Ranger Walt Wants YOU for the NPS

Former Chief Ranger of the National Park Service Walt Dabney spent a long career pulling climbers off of Mount Rainier, counting alligators around the Everglades, keeping the gates open in Southern Utah, and otherwise having great adventures in public service around the national park system. He takes us deep, deep down in the weeds on the different tasks rangers do across the parks, how those need to change, what resources they need, and all the rest. If you don't have an inkling of a craving to get out and join the rangers by the end of this episode, I've failed as an interviewer! Follow Walt's work at https://americaspublicland.com/home.

You're listening to Match My Mountains hosted by Luke Nathan Phillips.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hello everyone, you are listening to Match My Mountains, a show about conservation and history, and conservation history. Hold on one second. Uh sorry, it looked like it was set up for a live stream there, not a podcast, but I am turning that off right now. Okay, I'll say we're gonna need to restart. You are listening to Match My Mountains, a show about conservation and history, and conservation history, and the history of conservation, and everything else in between, and about all the various ways that those uh affect and are important to many, many, many other aspects of our lives as individuals and as a society. Uh we've been talking about some different concepts in conservation, but we've also been bringing on uh guests who have spent their whole lives and careers working on this stuff. And today I am very, very pleased and proud to say that we have a fantastic guest joining us. His name is Walt Dabney. He has had a very, very long career in the National Park Service and then in the Texas State Park System, done a lot of really interesting work in that. He's been superintendent for some major national parks and was the chief ranger of the national parks in Washington, D.C. for some time. Uh he recently has gotten into um advocacy and education on the American public land system as a whole, too, which we will talk about at some point. Um but Walt's been doing some great work. He's uh very well renowned inside the Park Service alumni community, and I'm pleased and privileged to have him on the show. Walt, welcome.

SPEAKER_00 1:46

Thank you, Luke. Good to be with you today. It's snowing in Buena Vista, Colorado.

SPEAKER_01 1:52

I'm uh I'm glad to see it. Can you see uh Mount Princeton under a heavy layer of snow?

SPEAKER_00 1:57

I can't see Mount Princeton now, and I hope I can't see it for a while because I hope it's buried, because we had a terrible winter.

SPEAKER_01 2:06

For those who are not aware, the Colorado River and other major watersheds in the West rely on snow melt. And uh Walt is right there at the front lines of that river and they're watching it all the time. And uh I hope um for all of our sake that uh that it works out a little bit more um more watery this year. Uh Walt, can you tell us all first about um your career in uh in conservation and public lands? You bet.

SPEAKER_00 2:37

I uh I grew up in Texas, uh a land a state that has very little public land. It has some parks and is building some good ones now, but uh uh second most populo state in the nation and uh not nearly adequate parks and open and public land available. I went to Texas AM, got a degree in recreation and park administration, got uh interviewed by the National Park Service my senior year, several of us did, had to take the entrance exam for the Federal Service in those days. And I got selected as a student trainee and sent to Yellowstone in the summer of 1969. I was a park naturalist at Old Faithful. And after that summer, I just absolutely loved what I was doing. I loved being in that park. Uh being from Texas, I'd never been out there before, and it was an incredibly different uh experience for me. Went back, finished AM, uh, and then uh spent the next 30 years working in the national parks. The first year was a special assignment for the park service, traveling with a senior author and editor as his aide, a man named Freeman Tilden. We were based out of Harper's Ferry, West Virginia. Uh then I was transferred to Yellow to uh Yosemite National Park in California and was a general ranger there, not in interpretation, but in a protection ranger. I got sent to Federal Law Enforcement Training Center. I got uh very involved in fire, both wild and structural fire and search and rescue, really got into climbing and that kind of thing. Uh, a lot of bear management activities and wildlife activities. Uh, got transferred from there to Mount Rainier National Park in Washington State as the Paradise District Ranger. So learned a lot of new skills. Uh got my EMT emergency medical technician certification there, and uh spent much more time doing glacial mountaineering and managing the climbing programs on Mount Rainier, which was a different kind of experience. Then transferred to the South District Ranger and the Grand Tetons for four and a half years, and uh had all the responsibility from Grant for Grand Tetons south of Mount Moran, if you know the park there. And then did something I said I'd never do, and that's go east of the Mississippi River, which a real ranger wouldn't think of doing, which uh is pretty immature thinking uh in retrospect. But I went to Everglades as the chief of resource management with oversight of the uh wilderness program there, fisheries program there, the oldest prescribed burning program in America, started, I think, in 1947. And then I uh again did something I said I'd never do, and that's go to Washington, D.C. And I was in there five and a half years as the National Park Service's chief ranger for the nation, and um absolutely loved it, had the fire program, national fire program, and that's the during that time Yellowstone was on fire in 1988, so I was very much involved in testifying up in Congress and representing the National Park Service and lots of television and and other interviews about the fire and why we couldn't get it put out and so forth. And then my last Park Service assignment was as the general superintendent in Moab, Utah for arches, canyonlands, uh national parks, and natural bridges and Hovenweep National Monuments. Uh I then got called by my home state of Texas and asked if I would consider coming down there to be the director of Texas State Parks, that they needed some help. Anyway, I initially said no and then finally agreed to come down there, maybe because I spoke fluent Texan, I don't know. And uh that ended up, I was down there 11 and a half years as director, and we really worked hard to turn that program around. Uh, it was very, it was it was a grand experience. I got to work with some wonderful people. And at the end of that, accounting uh park service and state of Texas time and seasonal involvement, I had spent about 43 years working in uh national and state parks and public lands. And then moved back west where there's public lands, and and uh and I'm still out west where I love to be. And and just uh five days ago I came off of 21 days rowing down the Grand Canyon at 80 years old almost, and uh it's uh it was harder than it used to be. And uh but uh still trying to keep moving and and staying very active in uh park and public land issues.

