This is an automatically generated transcript. Please excuse spelling and grammar errors.
Aaron: Welcome to the Landscape, your show about America’s parks and public lands, and the fight to keep ’em that way. I’m Aaron Weiss with the Center for Western Priorities in Denver.
Kate: And I’m Kate Groetzinger in Salt Lake City. Today on the podcast we’ve got a conversation with photographer and author Josh Jackson.
Jackson has dedicated a big part of his life to advocating for what he calls the leftover or forgotten lands, otherwise known as BLM Lands. But before we get to that, let’s do the news.
Aaron: Well, you have probably heard by now, but Utah Senator Mike Lee is hellbent on selling off as much public land as possible through the budget reconciliation process.
His first attempt would’ve made over 250 million acres of forest service and BLM land available for sale to private developers. That was so unpopular. It sparked a backlash among far right influencers. And progressive influencers. It was panned by conservatives in Fox News and The Daily Caller, as well as conservation groups, of course.
Well, that version got tossed out by the Senate parliamentarian. Mike Lee backed off it anyway, and then came right back with a whittled down version that would make Bureau of Land Management lands within five miles of a “population center” eligible for sale to developers with no affordability or density restrictions.
He didn’t even bother to define what a population center was. So, I mean, two shacks in the middle of the woods. Sure. Why not call that a population center? Uh, the good news is that it looks like folks aren’t falling for this version of it either. At least five Republicans in the house, including former interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, are already saying they will not vote for the reconciliation bill.
If the land selloff stays in it, that would be enough to tank the bill in the house. But first it’s gotta get past the Senate. As of right now, we are taping this just before 11:00 AM Mountain time on Friday, June 27th. It’s not clear. What’s gonna be in the final version of the Senate bill? It’s not clear if the Senate is gonna try to pass something that the house can immediately pass so everyone can go home for the July 4th holiday.
It’s not clear if this new Mike Lee provision would pass muster with the parliamentarian. I. We don’t know. It’s a big black box right now, and the fact that there is no intel coming out on what’s gonna be in this final bill, uh, is a pretty clear sign that there is some chaos going on on the Republican side of Congress. So all we can say is stay tuned.
Kate: In other news, USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins announced that the Trump administration is repealing the 2001 roadless rule, which currently protects over 50 million acres of national forest land from logging and road construction. Rollins is spinning this as an effort to improve forest health and reduce wildfire risk, but that’s bs.
This is actually a huge threat to Western water quality and will increase wildfire risk. As we’ve discussed on this podcast, the logging industry is not interested in the small trees and underbrush that make forests more likely to burn. They want to clear cut forests, which increases climate change and makes those forests more likely to burn in the future when they grow back.
Also, at least. 85% of wildfires are started by humans according to the US Forest Service, so building more roads into our forests will only increase the risk of wildfires. The only good news here is that the state-level roadless world protections in Colorado and Idaho will remain in place. Those are agreements the states negotiated with the Forest Service that allow some logging, but still protect millions of acres of forest land.
Our guest today is Josh Jackson, writer, photographer, adventurer, and the man behind the Forgotten Lands Project Instagram account. Josh has a book out in July called The Enduring Wild that beautifully captures and explores the variety and fastness of California’s public lands with a particular focus on lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management.
Josh, thanks for joining me.
Josh: Thanks for having me. I’m a big fan of the pod, and it’s great to be here.
Kate: Awesome. So the basic conceit of your book and your Instagram account is that in order to protect BLM lands and ensure they remain public, people need to know about them. Of course, there’s currently a plot underway to sell off millions of acres of BLM managed lands.
So your book really is dropping at just the right time. What was your reaction when you first heard about the proposal from the house to sell off BLM lands in Utah and Nevada?
Josh: My first reaction was to grab my camera, grab my tent, throw ’em in the car, and get out to see these places. You know, there were so many, so many talks about how many acres were in the proposed sell off, but no one was really documenting or telling us what these landscapes looked like, where exactly they were.
So I actually talked to one of your colleagues, Aaron. Got some maps and then figured out exactly where all those landscapes were in Nevada and Utah. Dropped some pins on my On-x off-road map and hit the road. Within a couple of weeks, went out. I spent most of my time in Pershing County, Nevada, where the 365,000 acres of proposed selloffs were.
