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[00:00:00] Michael Hawk: I bet you’ve heard of the national park service or the us forest service, which manages all of our national forests. But did you know that there’s another land management agency that manages more public land than either the national parks or national forest? This often overlooked agency is the bureau of land management or BLM. Josh Jackson, our guest today has become one of BLM top enthusiasts with a huge following on his forgotten lands, California Instagram account. He’s also a writer and a conservationist. And it’s working on a new book, all about BLM lands. Today we dig into what turned Josh on to these fascinating places. He gives us a nice overview of what they’re like the amazing sites and plants and animals that you could see and how you too can enjoy them. We also learned about his upcoming book, which sounds very intriguing and aims to fill a major gap in the literature. You can find volumes and volumes about national and state parks and national forest and other lands, but try to find similar literature and BLM lands.

[00:00:59] Good luck with that. So I strongly suggest that you follow Josh on forgottenlandscalifornia on Instagram to see and hear more about some of these amazing places. So without further delay, Josh Jackson.

[00:01:12] Josh, thank you so much for making the time to talk today.

[00:01:16] Josh Jackson: Yeah, it’s great to be here. I appreciate it.

[00:01:18] Michael Hawk: When I first saw you and the work that you’re doing, I think I probably saw you through Instagram. I thought what a great idea because there are so many great places to go that just fly under the radar.

[00:01:28] So can’t wait to get into the depths of BLM today.

[00:01:33] Josh Jackson: Yeah, me too.

[00:01:34] Michael Hawk: So I want to ask you though, and this is the tradition in Nature’s Archive to learn a little bit about how you ended up where you’re at in this pathway to conservation. So where did you grow up? How did you get interested in nature?,

[00:01:49] Josh Jackson: I grew up in a small town of Holland, Michigan, actually, a town of about 30, 000 people. And Luckily for me, my parents house was like right on the edge of the town and the country. So like in my front yard, north was the city of Holland and in my backyard was literally cornfields as far as I could see.

[00:02:09] So I was right on the literal edge and behind our house was a little hill. That kind of went down to this little forest in the middle of cornfields with an ephemeral creek running through it and the huge the tree that I thought was as big as a sequoia tree when I was a kid. And that’s where I got into nature as a young kid after school, just going down to the forest, looking for foxes, looking for skunks trying to build little dams in the creek that ran behind my house.

[00:02:38] My grandparents live in rural Pennsylvania. They’re chicken farmers and they have a pretty large property. So in my summers, , I would always go there for a couple weeks and just roam around with my cousins. Those are My first introductions to nature in terms of like public lands, my first introduction was every summer camping in Indiana State Parks with my three younger sisters and my mom and dad.

[00:03:01] And as you can imagine, if for all the campers out there it came with its hard Midwestern hardships getting to the campground. Four days straight of rain and just packing up and going home, so yeah, I was really lucky to grow up in a place that had lots and lots of nature, both in my backyard and at my grandparents house.

[00:03:19] And my mom and dad didn’t have a lot of money, so camping was, like, pretty much how we spent our summer vacations. Looking back, it’s funny that we went to Indiana, because I think, arguably, Michigan has much better scenery and campgrounds, but when you don’t travel much, crossing the state line was exotic,

[00:03:39] Michael Hawk: And hearing your story, it just reminds me how important it is to get kids exposure to nature.

[00:03:46] Josh Jackson: Totally.

[00:03:46] Michael Hawk: I always reflect on my own life and my own kids and what else I could be doing because what you just described there was not just the initial connection, but that exploration and experimentation, putting dams in the Creek and things like that, that I think are so critical.

[00:04:04] Josh Jackson: Yeah, I think it was so important to have autonomy in nature as a kid And so when I’m out there with my kids, whether it’s in state parks or on BLM land or a national forest I’m trying to find ways that they can engage on their own, you know Obviously in a safe way, it’s not fun to watch your kid wander around the Mojave Desert where there’s rattlesnakes I think the autonomy and exploration that kids can have in nature without us constantly hovering over their back is such a valuable way for them to explore on their own.

[00:04:34] Michael Hawk: I’m going to maybe jump ahead a little bit here and then we’ll circle back and tie a couple of things together. I already mentioned the acronym BLM. So can you just tell me what is BLM?

[00:04:47] Josh Jackson: yeah, The BLM in terms of the federal government stands for the Bureau of Land Management, and it’s one of four federal agencies. In the United States that manages public lands. The one that everyone’s familiar with is the national park system, which manages the plethora of national parks.