SPEAKER_01 8:00

I've wondered for a while, um, and I've been meaning to ask you, uh, when you were based in Washington, D.C., uh you were the chief ranger um for for the park service there. Can you say a little bit more about what that was like and how deeply that meant you were involved in federal policy versus the nation's capital parks?

SPEAKER_00 8:21

I I wasn't the chief ranger for the nation for the capital parks. I was the chief ranger for the whole nation. And and and and when I say that, that did not mean that I supervised every ranger across the National Park Service. But I was responsible for the fire program, wildland and structural fire, the uh aviation program, uh ranger activities, which is all the things rangers do: law enforcement, EMS, search and rescue, fire uh uh wilderness management, campground management, regulation promulgation, all those kinds of things. As well as the third big piece I had was the special populations program or the accessibility program for the National Park System. So I had policy and oversight responsibility for the entire country as it related to the things rangers do. So I spent a lot of time on the road, I spent a lot of time talking to ranger gatherings and trainings. Uh uh I used to teach a lot. I taught leadership and supervision and attitude and image in law enforcement, how you treat people when you're doing law enforcement contacts and the managing interpretive programs and a number of other things. I still do some of that, but uh I did a lot of teaching in those days as well.

SPEAKER_01 9:54

That's helpful clarification. I apologize that I didn't uh quite understand that before, but that's actually goes um into something I wanted to ask you about deeper. So there's um there's a kind of public image, as you know, of what the National Park Ranger is. Uh and so it seems, I guess, that you've had experience both there when you were the chief ranger of the National Park Service, but also subsequently in the work that you've done consulting with NPS afterwards um in uh helping new generations to continue to uh assimilate into that and redefine that. Um and obviously in these days when there's uh issues with people getting the right amount of funding and the agency having the right amount of independence, I assume there's new challenges for um the Ranger Corps being able to uh protect its um protect its image and its ethos. But can you talk a little bit then about what that image is and what kind of people go and become rangers and how that uh process has um has existed over the course of this over the course of these these couple of decades. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_00 11:14

Yeah, I uh during my career in the career of my peers, uh we were protection rangers, which meant we had the we were commissioned federal officers. And and the the thing I loved about that job was not only was I that, I was a National Park Service diver. I was an EMT emergency medical technician. I I was uh uh captain of the engine company in Yosemite for structural fire. I was a crew boss on wildland fires. Uh uh and so you're a generalist. You do lots of things and you focus uh each park is different. Each park does not have the same level of law enforcement or search and rescue or fire or uh lost people or medical social uh uh uh uh emergencies. So you as a ranger, if you move from Yosemite where we it was an absolute crazy time in the early 1970s. We had serious law enforcement problems, serious search and rescue problems. And so that just because the incidents were so frequent, we spent a lot of time doing that. I made dozens and dozens and dozens of physical arrests in four years I was there. I went to Mount Rainier. I didn't make a single arrest in four years. And so the emphasis on what my job was was more on the mountaineering, uh, resource management, emergency medical stuff, people getting hurt on the mountain or people getting hurt in a snowplay area or people getting lost in the in the backcountry. Uh fire was a little bit, but those emphasis changed because of of what was happening in those parks. I loved that. I I you know, many many days, most days, you had no idea what the hell was gonna happen when during the day. You may have the best plans going, and something happens, for example, at Mount Rainier up on the mountain, and my maintenance people, my interpreters, everybody had their jobs. Not all of us were gonna be on the mountain or in the technical climbing stuff, but everybody was just as important because they were getting the equipment we needed or coordinating aircraft coming in and that kind of thing. So it was an exciting thing to me and so forth. A little concerned today, and you need people, number one, that are physically fit, can do those things, like to do those things, want to stay in shape, because if if you're somebody that is not going to do that, the time is gonna come that you're gonna fail. You're gonna physically fail, you're gonna jeopardize whoever it is you're trying to help, andor your fellow rangers. And so I was pretty fanatic about the the physical fitness, physical fitness part of that. Uh I think there's a lot of emphasis now, and I would like to see that generalist ranger come back and be recognized by the Office of Personnel Management as an enhanced annuity retiree. And what that is, is those people in law enforcement or fire, hazardous duty stuff, retire at 57 and have to be in that position for 20 years. Well, I worked on that a lot in DC to make sure those people got in under the retirement system that included that. But the intent was if you're doing a combination of law enforcement, fire, structural fire, search and rescue, EMS, all of those and most other agencies are considered in themselves legitimate reasons because the physical demands are serious, the uh the knowledge you've got to keep going, the working under stress and danger is genuine. And so, you know, I would I would almost like to go back uh when things change uh nationally, politically, and help them relook at the whole ranger profession and and be looking for generalist rangers, ones that want to do the kind of work I just described and not just focus on the law enforcement piece of that. Law enforcement's critical. But like I said, if I'd have gone from Yosemite to Mount Rainier looking to do the same kind of law enforcement program, I'd have to turn over every rock in the park to find the problems. And that just wasn't what was important in that job. And when I got to the Tetons, there was a little more law enforcement, more search and rescue. It's a little more balanced out than some of those. But every one of those parks has a maybe it's a personality or whatever it is, but it has a a tempo that dictates what that job needs to be able to do. And if you're only a specialist and you can't very successfully respond to a medical emergency as a ranger because that's someone else's job, I don't think we got it right there.

