Tamara Pogue is a member of the Board of County Commissioners in Summit County, Colorado. Her primary focus is finding community-based solutions to workforce housing challenges and maintaining affordability for working families in our mountain community.听

When Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) proposed selling off millions of acres of public lands across 11 western states, he falsely claimed it would help solve the West’s affordable housing crisis.

It took about a minute to realize how unserious Senator Lee鈥檚 proposal actually was. It wasn鈥檛 about housing. In fact, there were no provisions for affordability, and worse, no guardrails to prevent the country鈥檚 wildest peaks and breathtaking vistas from being sold to the highest bidder.

But now that the political whiplash has subsided, and听 from the Senate鈥檚 sweeping reconciliation bill, the question remains: Could public land be used to house听people?

To be sure, the vast majority of our public lands aren鈥檛 suitable for housing. They aren鈥檛 near a town. They lack road access and basic infrastructure, like water and sewer. In fact, most of these lands are being used at their highest and best purpose: for wildlife habitat and public recreation鈥攖he entire point of 鈥淎merica鈥檚 best idea.”

There is, however, another idea for housing on public lands that鈥檚 already being put to work today.

In 2018, the bipartisan Farm Bill signed by President Trump, enabled the long-term leasing of Forest Service (USFS) administrative sites to entities like the one I help manage听as a key to addressing the west鈥檚 housing crisis.

These 鈥渁dmin sites鈥� aren鈥檛 the wild and scenic places where we play鈥攊n fact, you鈥檝e likely driven by them without giving them a second glance. They鈥檙e boneyards for equipment, with old buildings that sometimes serve as housing for Forest Service wildland firefighters, or they even sit empty.

Summit County, Colorado, signed a lease on a USFS administrative site near the town of Dillon back in 2023. This parcel, located across the street from the town, and just a mile from a major grocery store, is now the site of a development that will contain up to 162 units of housing for critical USFS firefighters, rangers, and other workers in the county.

The land has been surveyed, the utilities are available, and the buildings have been designed鈥攁ll without the need to sacrifice, or wantonly sell, any of the amazing public lands we听here in Colorado’s high country cherish and welcome millions each year to enjoy.

Repurposing these sites through legislation that already exists is a model built on a partnership with the USFS, and one that keeps whole what makes our economy run and our people thrive. Now, we need the current Administration and new USFS leadership to continue to collaborate with us to see this project through to completion.

There鈥檚 a silver lining to the justified panic over the sale of public lands. It shines a bright light on an important conversation about housing and public lands that my fellow commissioners and I, along with our friends at the Forest Service, are eager to share. It also offers D.C. policymakers a chance to advance housing solutions that the public can actually get behind.

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From the biggest corporations to the smallest garage brands, one thing unites the outdoor industry: passion. Businesses that fuel adventure are invariably started by adventure-loving people. They have an idea that makes the outdoors more accessible, or safe, or fun, and they dive into the hard work of bringing it to life.

is no different. Our brands were founded by passionate hikers, runners, cyclists, climbers, and more, and we want to support others pursuing their dreams. That鈥檚 why we launched , a pitch competition for outdoor industry startups. The inaugural event took place on May 29, in the lead up to the 2025 in Denver, Colorado. Five finalists, selected from nearly 200 entries, made their pitches to a panel of judges (with plenty of investors in the room). On the line: a First Place prize valued at $100,000, plus additional prizes for the Runner Up and People鈥檚 Choice Award.

The five finalists鈥� , , , and 鈥攙aried widely in their offerings. 国产吃瓜黑料 gear, travel, concussion care, dock rentals, and planet-saving shoes were all vying for the grand prize, which included cash, marketing services, and more. The finalists made their pitches to a panel of judges that included entrepreneurial leaders like Mel Strong, co-founder of venture capitalist firm Next Ventures, and Ariana Ferwerda, the co-founder and CEO of women’s outdoor apparel brand Halfdays.

After a flurry of slides and questions, Raide took home top honors, which surprised founder Kyle Siegel. 鈥淚 was nervous that maybe a pitch competition wouldn鈥檛 value a company like Raide in such a crowded market, but it feels really good to be validated,鈥� he says. 鈥淚 started Raide after reaching peak frustration with a lot of gear I was using for backcountry skiing and running, where I felt like brands weren鈥檛 able to combine performance, function, and style into a single product.鈥� Exhibit A: Raide鈥檚 flagship product, the LF 2L running belt. The Colorado-based company also makes ski packs and apparel, and is working on a lighter, more breathable running belt as well as baselayer bottoms coming out this upcoming winter.

As the First Place winner, Raide earned a prize package valued at $100,000. It includes cash and advertising across the 国产吃瓜黑料 Network, with a global audience of more than 250 million. One thing Siegel intends to do with the winnings? 鈥淎ttend 国产吃瓜黑料 Festival as a participating brand next year!鈥� he says.

