Before the rise of the indoor Republicans, conservatives’ affinity for wilderness was a powerful force in American politics. As the historian Douglas Brinkley put it to me, “There was something about huddling around the campfire exchanging stories, hunting and fishing — it was part of the DNA of the Republican Party.”
This helped ensure a nearly bulletproof consensus among Democrats and Republicans to steward public lands. While lawmakers and cabinet members argued about the details of environmental regulations, the core ethic of conservation — protecting clean air, clean water and wilderness for future generations — remained reliably bipartisan.
Update: looks like enough Republican senators from Montana and Idaho (and outdoorsmen supporters) were enough to kill public lands sales. LCV/Sierra Club scorecards are not-the-best gauges of who really cares and who doesn’t.
It seems like there is a subset of “manosphere” right-leaning figures (eg see meateater magazine) who really care about the values and landscape of the original frontier west—which represent what the US was like BEFORE the era of big government encroachment/constant gatekeeping (and the enlargement of the population). Wilderness is a place to test self-reliance/risk management/competence/ability to survive without all these “modern nuisances”. There is some gatekeeping involved with protecting wilderness, but once you protect those areas, people can be given opportunities to show how “pure” they are against the modern bureaucratic contamination of “big government”. The ethos of old American West still exists in the great public lands, and it looks like many Republicans still care about preserving this! (without appearing lame like tree-huggers). Even if it means some level of ranching, hunting, fishing, mining, and some level of delisting endangered species (all which are still nowhere as bad/irreversible as habitat loss from suburban sprawl). The wide open cattle ranches in the west (only responsible for a small minority of all meat production) can be regenerative and still involve less intensive land use than feeding more soybeans/corn to factory-farmed cattle. West Virginia is one of the most heavily mined states in the US, and yet one of the most “wild”/forested (over a timescale of decades, ecosystems recover from many forms of mining, and sometimes the mines have a mini-Chenobyl-effect of driving out human development).
[and wild game eats way less shitty food than most farmed animals]. Even a limited amount of trapping animals for their fur can help displace some excess use of plastics for clothing. Hunting/trapping seasons in the US [in the modern era] seem to be sustainable and have never led to any species becoming extinct, and give strong incentives for people to keep “wild lands” away from development
Dorian Abbot once wrote a substack essay about how “conservatives should be more about conservation” [though I’m not sure if he really was conservative].
Thomas Massie is a great example of solar-powered Republican self-reliance, although he has fallen out of favor with some of MAGA. There still seems to be enough MAGA-ish conservationists who were able to convince the administration to spare the public lands!
[if you take some some historical perspective, even Ted Stevens voted for Jimmy Carter’s Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA), though he later railed against some of the broken promises that democrats have later made. Alaska, in particular, has such low human development that it can more easily recover from mining-induced habitat fragmentation than many other states can, so this leads some level of sympathy towards Lisa Murkowski’s support of making better use of Alaska’s natural resources (and she is the opposite of climate denialist, her latest book is way more interesting than most books politicians write, b/c it comes with a unique level of history and care for one of the most neglected states).
and Dick Cheney said the “1984 Wyoming Wilderness Act” was one of his proudest legislative achievements.
==
Maybe they still won’t vote the right way (and maybe they won’t care as much as Jeff Merkley or Cory Booker), but there was a recent congressional hearing on microplastics where Dan Sullivan and Lummis (R-WY) both had very reasonable responses to a microplastics hearing.
[and maybe a small degree of increased logging can help replace plastics with wood]
[there really does seem to be something special with Montana Republicans, starting from Ryan Zinke. It might not be a total coincidence that they also re-instated “right to try” laws].
and maybe all these tariffs against Brazil and third-world countries can also help slow deforestation down in these countries!!! I haven’t seen any indication that JD Vance cares about the environment (he is more like the MAGA indoor Republicans than the pro-outdoors Montana Republicans), but he did make a point that it may be “environmentally better” to resource manufacturing to countries with better environmental standards like the US (though Republicans may still work to reduce those standards...)
LCV scores weigh everything equally so they are a poor meter of those who care when it really mattered (as Benji noted, the Montana Republicans stepped in when it really mattered). Mining/drilling is safer in the US than other countries, and when done in remote areas, can still give way to ecological restoration. The number of species that have gone extinct due to mining/drilling is extremely low compared with those that have gone extinct due to other causes.
Bill Frist (whose biophilia now permeates his profile so thoroughly that it feels almost as alive as EO Wilson’s..) even said that Tennessee republicans like Lamar Alexander did a lot for the environment, despite poor LCV scores.
