My America's Public Lands Collection (pictured a few paragraphs below) is fully sold out. Thanks to all of you who ordered. A pre-order announcement will be along soon for the December 2026 collection.
In the meantime, I feel compelled to share some of what was included in the booklet that went out with the America's Public Lands Collection, and add a bit of information too. I hope you find this helpful as you think about the future of our public lands.
Public Lands are Our Lands
Cape Horn, Columbia River Gorge. Carleton Watkins, 1867
Our national parks, monuments, wilderness areas, forests, wildlife refuges, and other federal public lands are beloved. Surveys by the American Automobile Association (AAA) show 85% of Americans have visited a national park and 73% say parks are “must-see.” There were 329 million visits to national parks in 2025. The outdoor recreation industry creates $640 billion in GDP annually and supports 5 million jobs. Here in New Hampshire, the White Mountain National Forest attracts 6 million visitors a year.
We all have our public lands stories. For me, it began with my parents taking us camping in our 1960 Volkswagen Westfalia camper. Each spring we spent a week in Great Smoky Mountains National Park and in June we often camped at Cape Lookout National Seashore. When I was eight we drove west to Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks.
As my father was both a photographer and the director of major photographic archives, we also were exposed to countless images of all kinds, including those of some of the great landscape photographers of the 19th and 20th centuries. Many of their photographs were made in national parks and other public lands.
Dungeon Canyon, Glen Canyon. Elliot Porter, 1961
As a student at Earlham College I spent a winter term in the Sonoran and Chihuahan deserts studying southwestern natural history and resource management. For weeks we lived and camped in Grand Canyon National Park, Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, and Big Bend National Park.
A bit later, I became acquainted with Ian McHarg, a Scottish landscape architect and the father of ecological planning. I went to study regional planning with McHarg at the University of Pennsylvania and during that time, began a work-study job with the National Park Service. For the next forty years I was fortunate to work on protecting some of the nation’s special places -- George Washington’s Birthplace, Gettysburg, the Columbia River Gorge, Chesapeake Bay.
Now, America’s public lands are under assault. Since January 2025, the National Park Service has lost 25% of its permanent employees; the US Fish & Wildlife Service, 35%; the Forest Service, 16%. National Monuments have been drastically shrunken by more than 90%. Enforcement of the Endangered Species Act was dramatically weakened by allowing habitat destruction to not count as harm. Public lands are being given to developers to exploit for profit. These are just a few examples. Our heritage is being taken in the biggest public lands crisis in a century.
My chocolates are not typically so pointed. They are made for you to enjoy. But, I take this personally, as we all should. Fortunately, public push-back against the threats to our heritage is building rapidly. We can all play a role in saving the lands that belong to all of us.
Ways to Help
There are many great sources for finding reliable, well-analyzed information on the threats to public lands. Wes Siler's newsletter on Substack is a great source for public lands reporting. Another of my favorites is More Than Just Parks, also on Substack. You can subscribe for free or be a paying supporter. In addition to regular articles and updates, the team has two great on-line tools.
More Than Just Parks has a threatened public lands tracker that provides information on active threats to protected lands, plus it has an easy to use function for submitting public comment on proposed projects.
Importantly, there's also a Congressional Public Lands Score tool that tracks how each member of Congress votes on national parks, national forests, national monuments, wilderness areas, and BLM land. It's the only such tool evaluating members of Congress based on how they support protecting public lands -- or don't. Always good to check with an election looming.
There are also many excellent national, regional, and local organizations actively involved in protecting our public lands. Ten percent of the proceeds from my chocolate collections always goes to organizations doing good. With so many meritorious public lands groups, it’s hard to go wrong. But for the America's Public Lands Collection, desperate times called for litigation and advocacy.
The collection supports The Center for Biological Diversity, described as “the legal shock troop of the environmental movement. They file fast. They get results.” That includes acting as lead lawyers in obtaining the recent injunction to protect Big Bend National Park.
It also supports the Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks, over 5,200 current, former, and retired National Park Service employees and volunteers, including former NPS directors, deputy directors, regional directors, and superintendents with more than 50,000 years of collective experience. They are among the most likely to be quoted or called to testify because the members previously ran the parks.
Here are some other great organizations (list from More Than Just Parks):
- Earthjustice: Climate, clean air and water, public lands litigation
- Western Environmental Law Center (WELC): Western public lands, energy, forests, and wildlife litigation
- National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA): National parks, park funding, policy defense
- Sierra Club: Grassroots organizing, legal action, climate and public lands advocacy
- Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC): Climate, air, water, endangered species, energy policy
- Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA): Utah wildlands, monuments, redrock country
- Conservation Lands Foundation (CLF): Protection and stewardship of National Conservation Lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM).
