For nearly 30 years, whether fixed anchors belong in wilderness was answered differently by every park superintendent who had to decide. In 2023, the National Park Service proposed prohibiting them outright, nationwide. Congress stepped in. The Protecting America's Rock Climbing Act, signed in January 2025, established that climbing and fixed anchors are appropriate in wilderness and required federal agencies to issue public guidance within 18 months. That guidance is now out, and the public comment window is open.

Erik Murdock, Deputy Director of Programs, Policy & Government Affairs at the Access Fund, has worked this issue for nearly three decades, from doctoral research at Joshua Tree National Park to the policy fight that produced the PARC Act. In the first episode of our Fault Lines bonus series, he traces the full history, explains what the draft guidelines actually say, and makes the case for why this comment period will shape wilderness climbing management for a generation.

Learn more about Erik and how you can take part in the public comment period at our website, thewildidea.com.

Dillon Osleger is a geologist, conservationist, and trail builder whose debut book, Trail Work: Restoring the Paths and Stories of America's Public Lands, reads as both a love letter and a reckoning. Named after Dillon, Montana, and raised by field geologists who hauled him on their excursions through the Canadian Rockies and the rangelands of southwestern Montana, Osleger grew up learning that the land itself is a kind of map, one that records what came before and what we choose to preserve. This episode continues The Wild Idea's month of stewardship with a wide-ranging conversation about trails, history, and what the act of maintenance actually means.

The conversation moves through the Appalachian Trail and Pacific Crest Trail as case studies in how long-distance trails have drifted from their original purposes, which were economically and socially rooted in rural communities, toward a culture of speed and personal achievement that has little relationship to the land itself. It returns, finally, to the people who maintain the trails: the campground hosts, trail crews, and seasonal rangers who rarely receive the recognition the work deserves. Osleger's argument is not nostalgic. It is a civic one. Stewardship, he says, is one of the few remaining spaces where people from genuinely different backgrounds can work side by side, swinging tools for the same reasons. The question the episode leaves open is how long that common ground can hold if we stop funding the people who tend it.

Learn more about Dillon and today's conversation at our website, thewildidea.com.

This week on The Wild Line, we're tracking new federal directives reshaping wilderness management for climbing anchors and livestock grazing, a bipartisan bill that would restore nearly $2 billion annually for national park maintenance, and a legal battle over a proposed oil road through Utah's most culturally significant canyon corridor. From the Senate's quiet protection of Grand Staircase-Escalante to a federal court's order restoring park displays, this week brought a complicated mix of setbacks and hard-won wins for public lands.

Find the links and resources mentioned today at our website, thewildidea.com.