Welcome!
Public Domain is an independent environmental newsdesk that uses public records law, litigation and deep reporting experience to bring scoops, investigations and analysis to your inbox. Our subscribers can count on outstanding coverage of this country’s major environmental agencies and the public lands, wildlife and natural resources they manage. These are public resources, part of the public domain, and our reporting is done in the public interest.
We practice non-partisan adversarial journalism — providing hard-hitting reporting on a critical beat that is too often ignored by mainstream news outlets. We aggressively cover threats to America’s great conservation tradition. We push hard for government transparency and shine light on the inner workings of environmental agencies. We dig into the powerful interests that influence policy from the shadows. And we strive to earn and keep the trust of our readers.
Who we are for
Public Domain is an information hub and community for anyone who cares about the future of America’s great conservation tradition. Whether you are a hunter, an angler, a wilderness advocate, a climate scientist, a wildlife biologist, or any one of the millions of Americans who love our public lands, this site is for you. If you care about government transparency and public access to information, join us.
The landscape
The United States enjoys a unique tradition of holding huge expanses of land in the public domain. Federal holdings alone total more than 640 million acres — an area of land more than six times the size of California.
Congress and a series of presidents from both parties have sought for more than a century to balance natural resource exploitation with the need to protect wildlife habitat, and promote clean water, clean air and ecosystem health. The lands are not the private domain of miners, drillers and ranchers, but are managed for multiple use, including recreation and conservation, on behalf of all Americans.
Federal law classifies wildlife, which thrives on those lands, as a public resource whose body parts generally cannot be bought and sold. That restriction, and the hunter-conservationist tradition that developed to support it, transformed the country from one that had pummeled virtually all species with any market value to the brink of extinction, to one in which wildlife watching generates $250 billion in economic activity today.
The public domain, however, today faces unprecedented political pressure. The development demands of a growing population make it increasingly difficult to forgo energy and mineral development on public lands. The North American model of wildlife conservation faces challenges in statehouses from the right and plebiscites from the left. A growing movement in the West aims to not just develop public resources more aggressively, but to privatize them entirely.
Values
We practice rigorous, no-surprises journalism, using human and primary sources to verify our stories.
We are committed to defending the public’s right to know. We make maximum use of the Freedom of Information Act to demand transparency from government and corporate entities.
We are committed to the public interest, including the public’s right to a healthy environment, viable wildlife populations and public land access. Public lands conservation is a primary focus for our newsroom.
We value freedom of thought and expression, and welcome feedback from our readers.
Our team:
Chris D’Angelo is an award-winning journalist who has covered climate change and environmental issues for more than a decade. He spent 9 years at HuffPost, where he spearheaded the outlet’s coverage of public lands, environmental policy and biodiversity loss. His reporting has triggered federal ethics probes, been cited in IRS complaints and forced EPA to review legacy chemical dumping. His work has also appeared in Reuters, High Country News, Grist, Vox, Mother Jones and other outlets.
Jimmy Tobias is an investigative reporter who primarily covers wildlife, public lands, public health, and the politics of conservation. His public records reporting has sparked federal investigations, informed Congressional probes, and helped spur concrete policy change in Washington D.C. He was formerly a trail worker with the U.S. Forest Service. His work has appeared in The Nation, The Guardian, The New York Times, The Intercept, HuffPost, High Country News, and numerous other outlets.
Roque Planas covers the pitched battles playing out across the country over the future of wildlife management. He spent the last 12 years at HuffPost as a national reporter, where he covered stories including the struggle to control the outbreak of chronic wasting disease in Texas deer breeder pens, tribal efforts to restore wild buffalo and the politics of Colorado's wolf reintroduction. He has also reported extensively on gun politics and spent nearly a decade covering immigration and Latin American affairs. His work has appeared at Fox News, Foreign Policy Magazine, the New York Daily News and other publications.