SPEAKER_01 17:00

This is an interesting framework that I think a lot of people don't really realize that rangers have done and done in the past. And everything you're saying actually reminds me um a lot of uh some things that I remember reading in Douglas Brinkley's Histories um about how when Theodore Roosevelt was first setting up the forerunners of the Forest Service and the Fish and Wildlife Service, a lot of the people who uh he wanted to be recruited for being the Forest Rangers and the Game Wardens were like manly men and former sheriffs and people he'd rode within the Rough Riders and have this kind of like rugged, outdoorsy people who can do everything on the land to protect the parks. And um it's interesting because somebody told me a while back that the ethos of conservation, of having a place that you're responsible for and taking care of it while you're there and passing it off to the next generation better than it has been before, um, is something that a lot of people say all the time. Um I'm not sure that everybody really fully knows what it means, but if you want to figure out like a physical version of what it means, that idea of the generalist ranger that you're talking about is pretty close to a personal encapsulation of it. Am I wrong?

SPEAKER_00 18:22

Or no, I think you're absolutely right. And I will tell you from personal experience, it's a hell of a lot more fun than being a specialist. I mean, I you know, I still teach leadership and supervision and career management. And when I first started doing that in 1980, I looked at a Roper poll that said that something like 78% of Americans hate what they do for a living. And you've probably been around folks that when they're talking about their job, they're talking about how many years and days and so forth they have before they can retire. You need to get the hell out of that job and go find something you like to do. That's that's horrible. I wish I could do mine all over again. And and uh it doesn't work that way. And but but you want to find something good. I will tell you, I will tell you based on a couple of things. One is political because they went through and just chopped the hell out of these land management agencies like they did a lot of other things, with no notion of what they were doing and how what the effect on the land, other jobs, and that we're gonna have to rebuild those one of these days because American people are not gonna stand for the parks and the forests and uh BLM and the fish and wildlife areas to to not be able to function. And in fact, when we do it, we need to do it even better than they were. And and look at the mission and look at the configuration of of the organization, both in personnel and and support functions, that uh it takes to do it right in today's world. And so I really I really hope that would become the the case. The other one is I'm I was born in 1946. I'm the first year of the baby boom, and even before this current political situation, that whole group of folks were retiring in huge numbers, not just in the park service and the public land agencies, all across not only government but corporations. I mean, in the Park Service for years it was very, very, very difficult to get in. People worked seasonally forever, and many times they never got in there because nobody left. We loved what we did as a job. We call that big slug of people like me that phenomena, the python that ate the pig, and you see that pig moving through the python, and that was us, and then we came out the other end, and now there's some vacancy. And and so there were there's gonna be opportunities when we start rebuilding the agencies, and and I'm on the road a lot, and we're gonna talk about that uh on my public land stuff, but I'm telling I'm talking to schools in a lot of places. I just got out of Idaho, talked to College of Southern Idaho, Boise State, and the University of Idaho some classes, and I told them I'm not trying to talk you into anything as a living. I will just tell you, I spent 43 years working in this, and it was grand. Certainly not every minute of it, and sometimes it's frustrating and all those kinds of things, but it was it was great, and I would just encourage you to think about as an option in your careers going into one of these federal land management agencies because look where you're living and working, and if you're an outdoor Type person, and you're living out there close because you're working in a forest or on the BLM or in the in a national park, and you're into that as an avocation, and your vocation is proximate to where it is you want to go do those things. Man, you're in the catbird seat. It's uh you don't have to go very far, and you can do it. I mean, I used to I have come home from work in the Tetons during hunting season when the wind was blowing like hell and it was sleeting and snowing. Got out of my uniform because my day was done, and I had an hour and a half to zip up into the forest with my muzzle loader and chase a deer. Which I successfully did, deer and elk, a number of times. So, I mean, something to consider. And and you know, there's uh so much of today's world to me is pretty damned artificial, uh, antiseptic. Uh it's real out there. Yeah, in those in those places. Anyway, does that kind of talk about what you're doing?

