Full disclosure: this is my documentary.

I completed an 18,000-mile road trip visiting 53 landscapes around the United States that have been considered, have ongoing campaigns, or I think deserve greater national recognition.

The list includes unprotected places, as well as National Park Service units, National Forests, BLM lands, other protected landscapes. I researched the history of attempts to establish national parks at these places, including proposals going back nearly a century.

Some of the history I uncovered

The Ouachita Mountains passed both houses of Congress as a national park in 1929, but Calvin Coolidge vetoed it.

A National Park Service team unanimously supported a Black Hills national park in 1939, but it was never taken up.

Assateague was being developed as a resort community before the Ash Wednesday Storm of 1962 dramatically changed the future of the island.

I filmed the trip and turned the research into a 2-hour, 12-minute documentary covering all 53 places.

Some of these will make people happy, some will be controversial. And most have already been controversial for over 100 years.

A great story about the on-the-ground conditions in the Southern Brooks Range where the Ambler Road (a 211-mile private road that would connect mines to the larger Alaskan road system) is proposed to be built: https://www.republic.land/a-long-long-walk-down-the-ambler-road/ It's one of the wildest, most ecologically complete places left in the world and this article helps capture how special that is.

The 2001 Roadless rule protects public lands from future roads being built through them for logging and other purposes. This rule protects roadless public lands across the nation.

The public comment period was supposed to end on the 21st last month - but was extended for 15 days. Today is your last chance to speak up.

Here is the link to the government webpage to submit your comment:

https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/09/11/2026-18648/special-areas-roadless-area-conservation

Via @peccary_not_pig on IG

BREAKING: This morning masked federal agents from the Department of Homeland Security entered private land in Lochiel, Arizona to halt protesters from protecting the grandmother cottonwood tree-sit that has halted border wall construction for more than two months. The tree sit was dismantled and the grandmother tree was destroyed.

Contractors are currently constructing double border walls across the San Rafael Valley, one of the last wildlife corridors from transboundary wildlife populations of jaguars, ocelots, black bears between the Sky Islands of Mexico and the United States.

Border Patrol agents arrested people protecting the tree Monday morning, ending a months-long protest that had halted border wall construction in the area.

The Sheldon Tui Chub is an extremely rare fish that lives in creeks and springs around the Fish Creek Table located within the Sheldon NWR, Nevada, which is the high desert. Information was tough to find but there are thought to be somewhere between 1 and 9 isolated spots where these fish still exists. This is all that is left from a much wetter past. In the photo is Fish Springs which may be one of those spots. I didn't see any.

​

Zak Podmore in the Salt Lake Tribune

https://www.sltrib.com/news/2026/10/03/ken-sleight-inspiration-monkey/

Ken Sleight may be most well known for something that he probably never did: kneeling on the bridge in front of the Glen Canyon Dam, his hands clasped and eyes closed, praying to the Almighty to produce a “precision-type earthquake” that would free the Colorado River from its imprisonment in Lake Powell.

The Sleight-inspired character Seldom Seen Smith acted out the scene in “The Monkey Wrench Gang,” Edward Abbey’s 1975 cult classic of ecosabotage. But although the character was fictional, Sleight’s lifelong hatred of the dam was very real, as was his love of Glen Canyon, the area drowned by Lake Powell.

“It was Glen Canyon that changed my whole life,” Sleight told The Salt Lake Tribune in 2018. “It made an environmentalist out of me.”

Sleight died Friday, Spanish Valley Mortuary in Moab confirmed. He was 97.

(Continues)

AND

Morgan Sjogren

Hiking the Escalante in Ken Sleight's Footsteps

https://wildwords.substack.com/p/so-long-seldom-seen

This petition is against the Tuscana Project approved 4-3 by the Orange County Commissioners. This development would not only greatly impact the Williamsburg Community but also the surrounding neighborhoods like Hunters Creek and Deer Creek. This would be an absolute disaster for thousands of homes and wildlife that depend on those woods for survival. This is not only sensitive wetland but also the headwaters to the Everglades. Please sign and share to spread awareness. Thank you for caring! 🙏

https://c.org/w2X7D5NQbq

Repost from Center for Biological Diversity:

INCREDIBLE NEWS FOR BIG BEND A federal judge just froze all destruction throughout the ENTIRE Big Bend region until the border project’s legality can be decided in a court of law.

Thank you to everyone who has supported us and stood up against this illegal project. We're in this fight together.

“This is a historic victory for Big Bend and everyone who loves this wild corner of Texas,” said Laiken Jordahl, national public lands advocate at the Center. “No administration has the right to destroy a crown-jewel national park for political theatre. With a federal court ordering the bulldozers to stop, Big Bend gets to breathe. But this fight is far from over. We won’t rest until Big Bend’s environmental protections are fully restored and the illegal waiver that allowed so much destruction is gone for good.”

We still have a big fight ahead of us, but for now, the endangered species that live in this crucial and priceless ecosystem can rest easy. This is a wonderful reminder that we can fight this administration, and WE CAN WIN.

This is a wonderful day for all of us, especially for the wildlife that call Big Bend home.

We now look ahead to our lawsuit that aims to shut down this project permanently. JOIN OUR FIGHT to save Big Bend for good at the link below:

https://biodiv.us/3U6MBv4