07/26/2026
Be weary of today's administration promising greater "access" to our public lands. Many roadless areas were designated as such for a reason. Today's agenda is a backdoor to opening roads primarily for extraction. Access to these roads by the public will be secondary, and an afterthought. Fishing and hunting opportunities will be diminished once the land has been impacted. Think about it....
On this day, we honor Gifford Pinchot, the man who gave America its forests.
He didn't fight on a battlefield. He fought in offices and in the wilderness, at a time when the nation's timber and land were being carved up for private profit with no one standing guard. Pinchot believed the forests belonged to every American, not just the wealthy few who wanted to strip them bare. As the first Chief of the U.S. Forest Service, he built an agency from nothing, hiring rangers and convincing a skeptical Congress that conservation was wisdom, not weakness.
His courage was tested when he uncovered corruption reaching the highest levels of government, threatening to hand off public land for private gain. Pinchot spoke out anyway, knowing what it would cost him. President Taft fired him in 1910.
He never apologized. He never took it back. Because of the stand he took, millions of acres of American forest remain untouched today, ours to walk, to hunt, to breathe in. Gifford Pinchot proved heroism can look like standing alone in a room of powerful men and refusing to blink.
