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and signed the letter against Sienkiewicz.
PERC’s affiliation with politically con-
nected outfitters that stand to profit if
trails are closed bolsters the sense, to
Wilson and others confronting locked
gates, that a void in coherent policy
about public land management is being
filled by cronyism that rewards wealth
and connections above all else. Another
co-owner of the Wonder Ranch, Frank-
Paul King, a friend and former student
of Anderson’s, served on PERC’s board.
Hudson, the man who got Representative
Sessions involved, is King’s brother-
in-law, and he’s also a board member
and the former president of the Dallas
Safari Club, a group that made national
headlines in 2014 when it auctioned off
a trip to Africa to hunt an endangered
rhinoceros. (The winning bidder, who
paid $350,000, traveled to Namibia and
shot a black rhino bull, an animal the
club said had threatened the rest of the
herd.) The Dallas Safari Club has granted
PERC funding for, among other things, a
“Montana project to help ranchers pre-
serve private land so that hunters and
fishermen can have access to public
lands,” according to its newsletter.
In 2016 the Dallas Safari Club hosted a
fundraiser featuring the big-game hunting
enthusiast Donald Trump Jr. that netted
$60,000 in campaign donations to the
Republican National Committee. “The
candidate’s family connection to hunting
and its legacy gives DSC a huge oppor-
tunity to have the right people in place
as advocates for our mission,” the club’s
newsletter stated. After Trump was
elected, Hudson was listed as an orga-
nizer for a post- inaugural fundraiser
called “Opening Day 45,” which featured
Eric and Donald Trump Jr. as co-chairs.
It was canceled after TMZ published an
early draft of the invitation last December,
promising personal access to President
Trump, along with a multiday hunting
excursion with his sons, to anyone who
donated more than $500,000, sparking
criticism that the sons planned to peddle
access to their father.
This circle of big-game hunters is rel-
atively small, which means links among
them are numerous enough to allow critics
of the Trump administration to claim
political malfeasance, and they’re tan-
gential enough that defenders can argue
that they’re coincidental and easily mis-
construed. One person who has hunted
with Trump Jr. is Senator Daines, of the
anti- Sienkiewicz letters. The two men met
last fall in a camp in Montana during an
elk hunt. Daines later called on Trump Jr.
to return to the state to campaign on
behalf of Greg Gianforte, who was running
for the congressional seat Zinke gave up
to lead the Interior Department. This
spring, Trump Jr. explained that he had
grown to trust Daines unequivocally;
when the senator told the president’s son
that Gianforte was “an awesome guy,” he
decided to get involved. “That vouching
was enough for me,” Trump Jr. said at a
rally in April.ON A THURSDAY EVENING IN AUGUST,
a couple dozen people gathered in an
old schoolhouse in Livingston, Mont., to
grill Mary Erickson, the Forest Service’s
supervisor of the Custer Gallatin National
Forest, about Sienkiewicz’s reassignment.
Most of the people in the crowd viewed
the case with skepticism or outrage, and
Erickson appeared to be choosing her
words carefully to avoid pushing anyone
toward the angrier end of the scale.
The trail access issue was extremely
sensitive inside the Forest Service,
she explained, and potentially costly,
too. The Trump administration was
proposing a 73 percent cut in the
Forest Service’s capital improve-
ment and maintenance budget and an
84 percent reduction, from $77 million
to $12 million, in its trail program budget.
The Wonder Ranch case, she observed,
had cost the government “in the millions
of dollars,” and it wasn’t over yet—the
landowners were appealing the decision,
and it now sat with an appellate judge.
“I’m not saying we’re never going to go
to court, but the Forest Service is going
to be careful about when we go to court
and make sure we’re going to court on
cases we can win,” she said.
Erickson downplayed suggestions
that any of the politicians involved in
the Sienkiewicz case had been directly
responsible for his removal, and she
suggested that Sienkiewicz should have
been more diplomatic when he dealt
with the local landowners, to avoid the
appearance of “pulling to this side or
that side” regarding any questions of
public access.
That notion didn’t sit well with some
in the audience, particularly those who
believed that if the unfolding drama
showed bias toward an interest group,
it was toward the private landowners.Nick Gevock, the conservation director
of the Montana Wildlife Federation, told
Erickson that Sienkiewicz was a public
servant and he’d simply taken the side
of the general public.
The agency in mid- October
announced it was giving Sienkiewicz
his job back. But Gevock’s frustrations
spoke to an unresolved question under-
lying all of the disputes: Who, exactly, is
the Forest Service supposed to serve? On
the agency’s website, former Director
Thomas Tidwell wrote that its guiding
principles were clearly established by
Gifford Pinchot, the service’s founding
chief, during the Gilded Age—“a time
when the nation’s resources were being
exploited for the benefit of the wealthy
few,” Tidwell stated. “The national
forests were based on a notion that
was just the opposite—that these lands
belong to everyone.”
The public access advocates say
they’re not sure they trust the spirit of
Pinchot’s original message has survived
intact. The mixed signals coming from
the Trump administration mean every-
thing rests on how those sometimes con-
flicting messages are interpreted. Zinke
has repeatedly insisted, without offer-
ing specifics, that he is pro-access, and
on his first day in office he pledged to
fight against the “dramatic decreases in
access to public lands across the board”
that he said were plaguing America. “It
worries me to think about hunting and
fishing becoming activities for the land-
owning elite,” he said.
But this past July, while public land
advocates were protesting the Interior
Department’s pending move to downsize
the national monuments and hikers were
cursing the new No Trespassing signs in
the Crazies, Zinke traveled to Denver to
speak at the annual conference of the
American Legislative Exchange Council,
or ALEC. The group, a conservative lob-
bying coalition that helps lawmakers
draft legislative proposals, has energet-
ically pushed for the potential transfer
of federal lands to the states. Whether
Zinke’s speech clarified the govern-
ment’s general, overarching philosophy
on public-vs.- private control of lands
that are currently federal, only members
of the lobbying group can say for sure.
Unlike several other speeches delivered
at the conference, Zinke’s wasn’t tran-
scribed or published, and it was closed
to the general public.