Campfire Ranch was the other big winner, earning both Runner Up and the People鈥檚 Choice Award (voted on by 国产吃瓜黑料 Ignite attendees). Sam Degenhard, founder and CEO of Campfire Ranch, says the business is a direct result of his love for sharing the outdoors with others. 鈥淚 was raised with a focus on the outdoors,鈥� he says, 鈥渂ut in my adult life, I found that there were so few quality places to stay that supported frequent outdoor travelers and those curious about getting into nature. I started experimenting with hosting trips and learned that friends were 鈥渋n鈥� if you took away the heavy lifting, things like gear, meal planning, activities, and transportation. I brought all of these aspects to life in our first location in Colorado and saw immediate traction.鈥� Since then, Campfire Ranch has added another Colorado location, one in Arkansas, and has plans to open more.

Degenhard says the benefits of 国产吃瓜黑料 Ignite go beyond the prize packages (valued at $50,000 for Runner Up and $20,000 for People鈥檚 Choice). 鈥淭he experience allowed us to hone our story, deepen our focus, and deliver who we are, concisely, to the outdoor industry as a whole,鈥� he says. 鈥淭he connections following our involvement have been meaningful and I am sure will result in great brand partnerships, idea sharing, and hopefully, some investor traction.鈥�

For Campfire Ranch, connecting with the 国产吃瓜黑料 Network audience is the perfect next chapter in the brand鈥檚 journey. 鈥湽怨虾诹� already speaks directly to our target customer demographic,鈥� Degenhard says, 鈥渟o now it鈥檚 time to tell them about who we are, how we share the outdoors with others, and why we believe the future of the natural world rests in the hands of those who enjoy it.鈥�

Thank you to the sponsors who made 国产吃瓜黑料 Ignite possible: REI Co-op Path Ahead Ventures, Send Bars, Next Ventures, OEDIT, Cooley, Karsh Hagan, and ICELab.

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In 2020, David Litt, former senior speech writer to President Obama, moved from Washington DC to the Jersey Shore, and felt the need for a jolt of life amidst the pandemic. So he did what anyone would do: David decided he needed to learn to surf. As a sensible Yale-educated, New York Times best selling author, David knew he needed help. And that鈥檚 how he ended up bobbing in the ocean with someone who could not be more dissimilar to him, his tattooed, truck driving, death metal enthusiast, Joe Rogan superfan, brother-in-law, Matt. The sea salt comedy of errors, became the basis of David’s brand new book “It’s Only Drowning: A true story of learning to surf and the pursuit of common ground.” And while it hilariously recounts David鈥檚 learning process, the book is also a surprising investigation of the current American culture war, the roles David and his brother-in-law have been cast into, and how, as unlikely as it would seem, a sport like surfing can help bridge the fissures of class and culture.

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I have two nice things to say about triathlons, which is that they’re long, and they’re difficult. (Yes, they’re also steeped in history and tradition, and the .) But, Lordy鈥攃ould the sporting gods have picked a more somber collection of events? Swimming, biking, and running are about as basic as a pumpkin spice latte. Even the Olympics has skateboarding these days.

While I have nothing but respect for anyone who would even contemplate completing a triathlon, many of us at 翱耻迟蝉颈诲别听have a hard time doing the same, grueling activity for hours at a time. The rest of us have bad knees. Besides, triathlons have been around since the seventies. Isn’t it about time to change things up?

So, the editors鈥攑hilosophers that we are鈥攑ut our heads together to come up with some alternatives. So far, not a single national sporting committee has taken us up on any of them. But, as always, we’re just going to assume we’re ahead of our time.

Here are eight multisport linkups we’d much rather participate in than a full triathlon.

Spending all day in the sun is fine鈥攗nless you have skin as fair and burn-prone as I do. As an alternative, I propose we move the whole triathlon business underground. Call it the Moley Trinity. Competitors will connect a route, a spelunking adventure, and an in a terrible, beautiful, and highly abrasive linkup of semi-subterranean sports.
鈥� Corey Buhay, interim managing editor, 国产吃瓜黑料

I suck at swimming, which is why I鈥檝e never tried a tri. And a stubborn piriformis injury has put the kaibosh on competitive trail running. So if I could pick any three triathlon events, I鈥檇 keep biking in there, but make it mountain biking. Then I鈥檇 add in 10 laps on a , and I鈥檇 top it off with 60 minutes of jump roping鈥攎y favorite form of cardio.
鈥� Maya Silver, editor-in-chief, Climbing

Hike, pick a gallon of wild berries, then bake them into a pie. Points for time, but your final confection will also be judged in the style of The Great British Bake-Off. The hardest part is collecting enough berries without eating them all straight off the bush.
鈥� Zoe Gates, senior editor, Backpacker

Slam a gas-station four-pack of Red Bull on your way to the lake. When you arrive, grab your SUP and paddle until your arms give out. Finally, snag a prime shoreline spot and hang your hammock. Whoever dozes off first wins. (Can鈥檛 fall asleep? That鈥檚 God, or maybe the Red Bull, telling you that you haven鈥檛 paddled enough.)
鈥� Adam Roy, editor-in-chief, Backpacker