[00:05:06] We have, then there’s the national forest, which is a pretty large land. Agency as well. Then there’s the National Wildlife Refuges. And then astonishingly, the BLM manages 245 million acres, the most of any federal land agency. And those are mostly in the Western 11 states plus Alaska. And then here in the Golden State.

[00:05:29] This absolutely blew my mind. We have 15 million acres of BLM land just here in California. we’re pretty lucky here as well, because 50 percent of our total land is public between the National Forest, National Parks, BLM, refuges that includes like our state parks, county city parks, even your local playground is considered public land, and we have a lot of it here, which It’s an amazing place to live in the West when you have access to so much, so close, closely around you in terms of BLM in California, there’s some places that are like Pretty large pockets of land, almost like islands of land. So it’s all private land in the Central Valley, but then there’s this 200, 000 acre Carrizo Plain National Monument that’s managed by the BLM.

[00:06:16] That’s surrounded by mostly private land, or then you have a place like the King Range National Conservation Area up on the Lost Coast, which is BLM managed land that’s surrounded by. Private land. And then, there’s a lot of BLM land that’s on the outskirts of National Park and National Forest.

[00:06:35] Which is always interesting, because it’s like Yosemite National Park, and then if you zoom out a little bit farther, it’s like the National Forest around Yosemite, and then as you get into the lower elevations, it turns into BLM land but the most of the BLM land, two thirds, in fact, of the 15 million acres are in the Mojave, Colorado, and Sonoran deserts, so it’s mostly You know, there’s definitely pockets everywhere in the state, but the majority of it is in the desert, and it’s funny because I I used to drive to like Joshua Tree and Death Valley or Phoenix or driving back to the Midwest to my homeland I always called that desert the drive by desert.

[00:07:14] That’s sort of on the way to the national parks or on the way to Vegas or Phoenix or wherever. But in reality, it’s amazing that most of that land I considered the drive by desert is actually BLM land.

[00:07:28] Michael Hawk: And when you zoom out, you mentioned that most of BLM land is in the 11 Western states and Alaska. Is there a similar proportion of say. Arid desert land in, in the BLM portfolio across those other states as well.

[00:07:46] Josh Jackson: totally. Yeah, the most of the BLM land is in sagebrush territory, desert territory. So in places even like in eastern Oregon or in Montana or Utah, it’s a lot of desert. Chaparral sagebrush kind of landscapes. Yeah, the higher elevations, that means you’re getting into National Forest, National Park territory.

[00:08:09] Michael Hawk: There, there’s probably a whole discussion we could have about government agency structure and their charters and everything that goes along with that. But it sort of makes sense I guess, that this would happen because. People want the dramatic scenery in their national parks and the National Forest Charter is they’re in the Department of Agriculture, if I’m not mistaken.

[00:08:31] Josh Jackson: Yup, exactly.

[00:08:32] Michael Hawk: And the history there is forests are a resource to grow like agriculture.

[00:08:39] Josh Jackson: Yup. Yup.

[00:08:40] Michael Hawk: So it would make sense that BLM is in a different footprint than those other agencies. I think what’s fascinating to me about it. And we’ll probably get into this is being in a desert or arid climate or habitat it’s like life on it, on the edge.

[00:08:59] And lots of interesting things happen when you’re limited by precipitation or temperature or things like that. There’s interesting plants and interesting insects and so forth. So I’m hoping we can get into some of the discoveries that you’ve made along those lines here.

[00:09:14] Josh Jackson: Yeah, exactly. For sure.

[00:09:16] Michael Hawk: Before we do that I did write down here. BLM’s stated mission is to, I’m going to quote, sustain the health, diversity, and productivity of public lands for the use and enjoyment of present and future generations. it’s an interesting choice of words sustaining for future generations.

[00:09:38] And the one that jumped out to me was productivity. And I’m wondering from your perspective, what does that mean? And how does that end up applying to how this land is used? Yeah,

[00:09:50] Josh Jackson: Yeah, it’s interesting. The BLM has a fascinating history from their inception in 1946 when the BLM sort of merged between the grazing service and the homesteading part of the federal government, but basically between 1946 and 1976 when the federal land management Act was passed or what people refer to as FLTMA.

[00:10:12] Basically the two main things that happened on BLM lands were grazing and mining. And so like people would jokingly call the Bureau of Land Management, the Bureau of Livestock and Mining, because that’s all they seem to care about like that’s what their priorities were. Unfortunately in those, that timeframe the grazing and mining often went unchecked and unregulated.

[00:10:34] Which led to pretty severe degradation on the landscape and like the health of the soil and the places that the BLM managed. And so in 1976, when FLTMA was passed their mission sort of changed to, to, to the mission that you just read, that was a part of FLTMA, which was the first time the BLM was mandated with a multiple use sustained yield mandate, which.