It’s kind of the highest concentration of public land in Northern Nevada. And so. Spent three days up there camping, photographing these landscapes, writing about them, really documenting what we stand to lose. Um, of course, like at the last while I was actually there, I came back into reception after spending a few nights out in the woods and my phone had blown up with message after message, like, Hey, the proposed sell off is out of the package and.
You know, I was actually on my way to Utah, and so instead of going to Utah, I actually came back home, um, save a little bit of time and money.
Kate: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Gas. Um, yeah, exactly. Well, you know, uh, the selloff is back in Yes. Um, even bigger this time. So your time was not spent in vain.
Josh: Yeah, exactly. You know, in Nevada it was interesting.
In Pershing County, I was blown away by not just the scenic beauty of the lands, but also the biodiversity that they provided. I mean, we saw pronghorn antelope, we saw wildflowers, badgers, I mean animals that I wouldn’t have imagined seeing in Northern Nevada. It was pretty shocking. So, you know, even the, though, those lands up, there are checkerboarded lands and they’re really complex, uh, they’re still accessible, still wild, still open to hunting, camping, hiking, and all of the above.
And so. I mean, if that’s a microcosm or a macrocosm, I guess at 365,000 acres of the other lands that are now in the new proposed sell off, uh, we have a lot to lose.
Kate: Hmm. So speaking of losing BLM lands, you write in your book that BLM lands lack the types of stories that national parks have. What do you mean by that and why does that matter?
Josh: It matters because we simply don’t have enough people who love and engage with our BLM lands. You know, not enough people understand them or especially have a relationship with these places. You know, like while Ken Burns is out making these beautiful documentaries about our national parks, you know, America’s best idea.
And our most prominent photographers and writers from around the world are kind of flocking to places like Yellowstone and Yosemite and Joshua Tree and Acadia, you know, telling the story of these landscapes and photos and words. There’s just almost no one writing and photo taking photos of these BLM lands.
They’re, they’re less known, less understood, and, and also the least protected. And so when these BLM Lands are facing threats from privatization to overgrazing, unchecked development, we just don’t have enough people who have developed a place attachment with these landscapes and, and wanna stand up for them.
I mean, we saw this example play out in February when cuts came down to the National Park Service. Within two weeks, on March 1st, 20,000 people were protesting at 145. Park units around the country. I mean, it’s, it’s, and they’re, they’re out there because they’ve all developed this significant bond with these national parks.
And they want to see them protected. They want to see the, the, the, they wanna uh, they wanna see them protected and they also want, you know, funding to happen and they want these staff to. Cuts to be rescinded. So the problem is, you know, like I organized a protest for BLM lands out in the Mojave Desert, and we had 25 people show up, 25 people who were dedicated and excited.
But that was it. And I couldn’t, from all of my research, I couldn’t find anyone else who led a protest for the BLM, which also faced the exact same amount of cuts. They lost a thousand people. Staff is being reduced by 40%. They’re losing 40% of their funding from, you know what? They’re already critically underfunded and understaffed.
So we just simply don’t have enough people who have developed meaningful relationships with BLM lands and want to protect them.
Kate: So you set off on a personal journey to do that. Um, gosh, 15, 20 years ago. 15, 10, 10 years ago. Yeah. I don’t wanna age you. Um, so I’m gonna, um, just for our listeners, um, mention that you, you live in Los Angeles, right?
Yep. And so you decided to visit all of the BLM lands in California. Um, how did you first find out about BLM lands? You, you say in the book, you didn’t even know they existed, so what was your introduction?
Josh: Yeah, it’s funny ’cause I’ve been an avid outdoor enthusiast my whole life. I grew up in Michigan, camping, hiking.
I mean, it’s just been such a big part of my life and I moved out to the west 20 years ago. And even after living here for 10 years, I still had never heard of BLM Land before, and it was in 2015. We had a 5-year-old and a 2-year-old at the time with a newborn baby at home. And my older two kids and I were pretty desperate to get outta the house and.