Bike, to inline skate, to swim鈥攖he ultimate urban tri. The biggest crux here is transporting your skates via bike. Do you tie them around your neck, throw them in a pack, or swing them off the handle bars? The strategy we have tried is attempting to ride the bike with blades already on. Would not recommend.
鈥� Kade Krichko, contributing editor, 国产吃瓜黑料

Okay, one more idea. Allow me to pitch you Mudsport, a sloppy six-mile mud run, followed by an intense but sporting game of , with a stretch of highly competitive to cap it off.
鈥� Corey Buhay, interim managing editor, 国产吃瓜黑料

I鈥檓 13 weeks postpartum, so any kind of exercise is an accomplishment these days. I propose a tri for new parents: Drink a full cup of coffee before it gets cold. Then pop your child into a stroller and jog to the nearest kid-friendly attraction so you can push the stroller around while your little one snoozes peacefully, appreciating none of it鈥�.all on wildly limited sleep while nursing as needed. Bonus points if you have to change a blowout along the way.
鈥� Abigail Wise, brand director, 国产吃瓜黑料

I鈥檓 a great swimmer and used to be on a swim team, but if I never touch water again鈥攎inus showering and bubble baths鈥擨鈥檇 be OK with that. My preferred triathlon consists of a morning session spent training my friend鈥檚 kitten to wear a harness so that he can join me on my trail walks, taking said kitten on my favorite 2.3-mile trek, and then parking my car in front of the beach for a nap.
鈥�Ayana Underwood, senior health editor, 国产吃瓜黑料

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Ocean Ramsey spends more time with sharks than most people spend with their coworkers. For more than 25 years, she鈥檚 been studying, swimming with, and advocating for sharks鈥攃reatures she calls 鈥渨ildlife, not monsters.鈥�

Her high-visibility free dives with great whites have earned her the moniker Shark Whisperer, the title of a new Netflix film from the Academy Award-winning director of My Octopus Teacher, James Reed. Premiering June 30, the provocative documentary makes clear the soft-spoken Hawaiian marine conservationist doesn’t let her critics distract her from her mission: to use her voice and platform for shark conservation, not demonization.

Watch an exclusive clip of Shark Whisperer 产别濒辞飞.听

Ramsey鈥檚 social media following over 2 million across and features up-close encounters with dozens of different shark species (including 20-foot-long great whites), as well as frequent calls for policy changes to help promote shark protections around the world.

鈥淧eople look first and listen second,鈥� Ramsey tells 国产吃瓜黑料 about using her social media to challenge听our perceptions of sharks. Ramsey’s peaceful shark encounters caught on film go against Hollywood’s demonization of sharks and unwind our cultural frenzy that these creatures are to be feared.

Shark Whisperer doesn’t shy away from the controversy these close interactions also stir. Ramsey gets incredibly close to the animals while freediving, sometimes touching them. While Ramsey says these moments challenge negative perceptions of sharks and raise awareness about their importance in marine ecosystems, some in the scientific community say that type of interaction stresses the animals, alters their natural behavior, and sets a poor example for the public. On the other hand, world-renowned marine biologist Sylvia Earle, “our era’s Jacques Cousteau,” advocates for Ramsey in the film (and in the above video clip), applauding her fearless efforts to change the public perception of sharks.

Outside caught up with Ramsey to talk about the criticism, the dangers of getting too close, and how she hopes Shark Whisperer will shift how we view sharks.

OUTSIDE: How do you hope the encounters you share with the world changes public perception of sharks?

Ocean Ramsey: I’m really hoping that it’ll shift the Hollywood fictitious portrayal of sharks as mindless monsters into the reality that we can coexist. We need to learn to adapt to their behavior. Because the reality is there are over 100 million sharks being killed every year for wasteful things like shark finning for shark and soup, shark fishing, shark culling. And deep sea sharks being killed for the pharmaceutical and souvenir and cosmetic trade.

I hope to inspire people to get involved in marine conservation because we really need more people speaking up for those without a voice. A lot of people don’t go diving; they don’t get to see the amazing underwater world. Maybe they don’t feel a connection. I hope that with this film we can show the reality and the beauty and the importance [of sharks].

Your activism can be polarizing. On one hand, you鈥檝e contributed to passing protective shark regulations. On the other hand, people sometimes get heated when they see your close interactions with sharks. What do you have to say to critics who say your media is more about spectacle than science?

I think it is undeniable by this point that we’ve been able to help pass laws because we’ve been able to bring millions of people to the table. But I understand that there’s always going to be critics. The way that I handle it is staying focused on my mission. Who really deserves my time? The sharks.

I do also try to look for gratitude in moments like that as well. I have noticed in the past that while this isn鈥檛 their goal, [the critics have] actually brought more attention to the subjects, and that can be a really good thing to keep sharks in the news.