[00:11:02] At the time, it was all about trying to get the BLM to consider other things like conservation and recreation. And the preservation of these lands with mining and grazing to sort of bring those all under one umbrella. Cecil Andrus was the interior secretary when FLTMA passed in 1976. And he famously said, there’ll be no more rape, ruin and run on BLM land.

[00:11:27] Because that was what happened. These mining and companies would come in, it was overgrazed. They’d come in, rape the land, ruin it. And then they’d take the mining companies. Still to this day, a lot of times walking away with a lot of mess in their wake and grazing was, we were just giving, leasing too many cows to ranges that couldn’t handle it.

[00:11:50] So it’s definitely a difficult mandate. Even since 1976, the BLM has two things going against it. One is like a of funding besides managing more public land than any other agency, 12 percent of the budget. And so they’re just chronically underfunded year after year. Another thing that makes the BLM’s mandate sort of the multiple use mandate difficult is they’re often competing with ideals that they’re supposed to be supporting, but that directly impact each other.

[00:12:25] hunting is allowed on BLM land, so they have to. Have, give access to hunters, but then they also have to give access to ranchers. So these cows come in and oftentimes denude the very habitat that the hunters are wanting to find deer in. And so like there’s all these competing mandates for the BLM.

[00:12:44] So it certainly makes. it tricky. In 1996, Bears Ears National Monument in Utah was established, and that was the first time that a national monument was led and managed by the BLM, and that Bruce Babbitt was the Interior Secretary at that time, and he said from now on, I’d like the Bureau of Land Management to not be considered Bureau of Livestock and Mining.

[00:13:09] But the burial of landscapes and monuments. And so his idea was as moving forward with the BLM, it will be known more for these national conservation lands where conservation is, has just as much of a high priority as grazing and mining to do. So I’m empathetic to like the multiple use idea and it’s.

[00:13:31] Also to the idea that it’s difficult to manage, but I think, and we can talk about this later too, there’s a couple of new things even in the last year that have happened at the BLM that will lead to more conservation on these lands and not less.

[00:13:46] Michael Hawk: thinking about the pathway for our discussion today. And maybe one of the things I should have done at the outset was. So you about some of your favorite BLM lands to help paint a picture for the listener further beyond what you already described. Can you do that for me?

[00:14:04] Like, I know there’s such a diversity here. A lot of it is desert, but there’s a diversity. So can you tell me about what has really attracted you to some of these places in particular?

[00:14:14] Josh Jackson: Yeah, I think there’s honestly, there’s so many highlights and we can get later into the project itself, but I would say, while there are a lot of landscapes in the desert that are just absolutely breathtaking, we also have BLM land in the far northwest in the King Range Conservation Area, which I mentioned earlier, which is just Douglas fir, redwood, old growth forest.

[00:14:37] You have the Matole river that sort of winds along the edge of the King Range National Conservation Area and flows into the Pacific ocean. And the Matole estuary is where the kind of the Matole meets the ocean. And there’s really important salmon habitats there and some really cool organizations that are fighting for those salmon and for protecting those places.

[00:14:59] Michael Hawk: For people maybe not familiar with that part of California I think this is the area that some people sometimes call the Lost Coast. And it’s partly because of the terrain, but along the coast of California, we have a couple of famous highways, Highway 1 and 101.

[00:15:17] And For the most part, they hug the coast until you get up there and they, divert inland. So there’s this whole section of land that is hard to get to.

[00:15:27] Josh Jackson: It’s basically right where if you’re driving up the one and you get past Mendocino and Fort Bragg and Westport up there, it suddenly takes a turn inland to the 1 0 1. It’s a crazy road. I mean, My kids have thrown up along that road multiple times, , but that’s the start of the lost coast.

[00:15:45] And then it, and then the one sort of joins with the 1 0 1 and then reappears along the ocean, close to Eureka and Arcata. So it’s that little section there. Cape Mendocino is the most western point of the United States. That’s just above the Lost Coast and the King Range National Conservation Area.

[00:16:03] it’s a spectacular area. It’s, it was designated in 1970. It was the very first National Conservation Area we backstory to that place will be in my book, but it’s absolutely mind blowing the way that, that one came together. , the BLM also manages 11 wild and scenic rivers across the state of California.

[00:16:25] Some of those are one mile long, but some of them are dozens of miles long. And so you have really beautiful places in the desert and in the mountains where the BLM manages these really incredible scenic and diverse creek and waterway areas. There’s places all the way up in Modoc and Lawson County that are really incredible landscapes.