I looked for available campgrounds within two or three hours of Los Angeles. You know, the state parks, national parks that I knew about and I had camped out a lot before and they were obviously booked solid as everything outside of LA is. And I was telling this to my friend and he said, oh, why don’t you camp on some BLM land?
I think it’s free and there’s no reservations. Of course, to which I replied, where is this magical place that you speak of? Um, that was, that was honestly the very first time in 2015 that I had ever heard of the term BLM land. And within a few hours I went on the, the, the BLM website, which felt like going to the pixelated domains of dial up.
It’s pretty old school. Um, and it,
Kate: And it’s still like that? Yeah.
Josh: It’s hard to navigate. The pictures are, you know, like 80 kilobytes. They, you can’t really get, get much information. Um, but it’s a starting point and I found a place called the Trona Pinnacles out in the middle of the Mojave Desert, and I loaded up my.
Older two kids in our Honda element with camping gear. And we headed out there and we camped among these two foot, you know, two, two foot spires that looked like kind of drip sandcastles you’d make at the beach. And then all it’s surrounded by these really bouncy salt flats. So my kids and I were just running and hiking and climbing, and it felt like they said it was like jumping on a trampoline, walking through these landscapes, and it was just this really other worldly landscape that represented this idea of these BLM lands that I knew nothing about. And it really, really started an obsession. I wished I could have gotten out there back then, but with three kids under the age of six at that point. We kept camping a lot in state parks and national parks.
Those are easily the most accessible. So I just started reading everything I could, like trying to pour a foundation of understanding the history of BLM lands, where they came from, how they exist, where they are, and what kind of landscapes they contained. So that was really the start of this whole journey for me. It was back in 2015.
Kate: And at what point did you realize, Like you wanted to start an Instagram account and then eventually write a book and sort of like when, when did it click for you that you needed to tell those stories to the public and not just experience them yourself?
Josh: Yeah. Well, initially what compelled me was simply the desire for exploring new landscapes, like as an avid outdoor enthusiast, I’d kind of, and lived here for, for 15, 10, 15 years. At that point, I’d kind of covered as much of California as I thought was even possible, like. National Parks, Eastern Sierra National Forest State Parks, everything along the coastline. I mean, California’s a big place and, and we had spent a lot of time getting out there.
And so initially it was just this, oh, I get to explore a whole new landscape with my family and friends. Like, let’s get out there and see these places. But then as I started reading about them, uh, you know, historians often refer to these landscapes as the leftover lands. These 245 million acres that we have across the west,
Kate: historians and Mike Lee.
Josh: Yeah. And Mike Lee. The leftover lands, um, or the lands, nobody wanted. It was mm-hmm. These were landscapes that weren’t picked up during the Homestead Act. They weren’t picked up by railroads, developers, land barons. They weren’t even picked up by the other federal land agencies. Like they weren’t scenic enough for the national parks. They weren’t forested enough for the National Forest, and they weren’t full of life enough for the Fish and Wildlife Service. Um, so. I started thinking about these lands as the scrappy underdogs of our federal public lands that, you know, underdogs need a good story. They need somebody to stand up for them.
I also was learning at the same time about the privatization and land transfer movements that wish to dispose of these landscapes or sell ’em off to the highest bidder or transfer them to the states where they exist, where they, you know, his history showed us they eventually get sold off anyway. So it was kind of that mix of being drawn to their underdog nature while also learning about all the threats that they face in their 80 years of existence.
So it compelled me not just to now want to explore these places, kind of like for myself and my friends and family, but I wanted to play a small part in figuring out how we’re gonna protect these lands.
Kate: I wanna go back to something you mentioned earlier. You talked about place attachment. What does that mean and how do you form it?
Josh: So environmental in, in environmental psychology circles, the emotional bond between person and place is known as place attachment. And it’s this theory that’s sort of grown over the last two or three decades that suggests that people who develop significant relationships with an environment experience a greater sense of wellbeing.
Belonging and identity. And so our bonds with nature are often formed with repeated visits. You know, like my mom and dad, they’re from Indiana, but they have this deep immersive attachment to Yosemite National Park. They kind of make an annual pilgrimage out there. For the last 20 years and they, it just as they get these repeated visits, they just fall more and more in love with the landscape.