You spent six years advocating to make shark fishing illegal in Hawaii, which was ultimately adopted in 2021 and went into effect in 2022. Tell me more about the role you and your platform played in passing that ban.听

Since we have built this online social media presence, we can reach potentially millions of people a day. By utilizing our social media platforms, when we do a call to action during the legislative process, we have a little bit more educated of an audience, and people who are more willing to speak up, lend their voice, send in a听 letter, write to a politician.

And then for people that are on the Island, we put out other calls to action; filming ourselves going down to the capitol and saying , 鈥淧lease come join us. You can do this too.鈥� I know that for some people, it could be nerve-wracking to go and sit in front of a committee and testify again and again and again, as we did year after year after year. And a lot of times for these committee schedules, you get like two days’ notice, and so we had to drop everything and drive across the Island to go into the capitol.

The nice thing was, year after year after year, we fine-tuned our approach, we made more connections and we gained more support. There’s people that come there and they’re not necessarily even caring about sharks鈥� they care about corals and turtles and dolphins. But protecting sharks helps the whole ecosystem. We got those people on board, too.

Let鈥檚 talk about warning signs when you鈥檙e diving with sharks. How do you know when to call it and get out of the water? What are the signs to you that the shark doesn’t want an interaction right now?

It’s called agonistic, territorial body language. If you’ve got two cats, when they come together maybe they don’t like each other and they need to sort out their social hierarchy. They arch their back. When you have two dogs who might be territorial, maybe they smell each other first, then maybe they flatten their ears back, they lower their tails, they may bear their teeth.

Because of domestication, most people are more attuned to cat behavior, dog behavior, bird behavior. But it’s the same thing in the water with sharks and my team, because I train [the team] them to notice this. There are subtle, small behaviors, and you can see the way that they’re interacting with one another, and that’s precursory behavior towards a physical confrontation.

Now this doesn’t mean that we don’t occasionally get a wild card. A wild card is a shark that randomly swims in, from out of your field of vision. Maybe they’re moving from one aggregate site to another. Maybe it’s a highly migratory species. And they might be a very dominant individual, and they might come right up to you. And so with this [shark] approach, I train people on redirection methods and techniques, which doesn’t harm the shark. It’s just a gentle redirection off the side of them.

But most of the time, 99% of the time, the sharks don’t really care that you’re around, if you’re being quiet, if you’re not wearing bright, flashy, colorful things. If you’re looking around and any of them start to swim towards and you acknowledge them, they’re going to treat you a little bit more like a predator.

Again, not trying to encourage anyone to just jump in. Please go under the guidance of a trained professional who are very sensitive to their body language, to their swim patterns.

What policy efforts are most urgent for protecting sharks right now? What can people do?

The EU shark fin ban is currently under the environmental assessment, so stay tuned for when that’s going to be back open to public comment. At that time, it would be great if people could re-engage in that one, because that’s the entire European Union, and Europe is responsible for with Spain being the top exporter to Hong Kong.

And then if people could also potentially try to reach these companies that are still shipping shark fins. The U.S. removed themselves from the global fin trade, but there’s still a lot of companies out there on the global market, including FedEx, that are still shipping shark fins. And there’s a lot of companies who have banned it, and a lot of airlines who have banned it. It’s just that we haven’t gotten all of them on board yet.

And for the U.S., I would say banning shark fishing should be like the next really big one, because states like New York, South Carolina, Alabama, Florida and Texas, are still running shark fishing tournaments and doing recreational shark fishing.

So if anyone reading this is from those states, if you could talk to your legislators and send them a letter letting them know that this is important to you, and to rally your communities. If you’re from those areas, politicians are more likely to listen to you. But we can all help, collaborate and support each other.

This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Visit for information about ongoing advocacy campaigns.听

鈥淪hark Whisperer鈥� premieres on June 30, exclusively on Netflix.听

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Well, that escalated quickly.

Alone Africa isn’t even a week old, yet the survivalist are dropping like flies. During the third episode, titled “Thirst Trap,” two more contestants quit, bringing the total to four tap outs after just five days in the wilderness.

The high attrition rate has me wondering if the dry and rocky landscape in South Africa’s Great Karoo desert is, indeed, the toughest location in the show’s history.

It’s a Thirsty Crew

(Spoilers ahead!)听I’ll get to the tap outs later, but to me, the biggest revelation of episode 3 was that the fight against thirst would become the season’s defining struggle after all.

Yes, the show’s pre-season marketing material hyped-up the hardship created by the quest for water. I admittedly shrugged it off as hyperbole while watching the opening episode, when it became clear that all ten participants were stationed on the banks of a massive lake.

But as we saw in episode 3,听access to water in the desert doesn’t diminish thirst鈥攐r shrink the massive workload required to keep thirst at bay.

In this episode we got a sense of the grueling daily regimen survivalists must maintain in order听to stay hydrated. Get water. Filter out the gunk. Build a fire. Boil the water in a pot that holds two quarts. Let it cool off. Drink. Repeat.