[00:16:48] Along the eastern Sierra, you have the Bodie Hills, which is Probably my favorite BLM landscape in California. It sits at about eight to 10, 000 feet and there’s really wonderful ecosystems and sagebrush country up there. But then of course you have the desert, which I had always believed it to be this drive by thing that didn’t feel very accessible or very exciting.

[00:17:11] But. The more time I spent there, the more I was completely blown away by the richness of flora and the richness of, even fauna and geology and it’s such an amazing place. It really does. I write about how it sings quietly. It requires like it requires you to slow down it almost reorientates what your idea of beautiful is. And I think the desert does that because everything’s so subtle in the desert. There’s not like this 400 foot waterfall to walk to and to find. There’s not a, there’s not a snow capped peak most of the time where you can climb and there’s no grand rivers flowing through like ancient Douglas fir forest.

[00:17:57] It’s such A different A different landscape, but no less important.

[00:18:02] Michael Hawk: What a great way of explaining it because I’m thinking about an impactful element of my life and my connecting with nature was taking a desert ecology class, which really helped to see those subtleties. And we focused a lot of time on These are all of the adaptations of the plants and animals in the desert.

[00:18:25] And one real simple example is that plants in the desert, they’re water constrained. So as a result, they, they don’t want to lose water. They want to retain it as much as possible. And they have all these adaptations where the leaves are smaller and the flowers are smaller, but they can still be amazingly beautiful and intricate.

[00:18:46] And then of course you have the cacti that can just take advantage of any little bit of rain and soak it all in. It’s just, it is it’s subtle. It’s amazing. It forces you to slow down and really demonstrates, I think, the biodiversity that we have on this planet.

[00:19:05] Josh Jackson: something like I’ve walked by what feels like a million creosote bushes and then you start noticing like, oh, their stems almost look like railroad tracks. Oh, why are they, why do they have sort of a circle around them that no other plants can grow? And you start learning more and more about The creosote, which is just multiplied by trillion and you’re just, and you start learning about it and it’s becomes more and more interesting the farther you get into it.

[00:19:34] So I can see where taking a desert ecology class would be really informative.

[00:19:39] Michael Hawk: Yeah, and creosote. Is that the most biomass organism in California? I think I’d heard that before.

[00:19:48] Josh Jackson: Yeah, I can’t say for certain, but it sounds true to me and the way that I researched it as well.

[00:19:54] Michael Hawk: Yeah, there’s so many and the roots go so deep. I’ll fact check that and uh, include that.

[00:20:00] Josh Jackson: and it smells really, when it rains, it, the whole desert smells like creosote. It’s, but it only kind of unlocks when the rain comes, so it’s a really distinct smell. Some people don’t like it, but I, I love it.

[00:20:12] Michael Hawk: All right. I consulted some references on creosote and not too surprisingly. I couldn’t find any solid references that confirm creosote to have the most biomass, but I did find makes it seem unlikely though, that creosote would be able to hold this title. Obviously any assessment like that would have to make a lot of assumptions and rely on estimations. That said creosote is spectacularly successful and an interesting shrub.

[00:20:36] And I wanted to share a couple amazing facts that I was reminded of in this research. So first the creosote Bush scrub community is estimated to cover 70% or more of the Mojave and Sonoran deserts. And it’s also extremely common in the Chihuahuan desert. So very successful plant. And as a desert plant, it’s unique in that it’s evergreen.

[00:20:56] So many desert plants are either summer deciduous or winter deciduous to deal with the harsh climate or perhaps both but not creosote. It’s somehow figured out how to keep its leaves all year. Creosote bushes form clonal rings. So as their stems grow in, the center dies new plants emerge around the perimeter and this goes on and on and on.

[00:21:17] And there’s one such ring called the king clone. That’s thought to be 12,000 years old. Now combine that with evidence that creosote is a newcomer to north America. Pollen records, suggestive burst onto the scene in north America. Only about 22,000 years ago. So crazy how successful it’s been in such a short period of time. Now I mentioned that they have extensive root systems and they do have extensive roots, but not to the extent that I was envisioning in my mind, those roots are pretty shallow.

[00:21:47] And that’s why I think that my claim about biomass is incorrect. Now. Yes, they are wildly successful though with millions and millions of individual plants. If you want to learn more about creosote and desert plant ecology more generally, there’s a great accessible book from back country, press called California desert plants, and I recommend you check it out.