You know, for other people it’s like coming face to face with wildlife or a really interesting weekend camping with their friends where they bonded over, you know, campfires and hiking. Some people it’s an immersive experience, like hiking the Pacific Crest Trail or the Appalachian Trail, you know, like a long distance thing.
But it’s, they’re all of these experiences that are formed with a place. As we build that relationship, this two-way relationship, I should say, that it forms these bonds and then those bonds, of course, make you want to protect these places. Like those 20,000 people that showed up to protest the National Park firings back on March 1st. Those were people who had developed relationships with those lands.
Kate: Totally. So you took, um, how many campaign trips? Like a hundred. More.
Josh: Yeah. Oh my God, I think I’m up to like 60 individual trips, whether it was somewhere, two days, somewhere, five days, somewhere a week. Um, yeah, I’ve camped over a hundred nights now, but I think I’ve walked almost 500 miles just on BLM land over the last five years.
Kate: Wow.
Josh: So for me, I mean, going back to your question, yeah. I started going out to these landscapes, taking photos. I was writing about them. Thinking that I had this, like maybe there, there’s a book here. You know? ’cause once I got out there, it changed my entire thinking really rapidly because I just couldn’t believe how beautiful the landscapes were.
You know, up until 2020, I had really just read about these places. I had the Trona Pinnacles trip. I had done a ton of research and writing and, and reading. But I hadn’t ever actually gone out there. But once I started going out there, I mean, it changed the game for me. I started thinking like, wow, there.
If these landscapes need it to have a story told about them, maybe a book is out there. Maybe I’ve always been a writer, always been a photographer. Maybe like could kind of. Put those two passions together, write a book, and so I was already going out there maybe a year after I started going out there. I thought maybe I’ll document some of these places on Instagram to see if other people might be interested in learning about these places.
That’s kind of when it goes, how it goes back to, to starting something on Instagram. I’d already been doing it for a year before then, or two years, and then, um, soon after. Uh, I sent proposals out to publishers and was really fortunate to sign a deal with Heyday Books, who’s an independent nonprofit publisher here in the Bay Area in California.
Kate: So I want to go back to this concept of story and this idea that these lands were just not good enough to be protected or, um, you know, um, preserved. Is that what you found when you went out there? Like it’s, it seems like in fact there are incredibly scenic areas and they actually are filled with biodiversity.
Um, do, do you have any places that really stick out to you in your mind where you’re like, oh, this is not just leftover.
Josh : Yeah, I mean, honestly my first trips, ’cause I, because I live in Los Angeles, the closest BLM to me is really all that BLM land in the Mojave and Colorado deserts of Southern California.
And so those were my initial trips. I mean, I wouldn’t say it took very long. My first trip was to a place called Rainbow Basin, which I’ve gone back to several times now. But even then, on that first trip I sort of. I hadn’t ever really been a desert rat. You know, I’d spent a lot of my time in, in mountains and forest and, and rivers and, and oceans and, and so the desert was like a wake up call for me.
And if there’s any place that sort of represents what people imagine as leftover lands, it’s these desert lands. You know, I always, I would drive to Joshua Tree or Death Valley. Or, you know, drive east towards, back to where I grew up, and I always thought of these lands as kind of the, the drive by desert, like just mountains and shrubs on repeat, you know, like nothing to see, nothing’s going on.
There’s from the highways and freeways of, of, of the west, you sort of see like dilapidated houses and structures that it looked like they’ve been abandoned for 25 years. And so, yeah, it, that first trip I remember thinking like, what. Are these landscapes? Are they left over for a reason? You know, which is a question that seems ludicrous now.
But I had taken, uh, Terry Tempest Williams book with me called Refuge, and she writes this beautiful passage in, in the book. She says, if the desert is holy, it is because it is a forgotten place that allows us to remember the sacred. Perhaps that is why every pilgrimage to the desert is a pilgrimage to the self.
And so I kind of carried those sentiments with me as on those early desert trips. And, you know, it didn’t take long for the desert to, to make itself known. Known. And, and like the rich biodiversity that’s there and the scenic beauty and the, and everything I had kind of imagined as the drive by desert or the leftover lands were suddenly.
