Letter from the Editor

I’m lucky. I live in Southwest Montana, where more than 60 percent of land is public. To my south is the nearly one-million-acre Absaroka Beartooth Wilderness, abutting Yellowstone National Park. In nearly every direction, mountains: the Absarokas, the Crazies, the Gallatins. It’s, in short, a public lands wonderland. This is all to say: We’re all lucky. More than one third of the landmass of the United States is public. This enormous swathe of land owned by all of us is something utterly unique—a grand experiment on a scale that boggles the mind. And this website is meant to help you better understand the past, present, and future of this public land that we all share. 

First, the past: In the 19th century, a conservation movement burgeoned. The country had acquired an immense amount of land, much of it stolen—often violently—from Indigenous groups who depended on it and utilized it for millennia. As the country’s population spread West, much of that sprawling territory was given away to settlers, railroad companies, miners, and loggers. But as much of the land was plundered, we began to collectively reckon with our impact on the natural world. We needed the raw materials the earth supplied. But at the same time, we also needed to make sure there was enough left for future generations. 

The country’s (and world’s) first national park—Yellowstone—was established in 1872. Yosemite came in 1890. A year later, the country began to set aside ‘forest reserves’—the precursor to our National Forest system. A flurry of protections began. We began to set aside land—not just to be left untouched—but to hold value for the future. As the decades wore on, our values changed, too. The Wilderness Act of 1964 led to the creation of millions of acres of land that was not to be “conserved” for the sake of using its resources sometime down the line, but to be “preserved” for the good of the ecosystem itself. Today, there are about 112 million acres of wilderness in the U.S., areas to be left “untrammeled by man.” 

Our values changed in other ways over time, too. At first, we protected the craggy and sublime; high places in which it was easy to find awe. Much of this land was also deemed too steep, too rocky, and too heinous for mining, timber, and other industry. But over time, we collectively began to find ecological and aesthetic value even in the areas deemed to be wastelands, flat and uninteresting: the swamps, the prairies, and the desert. 

The United States uniquely pioneered the system of protecting land under the ownership of all. The United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia have areas known as “Crown lands.” Plenty of other countries have national parks and protected areas, many of which are privately owned. But here in the U.S., our 640 million acres of federal public land—managed by the National Park Service, the Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management, the Fish and Wildlife Service—have become a trademark of the country. This is a legacy unique to us, that we need to understand in order to preserve and enhance.

While National Parks and Wilderness Areas strive to create “primeval” areas largely divorced from human influence, Forest Service and BLM land are where so many of our deepest values meet and, sometimes, collide. In the 1970s, the federal government made formal what had long been taken for granted on these lands. The so-called “multiple use mandate” dictates that everyone has a right to use public lands—whether hikers or ranchers. Public lands, according to this policy, are equally about protecting natural resources as they are about driving the economic growth of local communities. These are areas where we hike and run and climb and mountain bike. And they’re also home to logging and hunting, drilling and cattle herds.

Today, the ways these lands are utilized has changed from the early days of timber and grazing. While those forces undoubtedly still weigh on the landscape, more people than ever are recreating on public lands. There were just shy of 332 million visits to national parks in 2024; that’s the most on record, and nearly the population of the entire country. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management land saw hundreds of millions more visitors, too. These visits generate billions of dollars for local communities and the outdoor industry every year. In fact, the total outdoor economy in the U.S. passed the trillion-dollar mark a couple years ago. Despite this sky-high cash flow, the influx of use on public lands poses new challenges to the health of ecosystems and these outdoor spaces. 

As more people frequent public land, we also see upsides. These shared spaces help form communities around the outdoors and give all users a stake in their well-being. They enrich lives and improve both physical and mental health. In an era defined by increasing partisanship and siloing, these are some of the few places where people of diverse viewpoints and backgrounds meet face-to-face, where we smile and say hello passing by one another on the trail. Public lands are spaces that require navigating how to coexist. 

Taken as a whole, our public lands will shape our future. Tending to the needs of these ecosystems, we’re forced to confront some of the deepest and most pressing questions affecting the natural world: How do we balance our economy and our ecosystems? How do we preserve ecosystems and wildlife in an era of unprecedented use and a changing climate? What’s the role of grazing and mining and timber on these lands shared with hikers and bikers and climbers? Who has a voice, and how loud should that voice be? These lands are changing. So is our society. And this website is a hub of information, analysis, and reporting dedicated to helping you understand the lands so many of us hold dear.

In a very real way, the future of our public lands is up to us. And the resources here will help us build a trail to that future, together.

For the land,