Andy Mergen & Justin Pidot: How Do We Make Public Lands More Public?

Please take our listener survey! We'd love to hear from you. Are America's public lands getting more public, or less? Two of the sharpest legal minds in the field join Bill and Anders to dig in. Andrew Mergen, faculty director of Harvard Law School's Emmett Environmental Law and Policy Clinic, spent decades litigating public lands cases for the Department of Justice. Justin Pidot teaches environmental law at the University of Arizona and served as general counsel of the White House Council on Environmental Quality. Together they cover the 1872 Mining Law, tribal co-management at national monuments, reacquiring land in the spirit of the century-old Weeks Act, and a proposal to charter a new Public Land Law Review Commission, the first since 1964. They close with a lightning round on the administration's rollback of Endangered Species Act habitat protections and a fresh round of cuts to Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante, both breaking as the episode was recorded. Full show notes and links at our website, thewildidea.com.