Exclusive: Podesta joins others to "reimagine" public lands policy
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Photo illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios. Photos: Library of Congress
A new, strange-bedfellows group is launching an initiative with an ambitious goal: "reimagine how the United States manages its public lands and waters in the face of accelerating 21st-century challenges."
Why it matters: Ground Shift is quite different from existing groups working to sway management of vast swaths of public lands used for energy, conservation, recreation and more.
- Rather than dive into regulatory and legislative fights of the moment, it's an "ideas hub" aimed at rethinking approaches and statutes that date back 50 years or more.
State of play: The dozen names on its advisory council include Democratic climate vet John Podesta; Tracy Stone-Manning, who led the Bureau of Land Management under President Biden; Lynn Scarlett, who was deputy Interior secretary under George W. Bush; and Mark Rey, a former top Agriculture Department official overseeing public lands under Bush.
- It also brings together a suite of other voices like Rue Mapp, founder and CEO of the group Outdoor Afro, and Brian Yablonski, CEO of the Property and Environment Research Center, which pushes market-based conservation policies.
The big picture: "We came up with this project to ask and answer a really simple question: What are our public lands for and what do we want them to be in decades to come?" Stone-Manning said in an interview.
- "That question has been asked and answered in our country, but it was 50 and 75, and 100 years ago, and the answers are different today," she said.
Threat level: The group calls today's policies, laws and agencies ill-suited to the overlapping challenges of species preservation, climate change, wildfires, tribal collaboration and more.
- "Critical activities — from clean energy and mineral development to restoration projects — are often slowed by outdated systems and processes, while the agencies responsible for stewardship face staff shortages, budget constraints, and legal mandates written for a different era," the announcement states.
Reality check: Public lands and waters policy is high-stakes stuff that has long created extremely sticky disputes among competing interests. So winning anything approaching consensus is an immense lift.
Catch up quick: Seed funding for the group, which has several staff members, is coming from The Wilderness Society, where Stone-Manning serves as president.
- But organizers say it's operating independently. Matt Lee-Ashley, who held conservation roles under Biden and President Obama, is the executive director.
- The group is seeking other funding and has seven academic partnerships with schools across the country.
- Those partners include the Bolle Center for People and Forests at the University of Montana and Harvard's Emmett Environmental Law Center.
What's next: It's getting things rolling with an initial collection of essays. It's also planning "convenings" around this year's 50th anniversary of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act.
- The initiative is focused on the next three to five years, and then it depends on "where those three to five years take us," Stone-Manning said.
Zoom out: Stone-Manning said that delivering more clean energy on public lands is among the many goals alongside more resilient landscapes, abundant wildlife, equitable access and much more.
- Asked if the group has a position on oil and gas extraction on public lands, she said: "It's safe to say that Ground Shift doesn't have a position on anything at the moment. It truly is about gathering the best ideas for the future."
The bottom line: Ground Shift "creates that platform for a variety of knowledgeable people to think about the future, and in a way that is distant from the moment of the trenches," Scarlett said in an interview.