More beautiful than I could have imagined and full of life. And yeah, those initial trips was when I started finding that these lands, uh, shouldn’t really be considered leftover. There’s a lot happening here, you know, and then of course when you go to the rest of the state, California’s this, I mean, we have a temporary rainforest from Desert High Altitude.
Sagebrush planes in the eastern part of California. We have the largest intact grassland in the Carrizo plane. I mean, we’ve got it all here. Just in this one state, there’s 15 million acres of BLM land just in California. So yeah, it might have taken one trip for me to feel like, oh, there’s a lot going on here.
They’re, they’re not, uh, leftover for any reason, except for we just got. They’re just here now.
Kate: Totally. And, um, yeah, I mean you visited some beautiful places like the King Range and I forget, what was the name of the last wilderness area you went to? I was just trying to look it up.
Josh: Oh yeah, the Elkhorn Ridge Wilderness, which is sort of up on the south fork of the Eel River watershed. The South fork of the river kind of flows right through. It’s a really small wilderness area. I think it’s like 10,000 acres, but it’s up in that northwest corridor of California. We’ve got wild and scenic rivers here. We’ve got sagebrush planes, grasslands, and high altitude mountains.
I mean, we have it all just, I mean, across the west, but especially here in California.
Kate: So in your book you say the balance between extraction and conservation on PLMs is out of whack. Did you, what do you mean by that? And, did you experience that on any of these trips? Firsthand.
Josh: Yeah. You know, it’s interesting. We have 245 million acres of BLM land across the west, but only 37 million acres or 15% are managed primarily for conservation for, you know, where conservation of wildlife, preserving indigenous stories. Protecting clean air and clean water have a greater emphasis than on grazing and extraction, but that’s only 15%.
So in 1976, I’m sure most of your listeners are familiar with FLPMA, the Federal Land Policy Management Act. It was the first time in history when they were mandated by Congress to consider conservation and recreation, kind of on equal footing with grazing and extraction. That was 50 years ago next year.
That’s 50 years ago. And so it’s what should be, you know, closer to 50-50 is 85-15. And as your listeners know too, like when, uh, on many of those national conservation lands, of those 37 million acres, existing grazing and mining rights are still allowed. So even when you’re in a national monument or in some wilderness like study areas.
You still see evidence and scars of mining. You still see, I mean, there’s still cows in the King Range, a national conservation area. There’s still, I mean, it’s, it’s wild to, to see out there, but you know, there’s these, there’s these big kind of blood, I would call ’em blood threats, where it’s like the land sale that we’re currently in the middle of, there’s these.
Massive threats where we could lose public lands that are owned by all of us at, at like at any moment. Then there’s these lesser threats that feel like, which are often in the form of, of grazing and extraction, where we still own these public lands together and we can still go out there and we can, you know, I’ve spent so many miles walking right next to cows that are out there.
It’s not the threat of losing them altogether, but those cows are still denuding and degrading the biodiversity that’s out on these lands. And we could, you know, we could have a whole podcast episode about grazing on public lands. But, um, yeah, so I have, I have been that, that kind of, that imbalance that it still exists today are the reason why we need more national monuments.
Why? ’cause that’s the easiest way to protect BLM land. And add to that the imbalance that we have now between 85 and 15%. So that’s the imbalance. And also, yes, I definitely experienced the mining and grazing all over California. We have thousands and thousands of abandoned mines in California. We have active mines, uh, grazing from like the shores of the King Range national conservation area to the Eastern Sierra, to Carrizo Plain kind of. It’s hard to only be in the desert outside of a few abandoned mines. Are you in a place where that feels a little bit more isolated from the extraction part of BLM land?
Kate: One part of the book that I really loved was the history of, um, the first NCA national Conservation area, which is the King Range, I think, if I remember correctly. And you talk about, um, you go into the history of Berryessa National Monument. So we kind of covered the NCA, but tell me about the creation of the Berryessa National Monument. You used a term that I hadn’t heard before called the Radical Center to sort of describe the coalition that came together and, and, um, resulted in this monument designation that was.