[00:22:07] And that’s where some of these facts came from. We hinted your project and your social media handle is ForgottenLandsCalifornia. I think all of that we’ve talked about so far speaks to how you’ve been hooked on these lands. So can you tell me a little bit about about what your project is?

[00:22:27] Josh Jackson: as I mentioned earlier, I was pretty In tune with nature as a young child and now as I’ve, I have I have three kids of my own now that are getting older, but it was really important for me and my partner to get them into nature. And so we went camping from basically when they were babies, we’d bring the pack and play and put it in our tent and that’s where they slept.

[00:22:50] We’ve always been a nature focused family, and in 2015, we had just had our third child. She was a month old, and as a parent, you know how it is in those last few months of pregnancy. You’re sort of hunkering down, you’re not getting out much, you’re trying to just ride that wave and relax and be as at home as much as possible.

[00:23:14] And our third was a month old and I was just dying to get out. My, my older two kids were four and two at the time. And it was like one of those last minute trips let’s get, let’s go camping. Let’s let mom and the youngest have their time at home and we’ll get out there and go explore. And of course everything within two or three hours of LA was booked solid.

[00:23:33] There was just nothing available. And I reached out to my friend Justin, I said, I told him about my predicament, and I’m like, what do you think I should do? He was like this friend of mine who knew all these weird camping things that I never knew about and I felt like if anyone know, would know, he wouldn’t.

[00:23:48] He said, oh, why don’t you camp on some BLM land? And I said, what is that? I had no idea what that is. That was in 2015. And I said, where is it? And he said, I think it’s out in the desert somewhere, which gave me almost nothing to start with. But um, I found a place called the Trona Pinnacles, which is out in the desert, it’s south of Death Valley and Highway 395 gets pretty close to there, but it’s this incredible landscape.

[00:24:16] So I packed up the element and took the two kids with me and we went out there and camped in the Trona Pinnacles and had this experience that was so beautiful and so much more than I ever had hoped for. And so that was my first experience. And I got back from that trip and just thought man, I.

[00:24:34] I don’t know anything about these lands. I need to start doing some research. So I did what any parent of three kids under the age of six would do with a full time job. I just ordered books, I knew there was no chance of getting out there With so much happening at home and having a full time job, so I just started reading book after book, learning like the history of public lands, learning about the history of BLM, and you know how books work you read one and that leads to two or three others, and it grows and grows from there.

[00:25:04] And then, As I’m reading, I read a book called In Defense of Public Lands, which really details these two movements that are trying to dispose of our public lands, the privatization movement and the land transfer movement. And so I started learning about the vulnerability of these BLM lands.

[00:25:21] And and then, of course, in 2017, President Trump ordered a review of all these national monuments managed by the BLM, some of them managed by the BLM. And I just started thinking of more and more like, Oh, I didn’t know these lands at all. And now that I am learning about them, I didn’t know they were vulnerable.

[00:25:42] And now that I’m learning about their vulnerability, what am I going to do to maybe play a tiny role in helping protect these places? So yeah, in 2020 my work slowed down considerably, like I’m sure it did for a lot of people. My kids were at home. My wife was an ER nurse at the time. Her world was pretty intense, but she also had her work was in shifts.

[00:26:04] So if she had three or four days off at a time, and so we just decided, I had been talking about BLM land and visiting these places forever, we decided like why not now? Why not go out there and start exploring and see what you can find. I didn’t know what kind of landscapes BLM contained I didn’t know what kind of recreation opportunities were on BLM land.

[00:26:26] There’s really not much information out

[00:26:28] Michael Hawk: Yeah, and I wanted to clarify that point. You mentioned getting all these books about public lands, but there’s not like there, it’s not like there’s a traveler’s guide to BLM land, right? There’s nothing like

[00:26:40] Josh Jackson: No there’s nothing. Yeah, it’s mostly like a book on public lands and there’ll be one chapter on the BLM. That’s like These American Lands, that book, there’s one chapter on the BLM. It’s things like that. So yeah, I set off in 2020. I went to,

[00:26:54] I went to the desert for my first trip. And the big question then was which seems absolutely ludicrous now, but the question then was, are these lands even worth protecting? What’s out there? I had no idea. Of course, it didn’t take long to fall in love with these places almost right away.

[00:27:13] And so that’s what I’ve been doing over the last three years. I’ve embarked on 33 trips, some by myself, some with my family, some with friends. I pretty much covered every significant parcel of BLM across California from Oregon to Mexico, Pacific to Nevada and Arizona. Done a lot of camping, but probably the biggest impact that I’ve had has been walking these lands.