SPEAKER_01 23:11

Oh yeah, very much so. And uh actually to be honest, Walt, um I uh I have been been tempted and called many times in my younger life um up to right now to um to think about joining the Park Service or the Forest Service um in ways that you're talking about. I think I'm called to be a writer and um a media and activist guy here around Washington, DC, in ways that would uh preclude me from working in government because I know that you can't be publishing all the time while also working in government. Um but uh I have I guess I haven't really regretted that because I know that I have my vocation and others have theirs, but I do want to be helpful in uh helping funnel more people in my generation and the younger generation into exactly what you're talking about, because um if you don't have new generations of stewards, uh then it's not going to last very long. And beyond that, too, I think if any generations needed to go outside more, it's us millennials and generations beyond us. So actually, one of these days, maybe I'll invite you on just to give a long long style of pitch for young people to hop in. But uh we have we'll we'll do that on a subsequent episode. In the meantime, I want to um go to the things that the rangers themselves serve and protect. Um, just the very idea of the national parks. You've been giving a uh talk on America's public land uh to a lot of different communities for quite some time now that we'll talk about towards the end of the show. Um, but in that you've been talking a lot about the history of the whole public land system. Um here's my uh favorite map of it with BLM, Forest Service, uh Fish and Wildlife Service, and the national parks. But as you know, the very first uh the very first of the public lands units, before we had forest reserves, before we had uh National Wildlife Refuges, um, I guess General Land Office land was there before, but it wasn't managed in any real way. The first land that was actually withdrawn and reserved for um for uh for public benefit um was the national parks. And so can you uh give us whatever history you think is relevant here on how that came to be, what the theory of that was, what its influence has been in America and beyond uh in the last century and a half that it's been there?

SPEAKER_00 25:38

Yeah, one of the programs I've given a number of times is the park idea. And in uh the story we'll talk about at the end is the public lands in general, and most of the parks were carved out of that public estate throughout the years when either Congress or a president made a decision to set something aside to be a park. Well, the first time that happened, you know, uh fur traders and explorers and so forth were coming back from the West as we were colonizing America, moving east to west, talking about this incredible land of smoking landscape, and that they were describing Yellowstone, and people thought they gotta be crazy, they've been out there way too long. And so the the government sent the Hayden expedition in 1871 out to the Yellowstone country. They did a month-long survey of that country and uh came back. They had an artist by the name of Thomas Moran on there, and a photographer by the name of William Henry Jackson that took pictures and painted, and they came back and people went, wow, there really is something there. And in March of 1872, President Grant signed the Yellowstone Act, which set aside two million acres of what is now Yellowstone National Park as the world's first national park. Uh Yosemite was a state park before and it came in, uh, but truly what is recognized as the first national park was Yellowstone. Well, they started adding more through the years. Uh the president had the authority starting in 1906 with the Antiquities Act to set aside special places for scientific and other purposes. So those were called national monuments, and they've been used virtually, except for this president, by every president to set aside places, many of which were initially opposed by the locals, but uh like Grand Teton National Park or Olympic or um Petrified Forest. Uh I think Grand Canyon, yeah. Grand Canyon were all opposed by the locals, and now they're a gold mine for the locals, and uh you would have thought it was their idea. And and uh and so that built through the ages. Uh some of those lands were being managed by the by the Department of Agriculture, and others were being managed by the Department of the Army. For example, Yellowstone was managed by the Army for 32 years, ending in about 1917 or 18, because the locals kept it unfunded and and the administration then sent the army in to manage it and keep it from being destroyed. Eventually in 1916, Congress established the National Park Service uh and and put all those units that were uh in existence then into that system. That system's now got, with all kinds of designated names, uh, well over 400 units of the in the national park system. That idea of national parks then spawned, I think starting in about 1921, with the state park gathering, a state park system which now exists in all 50 state parks. And from that idea came many county and regional park systems, and then also uh urban park systems, uh city park systems. One of the most important ones, and can you imagine Manhattan without Central Park was set aside, designed by Frederick Law Homestead, and so that system of parks, uh some of national significance, the state ones being of state significance, some being of maybe even regional multi-state significance, others being of more local significance or often a combination of certainly recreational opportunity, but also in many cases preserving a piece of or pieces of uh natural landscapes and cultural resources, historic resources. And almost every place has some combination of those. Almost all of them even have some piece of of history associated with history or prehistory. That idea has now been replicated in over 100 countries across the world that have their national parks. And what they've understood is these places are important to our people culturally and for national pride, but they also, if you manage them right, are huge economic generators for where they are. For example, every national park, take Arches National Park in Utah. It's about it's just under a hundred thousand acres. Grand County, Utah has a population of just under 10,000 people, 9,700 folks. You know how many people come to Grand County every year? Three million. And it's Canyonlands and Arches National Parks there, and then of course the Forest Service and BLM are there. People come to see the parks, then they find out, hell, there's a lot of other things to do here, some of which you can't really do in parks, but are perfectly appropriate on BLM and Forest Service. That is an absolute gold mine. And in many rural places, a given national park like Arches is also Grand County's local park. And and um, and so a whole other facet of this idea about parks is not only are they a neat place to visit and recreate, they're often a repository and a protection for natural and cultural resources, and you can use those parks, but especially the natural and cultural resources, to teach people about it. Not only visitors, but almost all park systems have a relationship with local schools to come out for field trips and have people like the interpreters in these parks do programs with these young people that teach them about their history and the natural history in the area that they live. Terribly important. And the other thing is they're all economic generators. Parks do not pay for themselves. No park that I know of, if you look at the total personnel and operational costs, the short and long-term maintenance cost and all, they don't make it. But when you look at something like the National Park System, the National Park System has a budget of $3.5 billion. That's a wow, that's a lot of money. It generates somewhere between $56 and $58 billion in economic activity. That is an absolute no-brainer. For $3.5 billion, you're generating that much money into the country, but especially into local economies that would not be viable in many cases otherwise. So it's just a good business proposition, which is one of the things I clearly do not understand about them attacking the world's premier national park system now and doing everything they can to make it dysfunctional when it is such an economic generator, especially for rural America, uh, that if it goes away, is going to be terrible. It's gonna be a hugely impactful thing.