Yeah, it’s a full-time job.

And the ramifications of this process are massive. Participants must keep fire going. They can’t take on too many mid-day tasks鈥攍ike building a shelter or fishing鈥攖hat steal their attention from the water-purification process.

And, perhaps most importantly, they cannot stray too far from camp, for fear of wilting in the heat and losing access to their stores of purified water.

In a speedy flash of听Alone text, we learned that just four participants chose to bring a canteen into the Great Karoo: Douglas, Doug, Nathan, and Jit. Everyone else has to stay close to home. When I learned this information, I made a mental note鈥攚ill a canteen separate the winner from everyone else?

In episode 3 we saw two survivalists address the so-called “thirst trap” head on. Kelsey created a water storage cistern made out of a strip of tarp and rocks.

Douglas, meanwhile, scored mega bushcraft points for building his own water storage unit out of a massive agave root. I don’t know if Douglas has what it takes to win this season, but his quick thinking vaulted him way up in my own mental ranking of the survivalists.

Did They Have the Right Stuff?

I thought a lot about Douglas and Kelsey while watching Pablo, 55, struggle under the unrelenting sun and eventually call for rescue. Pablo’s demise showcased the serious toll of the water workload.

I will likely never personally experience the discomfort and struggle that any Alone participant endures in the wild鈥攖hank god. But armchair quarterbacking their decisions is, of course, a crucial component of Alone fandom.

While seated in my armchair of omniscience, I couldn’t help but wonder why Pablo didn’t try to construct some type of water-storage system of his own. I also wondered if he could have lasted longer听by choosing a canteen instead of a shovel and a saw.

That said, I passed little judgement when I watched Will, 31, become the season’s fourth resignation in dramatic fashion. After eating a stew made from acacia nuts and prickly pear cactus, Will suffered terrible gastrointestinal stress, eventually vomiting blood. I squirmed in my seat as I watched Will writhe in pain. He called for an emergency rescue鈥攕omething you rarely see in 础濒辞苍别.听

My only takeaway from Will’s departure is that we’ve now seen two people quit (Jit left in episode 1 with a bad stomach) after eating prickly pear, which may be the proverbial poisoned apple of this season.

Is This the Hardest Setting in听Alone History?

You have to go way back in 础濒辞苍别’蝉听history to find an attrition rate this high in the opening week. In 2015, during the show’s debut season, four participants gave up in the first four days. A fifth quit on day five.

That year producers staged the show on a remote and soggy corner of Vancouver Island, where water, food, and shelter were in abundance. Three guys bailed due to fear of bears and wolves. A fourth departed after catching a water-borne illness.

Since then, no other season has seen four tap-outs within a week.

So, is听Alone Africa really the hardest season so far? I’m leaning toward yes, and to understand why, I think it’s worth examining season 12 through the听lens of the听show’s history.

A few years ago I asked its executive producer, Ryan Pender, about the early dropouts in season 1. It turns out the flurry of tap outs sounded alarm bells within the show’s production circles.

“We were concerned,” he told me. “Because of course it’s a massive undertaking, lots of money was spent on the season, and the concept was not proven.”

Pender attributed the high attrition rate in season 1 to the casting choices. Back then,听Alone was still untested and unknown. To find the ten participants that year, casting directors sought out people they met at survival trade shows or saw online.

“Not everybody knew what they were in store for, and that’s what it really came down to,” Pender said. So, long story short, the survivalists that year were green.

But fast forward to 2025.听Alone now attracts millions of viewers each year and has spawned its own culture of bushcraft fanatics.听These days, Alone receives 70,000 applications each year, and its casting department follows a multi-step process to听find the ten best. By and large, the contestants coming on the show听these days know exactly what they’re getting into, and they spend months preparing.

“The participants’听skills are always improving from year to year,” Dave Holder, the show’s safety expert, recently told me. “I love to see how people are practicing these skills in their daily lives. The overall level has gone way up.”

But the x-factor is that all of听Alone‘s previous seasons have been set in cool, damp, and in some cases frozen environments. Dehydration isn’t much of a hurdle in coastal Labrador, the Great Slave Lake, or Vancouver Island. And Holder told me that the curveball created by Alone‘s African setting absolutely caught some people off-guard.

I spoke to Holder prior to听Alone Africa airing, and while he didn’t divulge any spoilers, he did share a takeaway from what he witnessed during the filming.

“It’s about the stress caused by dehydration. Their skills need to be at a high level so that they can constantly purify water and hydrate,” he said. “This takes up a great deal of the day. You have to remember to drink. You will see people get so engrossed in other tasks that they forget to drink. And for them, the dehydration just gets worse day after day.”

There are no grizzly bears, or wolf packs, or arctic winds in South Africa’s Great Karoo. But its silent killer鈥攄ehydration鈥攊s enough to convince me that it is the toughest season yet.