At the time, just not controversial, which, and I, and I think probably Berryessa is still, not to imply that it is controversial now, but it was just sort of like everyone actually just agreed and it went really well. What does the Radical Center mean and how did it work in the case of Berryessa National Monument?
Josh: Yeah. I first discovered the term in a wonderful book called Working Wilderness. Which is this deep dive on the ranching community and the Malai borderlands, which kind of exists between New Mexico, Arizona, and and, and Mexico. And then Randall Wilson has another wonderful book called America’s Public Lands, and he kind of builds on this idea.
He defines the Radical Center as the idea that compromise represents an audacious but critical approach to problem solving in the age of zero sum politics. And so in the book, I. Go. I kind of did my own deep dive on the Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monument, because the more I read about it, it did seem exactly like what you’re saying.
It felt like there was less controversy around that monument than most of the other monuments that have been designated in the last 20 years. And I wanted to, to understand how that happened. And so I went up there. I’ve been up there many times now, but I went up there to interview a couple of the key players.
Andrew folks and Bob Schneider, who were a part of design, getting that designation across the finish line and the story they weaved over. You know, a day of wandering and hiking around the monument was pretty incredible. It’s something like it stayed with me as a, especially as you know, we looked to get noon monuments designated.
The way to do it is to incorporate as many of the local community as you can, and it takes a long, long time. Like them, their journey was 12 years long, so they were building relationships with ranchers that surrounded the monument, who initially were really opposed even to the idea of it. Um, but you know, as we mentioned earlier, ranchers who own existing leases within the monument, they get to keep those leases.
So they built these relationship monuments. They built relationships with a guy named Don Amador, who was the big, he was like the state representative for the OHV community. I mean, they spent so many meetings, coffees together, figuring out plans of. Which OHB would be allowed in the monument, which would be, you know, which wouldn’t be allowed or where it would get cut off.
Um, they interviewed local businesses, trails, and education centers. I mean, they brought as many people into the fold, like, let’s all dialogue together about this. It took a long time, but by the end of it, you know, there were 900 people at Cowboy Camp where the designation ceremony took place back in 2015.
I mean, you had OHV community people, you had ranchers, you had equestrian users with their horses. I mean, there’s this photo of, I think it was Sally Jewel, who was the interior secretary at the time, riding on the back of an OHV rig through the monument. I mean, stuff that would be unheard of today, but they brought everyone together.
It took a long time. There was compromise. Like the idea of the radical center is this idea that you’d sometimes need compromise to achieve a really big result. And after 12 years they were able to achieve that result. And I mean we even added to ESA last year with the addition of Malik Loic, which is a really sacred indigenous area, um, just adjacent to the monument.
So. You know, I don’t think we can ever have a hundred percent consensus like we maybe did in the seventies when like, you know, the Wilderness Act was passed in 64, but all the environmental acts in the sixties and seventies where we, they’re basically unanimous. I think Berryessa is one of those examples of near unanimous consent for wanting to protect these lands while also allowing room for existing ranching rights and some OHV, along with hiking and camping.
Kate: So staying on the topic of protecting BLM lands, um, you talk, you say pretty clearly in the book that your goal is to get more people interested in these places, visiting these places. Um, at some parts the book almost reads like a guidebook. You kind of give tips on how to find BLM lands. Um, so this is sort of a two part question, but the first is, mm-hmm.
How do you get more people to visit BLM lands? And the second part is what about the impacts of recreation? Is that something you think about or worry about? And where does that fall? Um, sort of in this balance of getting more people out to visit the lands and, but also protecting them.
Josh: Yeah, I, I think it’s a great question.
You know, for me, I’ve been trying to get more people out there simply by telling the story of these landscapes through words and images. So, you know, the book, I get to do a lot better job of that because you can give a deep dive. The book’s full of beautiful images from all of my travels around California.
Um, but I, I really like to, and I still keep up with social media. Um, and I have a newsletter that I write every Sunday about these landscapes as well. I try to really give the view from 5,000 feet, so to speak, so I’m not highlighting things like a hot spring or a perfect disperse camping site or GPS coordinates.