[and sometimes, the pro-MAHA republicans do get better access to the head of EPA than really pro-environment democrats (eg Sheldon Whitehouse or Jeff Merkley) do]. Ryan Zinke made a difference when it mattered.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/08/opinion/republicans-hunting-wilderness-nature.html
Update: looks like enough Republican senators from Montana and Idaho (and outdoorsmen supporters) were enough to kill public lands sales. LCV/Sierra Club scorecards are not-the-best gauges of who really cares and who doesn’t.
It seems like there is a subset of “manosphere” right-leaning figures (eg see meateater magazine) who really care about the values and landscape of the original frontier west—which represent what the US was like BEFORE the era of big government encroachment/constant gatekeeping (and the enlargement of the population). Wilderness is a place to test self-reliance/risk management/competence/ability to survive without all these “modern nuisances”. There is some gatekeeping involved with protecting wilderness, but once you protect those areas, people can be given opportunities to show how “pure” they are against the modern bureaucratic contamination of “big government”. The ethos of old American West still exists in the great public lands, and it looks like many Republicans still care about preserving this! (without appearing lame like tree-huggers). Even if it means some level of ranching, hunting, fishing, mining, and some level of delisting endangered species (all which are still nowhere as bad/irreversible as habitat loss from suburban sprawl). The wide open cattle ranches in the west (only responsible for a small minority of all meat production) can be regenerative and still involve less intensive land use than feeding more soybeans/corn to factory-farmed cattle. West Virginia is one of the most heavily mined states in the US, and yet one of the most “wild”/forested (over a timescale of decades, ecosystems recover from many forms of mining, and sometimes the mines have a mini-Chenobyl-effect of driving out human development).
[and wild game eats way less shitty food than most farmed animals]. Even a limited amount of trapping animals for their fur can help displace some excess use of plastics for clothing. Hunting/trapping seasons in the US [in the modern era] seem to be sustainable and have never led to any species becoming extinct, and give strong incentives for people to keep “wild lands” away from development
Look up Benji Backer now, he helped create the “American Conservation Coalition”
Dorian Abbot once wrote a substack essay about how “conservatives should be more about conservation” [though I’m not sure if he really was conservative].
Thomas Massie is a great example of solar-powered Republican self-reliance, although he has fallen out of favor with some of MAGA. There still seems to be enough MAGA-ish conservationists who were able to convince the administration to spare the public lands!
[if you take some some historical perspective, even Ted Stevens voted for Jimmy Carter’s Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA), though he later railed against some of the broken promises that democrats have later made. Alaska, in particular, has such low human development that it can more easily recover from mining-induced habitat fragmentation than many other states can, so this leads some level of sympathy towards Lisa Murkowski’s support of making better use of Alaska’s natural resources (and she is the opposite of climate denialist, her latest book is way more interesting than most books politicians write, b/c it comes with a unique level of history and care for one of the most neglected states).
and Dick Cheney said the “1984 Wyoming Wilderness Act” was one of his proudest legislative achievements.
==
Maybe they still won’t vote the right way (and maybe they won’t care as much as Jeff Merkley or Cory Booker), but there was a recent congressional hearing on microplastics where Dan Sullivan and Lummis (R-WY) both had very reasonable responses to a microplastics hearing.
[and maybe a small degree of increased logging can help replace plastics with wood]
[there really does seem to be something special with Montana Republicans, starting from Ryan Zinke. It might not be a total coincidence that they also re-instated “right to try” laws].
and maybe all these tariffs against Brazil and third-world countries can also help slow deforestation down in these countries!!! I haven’t seen any indication that JD Vance cares about the environment (he is more like the MAGA indoor Republicans than the pro-outdoors Montana Republicans), but he did make a point that it may be “environmentally better” to resource manufacturing to countries with better environmental standards like the US (though Republicans may still work to reduce those standards...)
https://chatgpt.com/share/688fda57-e720-800c-afc6-5f7df5781395
LCV scores weigh everything equally so they are a poor meter of those who care when it really mattered (as Benji noted, the Montana Republicans stepped in when it really mattered). Mining/drilling is safer in the US than other countries, and when done in remote areas, can still give way to ecological restoration. The number of species that have gone extinct due to mining/drilling is extremely low compared with those that have gone extinct due to other causes.
https://chatgpt.com/share/6988ea21-3178-800c-b90e-326ae6433947
Bill Frist (whose biophilia now permeates his profile so thoroughly that it feels almost as alive as EO Wilson’s..) even said that Tennessee republicans like Lamar Alexander did a lot for the environment, despite poor LCV scores.
[and sometimes, the pro-MAHA republicans do get better access to the head of EPA than really pro-environment democrats (eg Sheldon Whitehouse or Jeff Merkley) do]. Ryan Zinke made a difference when it mattered.
https://bonamici.house.gov/media/press-releases/senate-unanimously-passes-sullivan-whitehouse-bonamici-carter-legislation