Writing in Defense of Our Public Lands in the Age of Trump—Again

In each new administration, I collect my op-eds and essays in defense of our public lands on these pages. I’ll keep updating as we progress (probably the wrong word choice!) through the cruelty and truth-trashing of the current administration.

First up, I couldn’t help but remember Bernard DeVoto’s classic essay, “The West Against Itself,” as I listened to Utah’s politicians rant about government overreach, praise Elon Musk’s sabotage of federal land management agencies, and refuse to acknowledge the importance of federal money and jobs in the rural West. I wrote about this for Writers on the Range.

When six southwestern tribes joined forces to create the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument Inter-tribal Coalition in March 2025, I saw this as a transformation worth celebrating in this dark time. I wrote an op-ed for the Los Angeles Times about this marker of a cultural shift in America, even as the president and his cronies do their best to repress these voices. The Coalition is launching just in time to defend this astonishing landscape from attempts by the Trump administration to modify the monument’s boundaries or reduce its protection. Let's hope these eloquent Native people and their allies in the conservation community succeed in keeping Grand Staircase fully intact and wild--a model for including Indigenous voices in public lands management.

Toquima Cave, in the middle of nowhere in Nevada—on federal lands, Indigenous land, public land, always-endangered land.