No license required-NPS photo.
The land to be fouled in the Big Beautiful Bill is currently public land, unspoiled land that includes Tongass National Forest in Alaska, North America’s largest temperate rainforest; Reddish Knob in the Shenandoah Mountains, one of the highest points in Virginia; and millions of acres of the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness in Idaho.
Henry Clement, Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, August 2023.
By Henry Clement
For those who seek reason but fear the chaos associated with this administration, disappointment doesn’t yet necessitate drastic actions like Hara-Kiri or jumping off a bridge. There is still a faint glimmer of hope amid the Democrats’ tumultuous debates. How can dedicated hunters, anglers, campers, hikers, and admirers of the beauty of our public lands prepare for the potential loss of the “best idea ever”?
Let’s tease up some scenarios, tie in past happenings, and add some new possibilities. Let’s go
The smell of methane and dead animals pockmarks the dying grasses on the new highway cutting through the Tongass National Forest. Too many couldn’t care less about miles of empty riverine flows now without trout and salmon, or whether or not there are asphalt six-lane highways. Highways that cut through once unspoiled valleys guarded by mountain peaks, glaciers, and waterfalls. Now feature gas stations, small casinos, bars, grifter churches, and big box stores.
Hundreds of neon-lit billboards have already sped by on the new Trump Tongass Highway
Looking up, one sees another billboard, “Two more miles to the world’s largest amusement park and zoo. See native animals in their natural Alaskan habitats: Alligators, monkeys, camels, and parrots.”
Another sign comes into view, “Keep right for fuel, and exotic dancers, short stay rooms with a shower at Big Bob’s 24-hour Fun Land.
Miles down the road, on the once roadless real estate of pristine wilderness of the Tongass National Forest, a fire set by a logging company to control undergrowth because it slowed down their deforestation efforts rages out of control. The fire chokes the air for a hundred miles or more.
Forest Service map of the Tongass, with National Monuments and Wilderness Areas. Approximately 35 percent of salmon and trout habitat is conserved at the watershed scale on about 40 percent of the land base of the Tongass National Forest. At just under 1.9 million acres combined, these high-value salmon and trout watersheds represent only 11 percent of the Tongass land base, but include about 23 percent of the total salmon and trout habitat of the Tongass National Forest. If we lose Tongass to Trump’s paying off his big donors, we lose a national treasure.
Wasted
The Sitka spruce and western hemlock once thrived in the Tongass National Forest. They represented the world’s largest remaining temperate rainforest. Trees with 10-foot diameters and heights exceeding 200-feet stand uselessly tall, blackened, and leafless [more accurately described as needles].
An end to public lands will be a legacy of one individual and the political party created by him; cowards and sycophants almost to a person, lacking soul, wisdom, and morality.
The Trump public relations news outlet, with the slogan: “All the news that’s worth lying about,” claims that 58 million acres is just a drop in the bucket. “No one but Democrats will chirp about the slight loss of public land, and no one important even cares.”
The reality is as you already expected: “Just let me have one cookie”
With cabinet men and women of little knowledge of their assigned authority, we are subjected to the whims of a would-be king who is guided by only a need for attention. Many are starting to realize what they voted for: chaos, knee-jerk policies that change daily, and lawlessness unequaled in our constitutional republic’s history is not working out for them. Ask a farmer, a retailer, a car manufacturer, an outdoor travel company, a mother with a sick child, anyone with a dollar in their pocket, or five dollars needed for medicine and food.
U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins, USDA official portrait on Feb. 14, 2025. (USDA photo by Christophe Paul)
The lady in charge
Secretary Brooke Rollins, a skilled lawyer and committed radical thinker, now heads the Department of Agriculture [public lands]. She believes that protecting public lands is unnecessary. Her only experience outside of being Miss Texas A&M is a summer spent as a counselor for children at a Texas fish camp, along with earning a law degree from the University of Texas. While she is undoubtedly intelligent, she often chooses to overlook legal violations just like her hero, Pam Bondi.
With this background and morality, Rollins plans to dismantle the Roadless Rule, which could have devastating effects on Alaska’s Tongass National Forest. Other targets of destruction are Virginia’s Reddish Knob in the Shenandoah Mountains—one of the highest points in the state—and millions of acres of the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness in Idaho.
To be denied. Why is it important not to lose all of this?
Maybe it’s because ravaging the landscape always plays out badly for the people? Remember, once our public land is sold, it is gone forever.
Yes, new billionaires will emerge while older ones’ wallets will grow fatter, but thousands of promised jobs never materialize. Initially, everything seems positive. A small community becomes incorporated and thrives, benefiting those involved in logging or mining. However, once the forest is depleted and the mine loses profitability, the jobs disappear, and the companies that have exploited the landscape legally disappear.
The consequences of deforestation and mining have a history of draining once-rich streams of fish and aquatic life. Barren forests no longer echo with bird songs, and the once-abundant wildlife in unimpaired forests disappears.
If you choose to participate in this American nightmare of the would-be king’s version of
Brave New World, perhaps it’s time to escape
Adult steelhead trout [Oncorhynchus mykiss is the anadromous form of rainbow trout]. They are typically found in Southeast Alaska, in the Tongass National Forest. A Thom Glace watercolor Illustration. See more award-winning art from Thom Glace here . . .
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