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It鈥檚 6 A.M., and I鈥檓 looking over a small canyon with my baby strapped to my chest and my two labs darting zoomies around my legs. In the distance, I can make out Black Rock Mesa and the snow-capped Jemez and Sangre de Cristo Mountains, and I haven鈥檛 seen another person on the trail all morning. We鈥檝e got four miles left to hike, and then I鈥檒l be back at my home office in time to log on to work for the day.

This is the beauty of land managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM): in the Southwest, where I live, it鈥檚 the land in between鈥攖he vast patches of beautiful nothingness that make up many of our backyards. One-tenth of land in the U.S.鈥� acres to be exact鈥攊s managed by the BLM, making it one of the most accessible places to recreate.

It鈥檚 also one of the freest. Unlike other public land agencies that are riddled with rules and regulations for outdoor recreationists, on BLM land, pretty much anything goes. Dogs can run off-leash, dispersed camping is allowed for two weeks at a time in most areas, and even ATVers and off-roaders are tolerated. Extreme sports like BASE-jumping, climbing, and highlining are accepted鈥攁nd celebrated in BLM meccas, like Moab, Utah.

Have you ever heard of Burning Man? The Moab Easter Jeep Safari? Creeksgiving? Many of the desert meet-ups, festivals, and wilderness rallies that form the axis of outdoor culture are pretty much only possible on BLM land, where the horizon seems to stretch on forever and you can truly forget that the rest of the world exists. And while entry to Yellowstone, Yosemite, and Zion National Parks will set you back $35, recreation on most BLM land costs a few bucks or nothing at all.

From the natural arches of California鈥檚 Alabama Hills to the glittering hot springs of Soldier Meadows in Nevada, BLM manages some of the most scenic recreation hubs in the country. For those of us who seek solitude in the outdoors, BLM is our first choice. If you think the outdoors are getting crowded, you just haven鈥檛 been to BLM land recently. While hordes of visitors flock to many of our most sought-after national parks, BLM receives notably less traffic. Last year, a record people visited national parks, but only went to BLM.

So while some sighed with relief on Wednesday, when Utah Senator Mike Lee鈥檚 revised plan to sell public lands excluded the Forest Service and limited BLM land sales to , my hackles remained up. Under the revised proposal, 1.2 million acres of our precious land remain at risk. The bill also maps out that only land within five miles of 鈥減opulation centers鈥� will be for sale.

Remote spots like Indian Creek and Burning Man鈥檚 Black Rock Desert might be safe, but that doesn鈥檛 mean the new plan isn鈥檛 without huge loss. Those parcels near population centers are the most accessible areas to recreate. They鈥檙e where many of us hike, bike, and run our favorite backyard trails. But most importantly, selling off any of this precious land sets a bad precedent and opens up the haunting question of what might be next.

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On Kelly Ramsey’s first day with a Californian hotshot crew鈥� an elite team of wildland firefighters鈥�she鈥檚 not only scared she won’t be able to keep up with the intense physical demands of the job, but worried how her fellow firefighters will take to her. She is the only woman in a crew of 20 men, as well as their first female team member in ten years. And at 38, she鈥檚 also among the oldest.

While Ramsey overcomes “the bro show” and her crew鈥檚 skepticism, she finds herself on the front lines of the some of the fiercest wildfires the West has ever seen. Bringing us along with vivid prose, she battles both the megafires and the insidious psychological toll, and ultimately earning her crew鈥檚 respect鈥攁nd even friendship.听

In her intimate and action-packed memoir, Ramsey wrestles with the power of fire to both destroy and renew while confronting her own internal struggles and self-destructive patterns. Asking herself:听 “Which fires do you fight, and which do you let burn you clean?鈥澨�

Watch Kelley Ramsey talk about her new book in this video 产别濒辞飞.听

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Craig Mod may think in binary code, but he does so from the perspective of a visual artist. Mod is鈥ell, a lot of things. He鈥檚 a writer, a photographer, and a digital media designer. And he鈥檚 likely influenced your life, even if you have never heard his name. Craig worked on massive digital platforms, like Medium and Flipboard, and has spent two decades as a tech start up consultant. But to make sure he can unplug from his computer-centric work, Craig walks. As in many, many, many kilometers-long multi-day walks, mostly on the ancient pilgrimage routes that crisscross his adopted home of Japan. Craig has turned these walks into several fascinating books. In his most recent book, Things Become Other Things, Craig took on a 300-mile trek through Japan鈥檚 ancient Kumano Kod艒, which transformed into a meditation on his life, the forces that shape us all, and the power of slowly moving through nature in an increasingly distracting digital world.

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Fifty years ago, Jaws hit theaters with the force of a tsunami, and proceeded to scare the living daylights out of millions of viewers.听Beach attendance in the months following the film鈥檚 release, and more than a third of viewers reported feeling an increased sense of fear while swimming. The 鈥淛aws Effect鈥� was so powerful during those days that some people even .