[00:27:40] I’m pretty meticulous about tracking it. And I’ve walked 359 miles over the last three years on BLM land, taking them in one step at a time. Like I was saying about the desert some of these places sing quietly and you really got to walk to find the magic to find those like hallelujah kind of moments.

[00:27:59] Yeah, I. Are you familiar with Aldo Leopold?

[00:28:02] Michael Hawk: Yes.

[00:28:04] Josh Jackson: He was like a 20th century the father of the land ethic idea but in his Seminole book, The Sand County Almanac, he has this line where he says, American conservation is, I fear, still concerned for the most part with showpieces. We have not yet learned to think in terms of small cogs and wheels.

[00:28:22] And you know what, the more time I spend on these BLM lands the more I feel like the BLM is. Sort of the cogs and wheels of present day conservation. the utter lack of stories about them is shocking to me. And while so many wonderful photographers far better than myself are flocking to the ends of the earth to find the most insane nature they can find, or going into Yosemite and shooting in the valley.

[00:28:48] Or whatever it may be there’s very few photographers going into these BLM landscapes trying to find the beauty there, and writers writing about them, and they have so many stories to tell the longer I got into these trips, the new question that drove the project was, how can we protect what we don’t know?

[00:29:06] Like how can we protect these places if no one knows about them? If a mining company decided, tried to do mining on Half Dome in Yosemite, you imagine there’d be riots in the streets, probably around the world, because we have so many people that have visited Yosemite, fallen in love with it and care deeply about the landscape there.

[00:29:27] And the flora and the fauna that exists there. Meanwhile, we have these mining threats in some of my BLM lands, like the Bodie Hills or Conglomerate Mesa, that will do incredible damage to these landscapes in terms of biodiversity, in terms of wildlife corridors, and

[00:29:46] they fly under the radar. Why? Because not many people know about these special places so yeah, that question was the one that drove the project to where it’s at now. There was a guy in 1968, a Senegalese forester named Baba Diem famously said, In the end, we will conserve only what we love.

[00:30:07] We will love only what we understand and we will understand only what we are taught. And I think if I was update to update this for today, it would be like, in the end, we will only conserve what we love. We will only love what we value and we will only value what we experience. And this blueprint is the kind of thing that makes sense to me like experience leads to value leads to love and love leads to conservation.

[00:30:32] And it feels like if we’re going to keep some of these public lands. in the public domain, and even to preserve and expand future protection on BLM land, we need more people, a broader coalition, to experience these places in the present.

[00:30:48] That’s what’s driven my project.

[00:30:51] Michael Hawk: it sounds like, in a lot of ways, the BLM lands are reflective of, say, biodiversity in general, in that it’s a very foundational piece of our ecosystem infrastructure, for lack of a better word and,

[00:31:08] And so what have you found through your project, to be most effective to help further your efforts?

[00:31:15] Josh Jackson: Yeah, I think that, through this project I’ve met so many amazing non profit groups that are actually working for these lands week in, week out. Places like the Mojave Desert Land Trust, or the Friends of the Inyo, or The Mattole Restoration Council, or the Conservation Lands Foundation, these really interesting organizations that are either exclusively working with BLM Land or BLM plus National Forest, and one of the things that they do, are they’re trying to get people.

[00:31:48] into these landscapes and taking, so like the Friends of the Inyo does a planned trip to the conglomerate mesa and the centennial flats every year. And their idea is to like, the more people you introduce to these landscapes and the more stories you tell about how important they are, and people are actually getting out there and experiencing these places.

[00:32:08] the More, the broader coalition that I referred to that you have. So when mining threats come, you have more people that can get involved and send letters to the BLM and, or protest if that’s what’s the best case scenario for some of these places. So I’m following in their footsteps, I’m trying to tell the story of these places through writing and photography and sharing information in a way that more people will go out there and have their own experiences on these lands and then fall in love with them and then fight to protect them. Gatekeeping in conservation, there’s a very fine line there. So I’m weary of giving like specific GPS coordinates to some tiny hot spring that, if it gets inundated, it’s dies and so my goal is to not give like GPS coordinates to a certain location that doesn’t have the infrastructure to be able to support crowds, but instead to talk about a whole wilderness area that has a campground, that has infrastructure that could support more people coming to visit it, or talk about a trail that’s already established that isn’t a really great trail for someone if they’re trying to have a gateway to BLM land and give a view from 10, 000 feet so that people know about these places, but they still have to do a little work to figure out how to get there and how to visit and experience, experience it for themselves.

[00:33:38] One of the fun things about BLM land is it. It certainly requires a little bit of digging through old blog posts and you know, trying to find things that aren’t as much written about as the National Park System, for example, and that’s part of the fun. that’s part of the Adventure.