I’m saying, oh, this is the Carrizo Plain National Monument. Here is some interesting history about this monument. Here’s some interesting campgrounds and some trails, but like. I really just want to paint a picture that helps people find their own starting point. You know, for me, some of the magic in the beginning was simply finding how to figure out where these places are and how to access them.
And so for me, that magic of discovery and exploration, I want to. I hope people, I wanna instill that in people. So I don’t wanna give GPS coordinates or driving directions. I want to give a view from 5,000 feet that sort of nudges people to find their own starting place to visit these places. Um, you know, I also lead weekend camping trips every other month with the Usal project, which is based in Los Angeles.
Their mission is to not only build community, but introduce urbanites to. The natural world. And so I lead these really immersive camping trips a lot of times to BLM lands. So we’re actually out there together learning about what sustainable recreation looks like in, in, in, in, in real time, while also introducing people to the, to the magic and joys of, of BLM lands.
It’s a good question. I’ve thought a lot about that, that delicate balance between recreation and conservation. You know, we’ve all been to like hot springs that have blown up on social media and like, they’re just devastated with trash. And like, there’s, there’s the hot springs themselves that have problems.
It’s interesting that in the last five years of highlighting these places, I still really haven’t seen many spots, at least in California, where this is happening in a negative impact. You know, the Alabama Hills are a really popular BLM spot in the Eastern Sierra and that was the amount of disperse, camping, and the sheer amount of places people were kind of going. Because you could camp anywhere, it was having an impact on the flora and fauna that were existing there. And so the BLM came in with indigenous tribes in the area and they came up with a plan. So now there’s only like 52 places you can camp in there and the rest are still open to day use for hiking and stuff, but you just can’t camp there.
And we’ve already seen signs where the landscape is slowly coming back to life. I’ve also seen hot springs where that’s happening. Um, and you know, the BLM, they’re critically underfunded and understaffed, so bathrooms don’t get pit toilets, you know, don’t get, uh, cleaned as, as fast as, as they can. They, they need to be.
But overall, you know, we have, I think, 66 campgrounds in California alone, hundreds of campgrounds at BLM across the west and. Even after all these years of highlighting these landscapes, you know, I’ve never ever had a problem. I’ve never not shown up to a campground and easily found a spot.
Usually I’m the only one there, in fact.
Kate: Wow.
Josh: Um, yeah, it’s pretty crazy.
Kate: It is crazy. And it’s, um, just a reminder that there’s so much land out there, you know, there’s enough for everyone if we just use it wisely.
Josh: Yeah. I mean, if you educate yourself and, and there. 245 million acres is a lot of land.
Like if, if I always tell people, if you’re willing to, if, if you’re willing and able to walk one mile from the, the trailhead or the, or a parking lot or a [00:36:00] campground, you on BLM land, at least you will, you’ll often find yourself in with. So a lot of solitude. I do think it’s worth mentioning. If, maybe we’ll get to this later, but like if people want to get out there, the, you know, the best ways to figure out how to get out there.
Kate: Yeah, yeah. Please tell us your tips.
Josh: I mean, you could start with the BLM website, which is pretty old fashioned and old school. It’s, it’s like, it kind of gives its own version of the 5,000 feet of a landscape. Um, but you could start with the BLM website. For me, I would go from there to reading blogs and, you know, trail summit reports.
I’d go to AllTrails. There’s hardly ever any trails on BLM land, but sometimes they do exist and that’s a good place to find a good starting point. Um, like I said, there’s hundreds of campgrounds and BLM land across the west. There are all no reservations, so you can walk up to all of them and get a spot.
They’re usually free to like $10 a night. So they’re really affordable and they also have, you know, existing infrastructure, like shade structures, pit toilets, you know, fire rings. National monuments often have more infrastructure as well built into them. So I would say for people that wanna start, they’re, they’re exploring BLM lands, look for campgrounds, look for trails, use the BLM website.
I would sort of put together all of this information. Let’s say I had a three day trip ahead of me. I’d put it all into this rough itinerary. Then I would actually call the local BLM field office. I would ask them, Hey, what are the road conditions like? I don’t have a four wheel drive rig.
I either have my two wheel drive Prius or like an old Highlander. That’s what I’m rolling out there with, which is what most people are. In fact, everywhere I went for the book, I never once went anywhere that required four wheel drive. But yeah, call the field office that you’re going to.