SPEAKER_01 34:28

As you know, a lot of uh a lot of my fellow conservatives take um American history, American heritage, who we are as a people, as like a given of something that's important. We don't want it to be taken away uh by political correctness and wokeness or whatever. Like that's something conservatives talk about. And I just I'm frustrated and I tell them all the time, guys, if you really do care about this, there is one entity in the country that protects, educates about um and interprets and manages more uh more of America's historical heritage than any other one. Um, and that is the National Park Service. Um I um I don't know what your count is, but by my count, between national historic sites, national historical parks parks, um, national battlefields and military parks, and national monuments dedicated explicitly to a history thing, um, there's at least 250 NPS units uh that are dedicated to history. Every one of them is within a three-hour drive of um any major population center. And then obviously all the national parks themselves have deep history. That's not always only conservation. And I guess at some level, um the the thing that I think a lot of people don't really fully understand is that the fact that the parks don't make money into like their own revenues and rely on a general budget revenue does not mean that those parks are not uh sustainable in themselves. It's just that there's a different budget flow than than would work for a theme park, you know. And I guess that's the thing is that there's this idea a lot of folks have that like, well, if Disneyland can pay for itself, why can't it Yellowstone? Um but that itself goes to another interesting question that I've been wondering for a long time uh what your thoughts are on this. Walt. As you know, there's always been from the very beginning, from the days of Stephen Mather and Horace Albright, um, a kind of dual mandate that the parks have, all the way from this 1916 Organic Act that established the Park Service, um, between recreation and access and getting as many people in to enjoy it as possible on the one hand, and preservation and scientific access and the protection of habitat, the protection of landscapes and natural beauty. And those are things that obviously should go together and often do go together. But as you know, because you are managing these places, sometimes they can be in very direct tension. I'm wondering if you can talk about that and talk about what that means for number one, managing parks, number two, a lot of the issues that are facing parks nowadays. Um maybe some of the things that this administration is screwing up in parks, but I'm wondering your thoughts on where that is.