The Chocolates and Their Stories
The designs for the America's Public Lands Collection illustrated wildlife that inhabit some of our threatened public lands. Below are stories and images linked with the regions represented through the chocolates.
Prairie Grasslands (American Bison & Lesser Prairie Chicken): Praliné of white sesame, Opus Blanc 35% white chocolate, & five spice powder.
There were once 550 million acres of prairie grasslands from Canada to Mexico. Less than 40% remains. Native grassland birds like the Lesser Prairie Chicken are endangered. This summer, the Bureau of Land Management revoked bison grazing on 63,000 acres in Montana, but in September a federal court blocked that. A proposal to cut protections for prairie potholes (vital to migratory waterfowl) received so much public push-back it was dropped in August.
Photo: Neal Smith NWR, Iowa. Richard C. Hager/USFWS
The Boundary Waters (Common Loon & Gray Wolf): Wild blueberry pâte de fruit & ganache of Itenez dark milk 68% with cinnamon.
The Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness is over 1 million acres of pristine forests, lakes, and streams. Loons and wolves are icons of the North Woods, yet wolves are considered threatened.
The ruling majority in Congress recently ended a ban on mining in the Boundary Waters watershed to allow a foreign conglomerate to open a sulfide-ore copper mine, a direct threat to water quality. There’s hope: the Minnesota governor has ordered the state to not issue mine permits in the watershed for non-ferrous metals.
Photo: Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, Superior NF, MN. Ben Stephenson
Pacific Temperate Rainforest (Spotted Owl & Chinook Salmon): Apple pâte de fruit & ganache of 70% dark Bolivian chocolate with French Calvados.
The Pacific rainforests stretch the coast from northern California to Alaska, dominated by huge evergreens. A century of industrial logging led to habitat destruction greatly reducing populations of salmon, Spotted Owls, and Marbled Murrelets. Protections put into place in recent decades are proposed to be rolled back to facilitate “maximum logging” on 2 million acres in Oregon. A plan to revoke the “roadless rule” that protects 60 million forest acres nationwide, just had 1 million public comments, 99% opposed.
Photo: Valley of the Giants Outstanding Natural Area, Oregon, BLM
Northern Rockies (Mountain Goat & Pika): Roasted peach pâte de fruit & ganache of 72% dark Puerto Rican chocolate with Liqueur de Noyau.
I spent 1981 tracking mountain goats for a National Park Service research project in Glacier National Park. It was a remarkable experience in a place the Kootenai once referred to as Ya·qawiswitxuki—“the place where there is a lot of ice.” That is changing, as the northern Rockies are warming at 2-3 times the average global rate. Cute little pikas, which live in the alpine zone, are seen as indicator species for the effects of climate change on this sensitive habitat.
Photo: Mountain Goats (adult and kid), Glacier National Park, Montana. Jonathan Doherty, 1981
Southwest Deserts (Mountain Lion & Bighorn Sheep): Piñon praliné with bits of dried apricots, Peruvian cobanero chile, and milk chocolate from Mexican Almendra cacao.
In the distance above lies the Rio Grande, separating Big Bend National Park and Mexico. It is remote, sensitive desert wilderness. Recently, bulldozers operating under a $1.7 billion contract began carving a border protection road along the river in the national park. Outrage was instantaneous, locally and nationally, causing a pause in construction that ended in late September. But on October 2, a federal judge halted all construction in the Big Bend region. The administration has appealed to the Supreme Court.
Photo: South Rim, Chisos Mountains, Big Bend National Park, TX. Doherty, 1987
Gulf Coastal Plain (Ocelot & Aplomado Falcon): Dark milk chocolate ganache from heirloom Tranquilidad cacao with molasses and chipotle chile.
The lower Rio Grande valley, near the Gulf of Mexico, represents a migratory “funnel” through which 80% of North America’s migratory birds and 50% of migratory butterflies pass. It is also home to the rare Ocelot and the few Aplomado Falcons seen in the U.S. This sensitive habitat is threatened by border wall construction, nearby rocket launches, and a land exchange giving up 715 acres of a national wildlife refuge to SpaceX, allowing even more launches. The exchange precedent could enable other unrelated exchanges at Yosemite NP and Cumberland Island NS.
Photo: Lower Rio Grande Valley NWR, TX. Dora Martinez/USFWS