[00:33:56] Michael Hawk: I Feel You on this because, I think. By now it’s well established the Instagram effect and how, I think, Joshua Tree National Park is a really good example of having seen a huge influx of visitors and not having the capacity to deal with it. And BLM would be even more difficult, I think.

[00:34:15] but Going with this idea of at least encouraging people to interact and see these lands and there’s one location in particular that I would, been debating in my head, whether I should even name it or not, but I’m not going to name it. but How does that look to people? Like, are, are the Lands entirely open and is it dispersed camping? Paint a picture of what a novice to BLM lands, might encounter if they were to travel to one of these locations.

[00:34:47] Josh Jackson: Yeah, I think the biggest gateway for people to BLM lands are there’s 60 plus campgrounds. I think 66 to be exact. There’s 66 like BLM campgrounds in the state of California where that you can drive to, and that will have minimal amenities like they’ll have usually have a fire ring, a picnic table and maybe a shade structure and like a vault toilet.

[00:35:08] And I think I always encourage people that are visiting for the 1st time to find a campground that they can go to. because That’ll always have a little bit of infrastructure set up for the average. camping family out there. And then usually from that campground, there’ll be trails and information of ways to access whatever BLM land is around that campground.

[00:35:32] Those are usually the best gateways to BLM land are those campgrounds. Outside of those campgrounds though, you can disperse camp almost. Anywhere on BLM land that you can get to and though I don’t usually talk about dispersed camping as much because there’s so many there’s just so many things that could potentially go wrong, whether it’s road conditions that haven’t been fixed, or severe weather, especially in the desert.

[00:36:01] Also I don’t think people have a really idea of how to practice responsible stewardship while dispersed camping. so I Typically don’t really talk about that as much, but it is And if you go on the BLM website, you’ll find all like the rules and regulations. And there’s a lot of great forums out there where people talk about specific places where it is a lot safer to recreate through dispersed camping as well.

[00:36:30] Michael Hawk: It’s funny, you talk about things that could go wrong camping in the desert, and I’ve camped several times in Death Valley, and it’s a national park with great infrastructure, the campgrounds are large, there’s plenty of people there and support, but every time I camp in Death Valley, we end up with these crazy winds at some point during the event, and People all over the campground have their tents blow away, holes ripped in their tents.

[00:36:56] It happens. It’s so easy. It’s an extreme environment. So I’m with you there that it takes a little prep work.

[00:37:03] Josh Jackson: That’s so funny because the time, the last time I went to Death Valley, we had spent the day wandering up in the Northern part of the park and we got back and our, our tent was literally gone. And it just blown away. So we just had to like, and like the only person still standing was the people that had a pop up trailer and that was barely hanging on.

[00:37:24] And so we just drove home in the middle of the night. We packed all our stuff up and headed out. It’s, that’s so funny that you say

[00:37:31] Michael Hawk: yeah, you bring your special Extra deep stakes, and, and even then that may not be enough.

[00:37:39] Josh Jackson: Yeah. It’s so sandy out there. It’s tough. Yeah. To find some good soil to stabilize your

[00:37:45] Michael Hawk: I still have fine grains of sand covering many of my camping objects because you just can’t get that off to it’s like it’s magnetic or something I don’t know how that works but. That’s what happens. I don’t want to

[00:37:58] dissuade people from trying it though. I guess that’s the other balance here, because it’s such an amazing experience to get out there and be able to spend a few days, in, in these locations and explore and listen to the quiet song of these lands, as you said,

[00:38:13] Josh Jackson: Yep.

[00:38:14] Michael Hawk: Alright, so there are some campgrounds, as you just pointed out. Are there costs, to, to camp at these locations? do you have To reserve a spot? What does that look like?

[00:38:26] Josh Jackson: That’s a great question. Luckily, there are no reservations allowed at any of the BLM campgrounds across the state, so they’re all first come, first served. they’re Typically free to 10 or 12, I think is the most I’ve paid for a campsite. Sometimes you’ll find even a host at these campgrounds.

[00:38:47] Sometimes you won’t even find that. I would say I have been alone or almost alone at every single campground I’ve ever stayed at, on every single night. Maybe the except there’s a few beautiful campgrounds that sort of on the eastern Sierra along the highway 395, in the shadow of the Sierra there.

[00:39:09] They’re incredible places. That’s probably where I’ve had more experience with other campers. But yeah, that’s 1 of the great things about BLM land is if you. You can’t find a reservation in a state park or a national park. You can go out to BLM campgrounds on a whim. And, I’ve never not found a spot even after all these years.