SPEAKER_00 37:18

Yeah, uh as a park superintendent, you're always ban uh balancing visitor use and enjoyment with the protection not only of the resource, which most people understand pretty clearly, but for the experience. And if you if your goal is to pack as many people in there as you can possibly fit, then the people coming out there to experience a Yellowstone and look at wildlife and and not stand in lines and lines and lines, you've got to manage it because there's so many of us. We just set a record two years ago at 332 million visits to the park system. Incredible. 332 million visits. And so, you know, right now the this administration is getting rid of all the reservation systems. That's just crazy. I mean, when I was chief in DC, I don't know how many times, but a number, I'd get a call from the front desk downstairs, a security desk, saying there's uh some people here that want to talk to the chief ranger. Uh I said, what about and they said they're they're just upset. And uh say, sure, send them up. And they'd come up there and visit with them a bit. Well, we're from Ohio, and for the last two days, we have stood in line at the kiosk over there to get tickets for a tour of the White House. And then both those mornings, twenty people or sixteen people, or thirty people before we got to the ticket window, a ranger came walking down the line saying, Sorry folks, all the tours are filled today, come back tomorrow. And they said, Let us make a reservation. We could be out looking at all kinds of other things. We only got five days here, and you you got your ineptness absolutely ruined it, ruined two mornings for us that we could have been out doing other things. If I knew we were supposed to be there at two o'clock Tuesday afternoon, we'd be on the mall in the Smithsonian, wherever it is, doing other things that now we're probably not gonna get to do. Well, there's a reservation system now in the uh to get White House tours, and that's exactly how it happened. The same thing was true in Arches, Zion, and a lot of other places. Going to the Sun Highway in in Glacier. When you can't park, you can't do anything but creep along in a solid line of cars, you're not seeing the park. That is no successful experience on your maybe once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see that. So it is absolutely the case all over the world that in prime destinations you're probably gonna have to make a reservation to be able to do your thing. And and and when they finally did the Arches uh timed entry system, where for a very nominal fee, you can make a reservation to be there at 2 o'clock in the afternoon and be in a 15-minute or 20-minute line of two lines of cars going in there, as opposed to two lines of cars for an hour plus sitting there with $5 a gallon gas, or even if it was $2 a gallon gas, sitting there idling a couple of hundred cars waiting to creep into that thing. That's and then when they get in there, there's no place to park because they're all full. And and what kind of visitor service and experience is that? So let them make a reservation and do that. Well, this bunch who probably don't know a parking apart from a parking lot, uh, have said, no, we don't need that. People need to have the right to go in whenever they want. Well, okay, they're just gonna drive around and drive around and get madder and madder, and probably not to go get to go hike to Delicate Arch or whatever it is that they wanted to do in Arches or any other park. So we got to go back in and figure out how to do that. And in the case of places like Zion and Arches and Glacier, every year they do that. They then look at what worked well, what didn't work well, and they adjust it. So they're constantly refining it. And um anyway, uh, you're protecting the resource and you're protecting the visitor experience. And people say, well, build more parking lots. Well, you could turn arches into a parking lot. And then what have you got? A very nice looking area to park cars. I I mean it's just it's it's pretty it's pretty maddening uh to be honest with you. And so when we put it back together, we really need to look at an approach wherever we can to provide the best protection for the resource, the best protection for the visitor experience, and let people plan their vacation so they're not wasting their damn time uh dealing with the either the bureaucracy or the failure to address the problem with way too many people wanting to go see all these wonderful places. People say, well, why would you be cutting staff and all in those kind of cases? Well, why you why would you be trying to make the park service fail? The only thing I can think of, and and to be honest with you, that Satya that was just nominated as state parks or as the National Parks Director, and he's they pulled his nomination, he was a corporate guy. And folks say, well, let it let him let's turn this over to corporations to run. You know how much if just take Yellowstone, the mother park, for a corporation to take over the operation of Yellowstone, to do all the things that the concessioner does now, from making beds to serving hamburgers to doing all that kind of thing, pumping gas, to what the rangers and the park staffs do, including the maintenance of park bathrooms and all those kind of things, including the long term bathrooms. Yellowstone alone has over 600 historic structures. In it, miles and miles of road, plowing snow, all that kind of thing. For a corporation to pay for all that and then make a profit and pay shareholders dividends and pay some CEO a lot of money. Can you imagine what a single ticket to get into Yellowstone would cost? So it would not it would clearly not be a place for families to go anymore. You have four kids and it's a couple hundred dollars a person to go in there because they have to make a profit. They have to make a profit. They can't use tax money to do that and then let West Yellowstone and Jackson and all of them benefit, collect the taxes through the goods and services they're providing. No, they got to make a profit right up front. So it's gonna be a pleasuring ground for very wealthy people, and the rest of us can just go do what the hell we can find.