Decades later, surprisingly little has changed. In 2015, four decades after Jaws premiered, to swim in the ocean because of sharks, and more than half admitted to experiencing galeophobia, a general fear of sharks.

I see this fear firsthand as a scuba diver. The first question people inevitably ask me is: What would you do if you saw a shark?

I don鈥檛 have to wonder. I鈥檝e encountered hundreds. And they’re beautiful. I watched dozens of hammerheads swirl around me in the Red Sea, and I’ve听drifted through French Polynesia鈥檚 legendary 鈥淲all of Sharks,鈥� where up to gather in a single day. One of the most incredible moments of my life came at a remote dive site off Mexico鈥檚 Baja Peninsula, where I floated peacefully above a river of 100 silky sharks.

I consider myself lucky that I didn鈥檛 see Jaws until my mid-twenties, after many real-life shark encounters. The New York Times calls Spielberg鈥檚 film a听 鈥攂ut it鈥檚 fiction. Sharks don鈥檛 crave human flesh. Most attacks on humans are likely cases of mistaken identity; from below, , which are on sharks鈥� menu. There were only 47 unprovoked shark bites worldwide last year, according to the . Just four of them were fatal. To put that in perspective, around .

And humans pose a much bigger threat to sharks than they pose to us. We kill roughly 鈥�a major problem for us when they are key to maintaining the stability of ocean food chains that feed billions of people around the world.

After decades of fear, a new generation of social media activists hopes to reverse the narrative. They鈥檙e flooding our feeds with peaceful, viral encounters aimed to replace terror with awe and understanding.

But can influencer-driven messaging truly repair decades of damage? Or does it present new, unintended risks for sharks?

How Jaws Scarred (and Inspired) Generations

Jaws didn鈥檛 invent a fear of sharks. By the sixties, occasional scares prompted short-lived panics. After one shark scare near Coney Island, the New York World-Telegram that city police 鈥渢riggered several bursts of machine gun fire, aiming into the water for the benefit of photographers.鈥� Such theatrical responses were typically enough to reassure beachgoers鈥�or a time.

But when Jaws hit screens in 1975, it etched these fears into our collective consciousness. Virtually overnight, the great white shark鈥攁nd by extension all sharks鈥攚ere perceived as ruthless killers prowling the coasts.

鈥淥ne of the great things, in movie terms, about a shark as the villain is that you can’t anthropomorphize it,鈥� Linda DeLibero, a film lecturer at Johns Hopkins University, said in a . 鈥淚t doesn’t seem to have any personality or feelings.鈥�

A great irony of Jaws is how difficult it was for even the filmmakers to even simulate a shark attack.

鈥淭hey had the rather ridiculous notion that for the shark shots, they could just get a real shark and a trainer and have the shark learn some tricks,鈥� said DeLibero. 鈥淭hey quickly realized that that was absolutely ridiculous, and so they built these mechanical sharks鈥� that rarely worked. 鈥淚f you’re paying attention, the shark is invisible until that amazing moment鈥攑robably the biggest shock in the film鈥攚hen Brody is throwing the chum overboard and it pops up out of the water. The shark worked that day, and they weren’t happy with the way it looked, but it didn’t really matter.鈥�

This engineered portrayal had real-world consequences. Shark-fishing tournaments surged in the late seventies, with eager to reenact the heroics of听Jaws’ shark hunter, Captain Quint.

While public fear itself didn’t cause the global decline of shark populations, it severely undermined early conservation efforts. Sympathy for sharks was effectively crushed by their portrayal as relentless monsters. this has made it difficult over the years to get public or political support to regulate shark fishing or reduce accidental catches (bycatch).

鈥淲henever I say 37 percent听of all named species of sharks and their relatives are threatened with extinction, there’s always someone who says, 鈥楪ood. How can we get that to 100%?鈥欌�� says Dr. David Shiffman, a marine conservation scientist at Johns Hopkins and author of .

鈥淭he fact that so many people are absolutely terrified of sharks鈥攚hich many of them trace back to Jaws鈥攎akes it harder for us to care and lobby or and to elicit public support to lobby for conservation. That is a big problem, not only for sharks, but for the oceans as a whole and for humans. Sharks play vital roles in keeping coastal and oceanic ecosystems healthy.鈥�

Even now, public officials invoke the film to justify anti-shark measures. Fictional Amity Island mayor Larry Vaughn, who notoriously kept beaches open despite shark attacks, remains a shorthand for political mismanagement of shark incidents. Nobody wants to follow in his footsteps. In 2023 George Gorman, the Long Island regional director for New York State Parks, explained drone patrols and beach closures after five shark bites in two days by saying 鈥淚 don鈥檛 want to be the mayor of Amity.鈥� And between 2000 and 2014, officials in Western Australia repeatedly ordered controversial shark culls by claiming there was an 鈥渋mminent threat,鈥� of rogue killer sharks.