Every BLM field office has been really helpful. What are the road conditions like? Are there fire restrictions in place right now? Um, anything else I should know? And they, they would, they were always happy to answer any questions I might have. Um, and don’t forget water sunscreen. Um, I don’t know if your audience is familiar with the app called On-x.
But the On-x off-road app, even if you’re driving a two-wheel drive vehicle, is so important to use out there because you can download offline maps before you go to a place that won’t likely have self reception. That way you’re never lost. You can kind of always know where you are on the map. It also does an amazing job of telling you what land you’re on.
Like I, I didn’t want to take any photos for the book where I was standing on national forest land or I accidentally walked onto private property or I was on like state parkland but didn’t know it. So I could always use Onyx to sort of pinpoint exactly make sure I was on BLM land. And it, you know, you can get these really interesting satellite views that prevent you from ever getting lost, whether you’re driving or hiking.
Kate: That’s awesome. I’m gonna add one more tip. You mentioned those fees that are usually like 10 bucks, five bucks per person, whatever. Um, bring cash or check because
Josh: Yes. Great. There’s
Kate: no Venmo out, no. On BLM lands, um, no
Josh: Venmo or credit card machines like you’ll find in the national parks.
Kate: That’s right, that’s right. They don’t take card. So. Where are you headed next? What, what can people expect if they start to follow you? Where will your adventures take you? This summer
Josh: I’m going to, uh, Nevada. The next book will take place in Nevada. So we’re in talks right now to write another book and photograph another book, uh, that follows this one.
So the next one will be in Nevada. It’s really, talk about a forgotten place. You know, Nevada’s people I think kind of write off Nevada or it’s like the drive by state if you’re going east or to, to Utah or Colorado or if you’re coming west to California or, uh, the, the coast. Uh, and you know, there, Nevada, if you were to parachute into Nevada, there’s a 67% chance you’re gonna land on BLM land.
It’s full of BLM land. I mean there’s mountains to the desert, to Red Rock Canyon. And so, uh, that’s where, I mean, I’m still going on to a lot of places in the west, but Nevada’s gonna be where my focus is. And with all these land sales that are proposed right now, we need to document these places that are on the chopping block. People need to know what is at stake.
Kate: Absolutely. That’s good to hear. I think Nevada BLM lands are definitely in need of a rebrand, so I’m glad you’re on the job.
Josh: There’s a great story to tell there, and I wanna, I want to be a part of telling it. Um, if you’re looking to get out there yourself or if, you know, if you’re just looking for inspiration, I think.
The book and my newsletter is a great starting point. You know, Wallace Stegner once said, we simply need that wild country available to us, even if we never do more than drive to its edge and look in, it can be a means of reassuring ourselves as sanity, as creatures, our ourselves of our sanity as creatures.
You know, it’s like a startling statement about the power of just simply a view and. I hope the book and the newsletter and the social media feels kind of like that. Like even if you can’t get to these places, it feels like driving to the edge of BLM lands, taking a deep breath and, and having a good look around.
Kate: Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Josh. Um, we’re gonna leave it here today. Josh Jackson, author of The Enduring Wild. Thank you again for joining me.
Josh: Oh, thanks for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here.
Kate: If you want to follow along as Josh visits more BLM lands across the west, you’ve got some options. You can sign up for his newsletter, the Forgotten Lands Project. You can follow him on Instagram at the Forgotten Lands Project and look for his upcoming book Tour Dates Across California and go by his book The Enduring Wild, which is actually shipping out right now.
I’ll drop links to all of those in the show notes.
Aaron: And that is almost all for today, but we’ve got some exciting news, which is that we are also going on tour this summer. We are cooking up a multi-state road trip in August to bring together public land lovers and talk about how we can push back against attacks on our national parks, monuments, and of course.
Our beloved BLM lands to get on the invite list and find out where we’re going. Go follow Keep Parks public on Instagram and sign up for email updates. We’ll put links in the show notes for all of that as well.
Kate: Thanks again to Josh for his time in tireless advocacy for BLM Lands, and thank you for listening to The Landscape.