[00:39:31] I’m usually by myself.

[00:39:33] Michael Hawk: I’ve been in that same position is, as you described earlier, where all of the county and state and national parks are booked.

[00:39:42] And it’s nice to know that this exists as a way to get solitude in the face of. So much interest and use, coming into our public lands.

[00:39:54] Josh Jackson: Yeah, in terms, especially with populations you know, increasing over the next hundred years even, these lands are going to be, if we want more people to, or if we want people to continue recreating and falling in love with these places, and these are going to be our future politicians and people that make up the laws and the rules surrounding public lands.

[00:40:17] And if we want them to make decisions that. are involved with, the future of climate change and the future of access and preventing these public lands from being sold to the highest bidder. Like, we’re going to need Kids, especially now, that fall in love with these places and BLM is a great opportunity if, some of those normal Gateways to nature are fully booked, which they often are.

[00:40:45] Michael Hawk: So we’ve talked a little bit about camping and the fact that there are trails, at many of these places, especially emanating from the campgrounds. what are some Other ways that people can interact with the lands or maybe some. Unexpected recreational activities that people might be able to experience.

[00:41:01] Josh Jackson: Yeah. Hunting is definitely a great option for a lot of people that they can hunt. You can’t really hunt in national parks. You can in the forest system, but BLM lands are great hunting grounds typically, it depends on which part of the state you’re in, but, it’s great for hunters.

[00:41:18] The BLM even has, I’m not an OHV enthusiast, but there are a lot of OHV enthusiasts out there, and there’s specific areas. on BLM land, like in the Imperial Sand Dunes, for example, which is closer to the Mexican border, or the Cow Mountain area, or even Berryessa has designated OHV trails for people, including campgrounds, so you can find a place to camp and then head out with your rig out onto these designated trails that are specific for OHV.

[00:41:51] Lots, if you’re a mountain biker, There are some amazing mountain bike areas, including like the Fort Ord National Monument, which is close to the Bay Area. Lots of mountain bike trails there, which is incredible in like the springtime. The King Range, up near the Lost Coast, which we’ve come back to a few times now, they have whole sections of wilderness that are designated for mountain biking.

[00:42:17] So they have trails built and ramps and all kinds of stuff. So that’s another one. And then of course, The way that you can recreate freely in terms of dispersed camping, which I know we’ve talked about that, that really distinguishes BLM from any of the other federal agencies that manage land, the ability to just go out and if you can pull off the road just a little bit without disturbing habitat or ecosystem you can just walk into the desert a few hundred yards and set up a tent and camp for the night for free. It’s pretty amazing.

[00:42:52] Michael Hawk: And the thing that I like to do, and I think some of the listeners to this podcast like to do is, I call it naturalizing and it’s going out and looking for all the different organisms that exist in the area and using iNaturalist or other apps to help document, what’s out there. I’d love to go out and discover new plants or new, new scorpions or new, whatever might live in the area that, you’re staying at.

[00:43:19] Josh Jackson: Yeah, I’ve met bird, I’ve met bird watchers, I’ve met photographers, I’ve met botanists out in the field, I’ve met hunters, I’ve met it’s every kind of recreation that you could think of is happening out on BLM land, which is pretty interesting.

[00:43:34] Michael Hawk: there are a couple of BLM lands not too far away from where I live. in the Bay Area. And I found some resources online on the BLM websites. Is, are those good sources to learn about these spaces? Because honestly, I found it to be a little bit of a mixed bag and I’m wondering, how people can learn about where these campgrounds are or where some of these lands are.

[00:43:55] Josh Jackson: , that’s really the impetus for what my whole project is about because it’s so difficult to find where these places are. it’s I remember when I first started my project and trying to figure out where to go, I had this big, huge California map. It was like a 1989 printed BLM map.

[00:44:16] But even that, it’s just showing the different colors of where the BLM land is. It was still really difficult, even going on the website, which at the time felt pretty antiquated, the BLM website. Trying to navigate through there is like trying to navigate it. Pixelated domain from the 1990s. There’s like broken links and all kinds of problems.

[00:44:35] They’ve just updated the website. So it is a little bit better. But yeah, I would say certainly start on the BLM website and I’m assuming you can put a link into the show notes, but there is a, a way that you can navigate you can hover over the state that you’re going to want to visit BLM land in, and you can, then there’s like a menu that you can scroll down.

[00:44:56] And if you want. Birding or hunting or camping or campgrounds. You can click that and then you can hit search. And that is a good starting point. cause you might see One picture and then a small write up with a little bit of campground inform