosevelt Wilderness Area, with some sitting as close as 1.25 miles from the park boundary. Four parcels directly overlap the trail itself.

Why It Matters for Public Lands: The threat to the Maah Daah Hey is more than a local land dispute. It is the clearest example yet of a fundamental reversal in how the federal government values public land, one in which recreation interests, more recently afforded equal footing alongside ranchers, loggers, and energy companies, have effectively been erased by the Trump administration’s aggressive push for oil and gas development. With last summer’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act stripping the BLM of its discretion to protect any area from leasing, few recreation destinations on federal land are safe from the same fate. There is also a deeper structural problem: the Maah Daah Hey Trail is now covered under a 1988 resource management plan written before the trail even existed, meaning there is no current legal framework that even recognizes this place as something worth protecting. The August lease sale date is fixed. If you hike, ride, or care about the land that shaped the president most associated with American conservation, this is the story to watch right now.

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2. The Forest Service Just Closed Three-Quarters of Its Research Stations | Late April 2026

The Forest Service announced plans to close 57 of its 77 research stations, located across 31 states, merging them into a single organization in Fort Collins, Colorado. The closures are part of an agency-wide restructuring that also includes moving the Forest Service headquarters from Washington, D.C. to Salt Lake City and replacing nine regional offices with 15 state-level offices. Many of the stations slated for closure study fire behavior, forecast smoke dispersal, and help inform evacuation decisions. Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz said the move was designed to ensure research “will better align with the priorities of the administration” minerals, recreation, fire management, and active management of forests.

Why It Matters for Public Lands: Forest Service researchers monitor soil, air, and water quality; study how wildfire, invasive species, plant diseases, and climate change are impacting forest ecosystems; and conduct experiments to ensure that public lands remain healthy and productive for years to come. The timing is particularly alarming. Federal agencies expect severe fire conditions to arrive in eastern Washington and eastern Oregon as early as June due to a meager snowpack and early-drying soils. During President Trump’s first term, a similar relocation plan at the Bureau of Land Management prompted more than 87% of the main office’s employees to resign rather than move. There is every reason to expect the same outcome here. When the scientists leave, the institutional knowledge goes with them, and it does not come back.

3. Mining Companies Are Being Offered a No-Review Back Door Into Your National Forest | April 21, 2026

The Forest Service is proposing a new “notice-level operations” concept that would allow mining companies to explore for minerals on up to five acres of national forest land without needing Forest Service approval and without any requirement for public notice. Under current regulations, a company wanting to explore for minerals must prepare and submit a plan of operations, which the Forest Service evaluates for environmental impacts while seeking public input. The public comment period on the proposed rule closed April 21.

Why It Matters for Public Lands: If mining companies don’t have to submit plans, conduct environmental reviews, or notify the public, they will be more likely to go on proverbial fishing expeditions for future mines in national forests. The public would be kept in the dark about how their lands and resources are being used until it’s too late to object. This proposal has received almost no national coverage. Set alongside the NEPA overhaul and research station closures, it represents a third layer of the same strategy. Remove the science, remove the notice, then remove the last procedural guardrail. Comments submitted during the window are now part of the legal record and will matter if this goes to court.

4. The 2026 Farm Bill Passed the House And Public Hunting Access Got Left Behind | April 30, 2026

The House passed the Farm, Food, and National Security Act of 2026 on April 30 by a 224-200 vote. The bill reauthorizes the Conservation Reserve Program for five years, creates a new Forest Conservation Easement Program, and includes measures to improve watershed health. But there is a significant omission buried in the fine print. The Voluntary Public Access and Habitat Incentive Program (VPA-HIP), which pays landowners to open private land to public hunting and fishing, received no new mandatory funding.

Why It Matters for Public Lands: The VPA-HIP program is one of the most direct tools in existence for expanding hunting and fishing access for ordinary Americans. Not trophy ranchers, not private lease clubs, but everyday hunters and anglers who need somewhere to go. This matters beyond recreation. Hunters and anglers are the single largest source of dedicated conservation funding in the country, generating billions annually through license fees and excise taxes on equipment. Money that funds habitat restoration and land access programs that benefit every public land user. Cutting off their access doesn't just lose their use of the land, it loses their voice and their dollars from the conservation equation. Zeroing out VPA-HIP's mandatory funding while loudly claiming to support sportsmen is exactly the kind of betrayal that gets lost inside a 1,000-page bill. The bill now heads to the Senate, where policy disagreements are expected to extend the process. Hunters and anglers should contact their senators now and ask specifically about VPA-HIP funding before the Senate version is locked

5. Conservation and Housing Groups Agree: Selling Public Lands Won’t Fix the Housing Crisis | April 30, 2026

More than 60 conservation and affordable housing organizations jointly published “Shared Ground,” a policy paper arguing that the housing crisis is “fundamentally a policy and investment challenge, not the result of a simple shortage of land,” pointing to alternatives like preserving existing affordable housing, building on vacant land within neighborhoods, and zoning reform. The Idaho Conservation League’s public lands director warned that “proposals to sell off large tracts of public lands don’t meet affordable housing needs or public desires to protect open space.”

Why It Matters for Public Lands: Using housing as political cover for public land divestiture is one of the most effective rhetorical frames in play right now, because it forces conservationists into the appearance of opposing affordable housing. This coalition is calling that framing out directly, and the breadth of it. Affordable housing advocates, hunting organizations, wilderness groups, and tribal coalitions finding common ground is the most significant development in public lands politics in years. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum has his own plan to use federal land for housing but has made no public moves since announcing it more than a year ago. Expect the housing argument to return. The coalition building against it is worth

Thank you for reading! Wild places don’t come back. Conservation Current tracks the policies, projects, and decisions eating away at America’s public lands, and holds the energy industry accountable when it takes the easy path over the right one. I believe in cleaner energy, it just has to be sited properly.

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Check out The Conservation Current Public Land Policy Tracker surfaces the five most impactful open comment periods and regulatory actions on federal public lands. Ranked by scale, irreversibility, and deadline urgency. Updated weekly. Always verify deadlines at regulations.gov before submitting.

Public Land Policy Tracker

Sources:

Story 1 - Oil & Gas Leasing / Maah Daah Hey Trail / Theodore Roosevelt National Park