SPEAKER_01 45:00

And that's the thing, right? Is that there's always been a fundamentally democratic idea of the parks and that they are not just the property of everybody, but they're something that everybody has the right to um not access whenever you want, of course, uh, but to go to as at the most reasonable way you can. You know, another thing I found too over the course of um my experience with the parks well, and um I admit uh back when here in Shenandoah National Park, they put the permit system at Old Rag Mountain, which is one of the most famous and popular hikes in the world. Um I was infuriated because that's a sacred mountain to me, and I didn't want to have to go um put in the the permits. But I had to admit over the next six months, it actually made the mountain safer. It actually made the mountain a better experience for everybody. And on the times that I did go and I didn't have a permit, I could still park there and uh pay my entry fee to the park and go onto another trail right nearby it and still enjoy myself. Like that's another thing, is if you really want to enjoy the parks, you'll always find a way into them. There's ways through the backcountry to get into things if you have a permit. There's multiple entryways um that have different kinds of sides. And if you're willing to wait a little bit and if you're willing to hike a little bit more, there's always ways to enjoy it and also the other public lands right nearby them, as you have uh done in your own time really well, I'm sure. Um and I think that takes us to the the last thing I want to talk about um and ask your your thoughts on um is that obviously the national parks are the most famous part of the public land system. There's a reason we call them the Crown Jewel. Um as you said earlier, if the national park system didn't exist, most of the rest of the public land and uh park system all around the rest of the country would not really exist either. It's the kind of icon of conservation in America, but it is one of many parts. There's a bigger system beyond it. Um the parks are the most focused on uh preservation and keeping the landscape there and the least focused on exploitation of all those. I've heard people argue that the Forest Service and BLM are probably moving in that direction as well, too. That's an interesting conversation. But um that system as a whole, not just the parks, is under great threats these days, and you've dedicated your time and the rest of your life to uh trying to protect those so that my generation will have something to rebuild. Can you talk about that system as a whole, the threats to it, and especially the stuff that you are doing right now that people should be following um to work on it too?

SPEAKER_00 47:42

That's a lot of stuff. The uh the parks, the forests, the remaining non-designated public lands, the Native American reservations, military reservations, uh dam sites, and all were carved out of the public trust, the lands that we obtained through our history as we march from east to west through war, through treaty, and through purchase. And that program that you just mentioned is one that I hope people would take the time to watch, and that's the history and future of America's public land. And I don't know whether you can give a link to that in this, and that's yeah, we'll put it in the we'll put it in the links. If if if the folks listening to this want a one-hour short course that's pretty comprehensive about how we got these lands, how decisions have been made through the years, how the states were farmed, what the Constitution and Statehood Acts actually say. Um and some of the threats to them today and a discussion of multiple use on especially the BLM and uh and the Forest Service lens, uh that that is really worth your while to sit down and look. That's what I do now, pretty full-time, not as a business, but as a mission, as a passion, and uh anything you find on that website uh is yours to use and share. There's no copyright, nothing on it. But uh the uh the forest, as you'll understand, were carved using the 1891 Forest Reserve Act. A lot of that was done by one president alone, and that was Teddy Roosevelt. He set aside 50-something fish and wildlife refuges and eight national monuments, and was instrumental in establishing five of the national parks. Truly uh a heroic personality in the things we have today that had he not been there, we would not have almost assuredly. About 28% of this country still is public land. And people say, well, that you mean the federal government land? Well, the federal government land means that you and I own these lands. And you and I can use these lands. And one of the things I truly encourage you, if, and a lot of this country doesn't live right next to them, we live back east, but these are your lands. And there's a lot of incredible things you can get involved with out there that will change your life from outdoor recreation pursuits and so forth. There's even lots of people that make their living, not only from consumptive uses of public lands, especially forests and BLM, like oil and gas and minerals mining, uh grazing, uh, and so forth that uh provide livelihoods, but there's a lot of people that are guides and outfitters taking folks hunting and fishing and four-wheel driving and horsepacking and and uh river running and mountain bike touring and all those kind of things. In fact, outdoor recreation on America's public lands is a multi, multi-billion dollar industry, much bigger than many of the consumptive uses. And I don't argue against any of the multiple use consumptive uses as long as they are done consistent with the requirements of a permit and are done in a way that is not unduly destructive of the land. That's what they're for, but you need to do it right. Anyway, uh that that program, which Luke will give you a link to, uh, will tell you a whole lot about these places, how we got them, and and the decisions that have been made through the years. The last thing I talk about in that is there are people that are working every day to try to get these lands away from us. Uh a Utah Senator recently put on the proposal in the big beautiful bill of the idea of selling three million acres of the public land. And I will tell you, that was not stopped just because of environmental organizations. That was stopped by, it's one of the most non-partisan issues I can think of. Because if you're a hunter, a fisherman, a four-wheel drive enthusiast, a horsepacker, a hiker, a peak bagger, a mushroom collector, a firewood cutter, a river runner, a mountain biker, whatever you are, you're from every damn political perspective there is. And if these lands go away, we're equally screwed. And there's people working every day, and truth is not very important to them. And they're gonna tell you all kinds of things that factually are not true. And if you watch this video, you will see, and there's not a thing in there that's not factually, historically accurate. And in going on nine years of doing that, and I invite every audience to let to tell me if they think I've got something wrong. That has never ever occurred. Because I I don't believe in not telling the truth. But anyway, uh watch that and and you'll have a really good understanding. And when people are spouting things that don't quite sound right to you, you'll have a good idea whether they are accurate or not, or know how to find them. Everything in that program that you watch, and a lot of it is focused on the state of Utah, which still is a place that's trying their best to get these lands away from us. That same information is easily obtainable for any state that you live in. If somebody says we were promised this or we were promised that at statehood, you know what you do to find out if they're telling the truth? You just go to your library and pull up the Iowa State Enabling Act or the Wyoming State Enabling Act or whatever it was, and you will see exactly what was agreed to by the territorial government in that territory because all the states, other than the original 13 states that were colonies, and the in Texas, which came in having been an independent country, all the rest of them were carved out of the public estate. They didn't exist. And these people, like in the state of Utah, say we were promised to get our lands back. Hell, when the Mormon pioneers went into Utah, it was Mexico. They were illegal immigrants into Mexico at the time, if you want to really get humorous about it. Anyway, uh easy to find that out and just go read that. You can find out what outdoor recreation is, for example, in your state. And that's from the Bureau, from the Department of Commerce Bureau of Economic Analysis, uh, although their ability to do work has been also doged and seriously disrupted now. So those figures are slow uh in coming, but they've got a lot from the past that you can see. Outdoor recreation in Utah, for example, last year, and Utah is 63% public land, was $9.5 billion generated by the public land and 78,000 jobs. That's real money. And and that's true in almost every one of the states that have public land. So uh does that kind of get to where you're oh yeah, oh yeah, it does.