Jaws also shaped legions of imitators. A found that 96 percent听portrayed sharks as threatening to humans. Finding Dory was the only exception. Some of such media is just absurd fun, like Sharknado and Mega Shark Versus Giant Octopus. But even those films resonate precisely because sharks are ready-made villains. It鈥檚 like putting Nazis in your film: it鈥檚 an instant shorthand for evil.

Then there鈥檚 the Discovery Channel’s annual Shark Week, which Shiffman calls 鈥渁 dumpster fire of lies, pseudoscience, and nonsense.鈥� After analyzing 206 hours of Shark Week programming, his team concluded it primarily reinforces existing misconceptions of sharks as mindless threats, and rarely discusses threats to sharks or how they can be addressed.

A dive operator in the Bahamas once told me, allegedly, that a Shark Week production crew that chartered his vessel filled a faux pig with fish guts to emulate sharks attacking pigs from Big Major Cay, where tourists swim with the famous wild pigs.

Yet for all its harmful impacts, Jaws paradoxically inspired a legion of ocean conservationists. 鈥淭here鈥檚 a generation of marine scientists who became scientists because they saw Jaws and wanted to be Hooper,鈥� says Shiffman referencing the oceanographer that is brought to Amity to help deal with the shark. Indeed, The American Elasmobranch Society (AES) was founded in 1982, just seven years after Jaws premiered.

Sharks Enter Their Influencer Era

Jaws is enduring proof that media has a strong influence on how the public views sharks. Today, shark influencers like and are hoping to use the power of social media for conservation, not demonization.

All over Instagram and TikTok, influencers swim beside tiger sharks, calmly redirect an approaching reef shark, and reach millions of followers. Their graceful footage, often accompanied by educational conservation captions, frequently gets shared across the Internet. These peaceful shark encounters directly contradict the idea that sharks will eat anything on site. This may help unwind our cultural shark frenzy.

鈥淧eople look first and listen second,鈥� says Ramsey, a freediving shark conservationist with a combined audience of over 4 million on and who stars in the upcoming Netflix documentary Shark Whisperer. 鈥淧hotos and videos transcend language barriers鈥hey directly challenge the Jaws archetype, and are reality. Jaws was a fictitious film.鈥�

It鈥檚 also an opportunity to highlight the ways sharks are threatened by humans.

鈥淚 also will share videos where you can see the human impacts on sharks,鈥� says Fragola, a marine biologist and with a audience of 2.2 million. 鈥淚f they have a broken jaw, or there’s a fishing line hanging from them, or they’re entangled in something, that’s all caused by humans鈥eople write comments like 鈥榃ow, I feel really bad for this animal having these human impacts.鈥� And I think having that direct connection is something that’s really important for conservation.鈥�

Of course, influencer content can cross a line: 鈥淎 video of someone riding a shark, of someone hugging a shark, of people flipping sharks over鈥攖here was one guy who used to kiss sharks,鈥� says Shiffman. 鈥淭hat does not prove that sharks are cute, cuddly animals. It shows that if you annoy a wild animal, it’s gonna bite you. And I’m not sure how much that helps anyone or anything.鈥�

Not everyone agrees where that line is. In 2019, Ramsey went viral听for swimming with and touching the fin of a 20-foot pregnant great white. The footage immediately听sparked from marine scientists, who accused her of interfering with the shark鈥檚 critical feeding opportunity.

鈥淚鈥檓 not trying to inspire people to interact鈥� with sharks, insists Ramsey. 鈥淚’m trying to inspire people to get involved in shark and ray conservation.鈥� She encourages people to, for example, pressure FedEx to stop shipping shark fins, purchase beauty products that use the vegan squalane instead of shark-based squalene, eat sustainable seafood to reduce shark bycatch, and advocate for states like New York, South Carolina, Alabama, Florida and Texas to end shark fishing competitions. Ramsey also was heavily involved advocating for Hawaii鈥檚 2022 shark fishing ban and an EU shark fin ban currently under parliamentary review.

If somebody does want to encounter a shark in their natural habitat, they should go with a specialist, not only to be safer, but to maximize the amount of learning, she advises.

While influencers may be giving sharks some much-needed good PR, not all of them are trying to erase the risks of interacting with an apex predator.

鈥淪harks are not mindless eating machines鈥攂ut they鈥檙e also not puppies,鈥� cautions Fragola,听whose show sharks as both risk (coming so close she must redirect them) and victim (a shark with severe jaw damage, likely harmed by fishing). 鈥淚f people only see sharks being peaceful, they think that鈥檚 how they always are. If they only see aggression, they think it鈥檚 always dangerous. Neither is true.鈥�

Come 2075, our perception of sharks will reflect how well today’s storytellers wield their influence.

Alexandra Gillespie dove with reef sharks in Belize on her first assignment as digital editor of Scuba Diving magazine, and she’s jumped at the chance to do so ever since. With about 170 dives under her belt, she is a freelance journalist covering water and travel. Her writing has appeared in National Geographic, NPR, Afar, and U.S. News and World, among other national publications.听

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