Ryan Callaghan — Director of conservation at MeatEater and host of 'Cal's Weekend Review,' a hunting/outdoor-news podcast. He's the North American board chair for Backcountry Hunters & Anglers and a leading voice in public-lands advocacy.
The gist
Joe Rogan and Ryan Callaghan dig into the recent attempt to sell off federal public land via Mike Lee's amendment in the budget reconciliation 'big beautiful bill,' and how a broad, nonpartisan coalition of hunters, businesses, and citizens killed it. They explore why public lands are uniquely American and economically vital, the corner-crossing legal battles, grassland and bison ecology, and the disconnect between urban Americans and where food comes from. The conversation widens into monocrop agriculture vs. regenerative ranching, lab-grown and plant-based meat, and the dangers of bot-driven social media and online censorship abroad. Throughout, Callaghan stresses that conservation wins require unglamorous, persistent, nonpartisan civic effort.
Big reveals
- The episode opens celebrating that the public-land sale in the 'big beautiful bill' was effectively killed before recording.
- Callaghan traces the threat back to Utah's August 2024 Supreme Court lawsuit seeking 18.5 million acres of BLM land.
- He argues Mike Lee's push is driven by Mormon-church land-development doctrine, calling it 'religious zealotry.'
- Public-land sales were buried on page 202 of the bill; Lee's team rewrote the language four times to pass the Senate Parliamentarian.
- Callaghan describes John Reeves's Alaska 'boneyard' where thousands of Ice Age animals are unearthed from just ~2.3 acres, possibly tied to the Younger Dryas impact.
- A former FBI source estimated 80% of Twitter is bots, fueling artificial 'consensus' on hot-button issues.
- In Montana, 115 people testified against joining Utah's lawsuit and all 10 supporters dropped off, yet the committee approved it anyway.
Things worth remembering
- The US loses roughly 2 million acres of grassland a year - the most threatened ecosystem on the planet.
- That annual grassland loss roughly equals all the golf-course acreage in the United States.
- Corner crossing - stepping across the touching corners of public-land parcels - was historically treated as trespassing despite involving inches.
- Grazing leases on public land can cost as little as ~$1.35 per animal unit month versus a high of about $24.
- Dan Flores's theory: massive bison herds existed because ~90% of Native Americans had been wiped out by disease, removing their main predator.
- A bison's gestation period is about nine months - similar to a human.
- About 97% of US-grown winter vegetables are irrigated by the Colorado River, which is fed by public land.
- The lesser prairie chicken won't nest within several acres of any vertical structure and just hit the endangered species list.
- Right-leaning figures like Cam Hanes and Josh Smith publicly broke from party lines to oppose the land sale.
- UK police made over 12,000 arrests in 2023 for offensive online messages - about 33 per day.