SPEAKER_01 56:10

And um, I'm gonna make sure that the links uh both in the podcast here and that we spread it further along because people need to see that video um and see the rest of your work. Actually, everybody listening, um, back when I first started getting into this advocacy myself, uh, I was angry and frustrated with that bill that uh Walt talked about. I Googled public lands and the video that Walt set up, America's Public Lens, was one of the first things that came up and got me realizing how fascinating and complicated and important an issue this is. And um I think if uh if you take a look at it, you might find something good with it as well. Walt, I don't want to take up too much of your time, so I just want to close on two last questions for you. Um, just real quick. Number one, uh, what do you hope people will know and do about their public lens moving forward? And number two, what gives you hope?

SPEAKER_00 57:04

Well, one of the things that gives me hope is when I've gone into some of these universities and talked to young people about them. One of the things that gives me concern is that I think there's a lot of people your age and younger, Luke, and I have no idea what the real percentage is, but it's pretty damn high. Don't even know that they own these lands, and and secondly, are not out there using them and enjoying them. And it's a it is a unique situation in the world. Most of the rest of the world has no such thing as this, where a fence means you are not welcome. And in in the public lands, as long as you don't go out and tear them up and abide by what I think are mostly reasonable rules, uh, they're yours to use. I mean, in the West, you can if you get a hunting license, you draw out a hunting license, as opposed to paying $2,500 a gun to go hunt in Texas, you don't pay. You you just go do it, or fishing or or berry picking or whatever it is. I mean, it's unbelievable. If you're not if you don't know they're yours and you don't know you could be doing a lot of wonderful things, uh you need to find that out. Because they're yours, there's people trying to take them away, and if you don't know about them, you don't use them, you don't learn to love them, then you won't have any reason to protect them. And I tell you, and I tell my audiences, this isn't about me. Hell I'm I'll be I'll be eighty years old next year, next month. And uh I'm still mountain biking and and uh hiking and when I get my hip fixed I'm gonna be a new guy and ready to hit it even harder, but but uh gosh, you need to get out there. It's a real world out there, and COVID, as bad as it was, sent a whole lot of people out of cities that just wanted to get the hell out of cities and do something else, and they got out there and they went, oh my gosh, we've been where have we been? This is incredible. And a lot of them made mistakes and got sand in their food and got cold or whatever it is, but they learned and they decided this is a real family kind of a deal that is just a something we all love. And so I encourage you to get out there uh and uh and and use them and enjoy them and then get involved in making sure you get to keep them and your kids get to keep them.

SPEAKER_01 59:59

Well, Walt, I uh I'm glad that you came on the show to help me get the message out uh to more people in my generation and particularly to more young conservatives uh here in Policy World. And I hope you and I get some more chances to work together moving forward. And uh if you'd be open to it, I would love to learn to mountain bike from you one of these next times I'm out in Colorado and Utah, because uh I see everything you do, and it looks like a lot of fun.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:25

It is. And people say, at your age, how do you keep doing that? And you know what the answer is? Number one, you've got to want to, and number two, you gotta never quit being active until the wheels fall off. And, you know, in my case, that's gonna happen one of these days, and then I'll have to adjust and do something less.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:50

But um, I'll try to follow that advice myself. Uh Walt, thanks for being on here with us and uh everybody listening. Make sure to take a look at that video we're going to uh post in the links here, America's Public Land, and subscribe to the things Walt is doing. He's on Instagram uh and uh has a bunch of other videos on his YouTube channel as well. It's some really great stuff. Um but uh Walt, to you and to all of our friends out there, especially those of us working on public lands advocacy, as we move forward into a great future, let us go out and do this work. I'll see you on the trail, and may you never run out of mountains.