When it comes to saving public lands in the West, who’s going to fill their shoes?

One of my favorite songs by the late country legend George Jones, “Who’s Going to Fill Their Shoes,” recalls the hits of country greats like Merle Haggard, Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, and he wonders, “Who’s gonna fill their shoes. Who’s going to stand that tall?...Who’s gonna give their heart and soul to get to me and you?”

Those lines reminded me of another kind of Westerner, and I wonder in the 21st century who will fill his shoes and who’s going to stand that tall.

Bernard DeVoto is one of the subjects of “This America of Ours: Bernard and Avis DeVoto and the Forgotten Fight to Save the Wild,” by Nate Schweber. It’s surprising they are not well-known, especially in the West, given how their lives and work challenged politics as usual back in the 1940s and 1950s and saved federal parks and lands Americans enjoy to this day.

The major battle was with Sen. Pat McCarran from Nevada, who was conspiring with cattlemen and sheep ranchers to get Congress to authorize the selling of public lands to the states whose politicians could then hand it off to private interests, aka their supporters and cronies. This certainly does ring a bell with Republican politicians today, including in Idaho, who seem to have a keen interest in getting their hands on our public lands.

Bernard DeVoto was in many ways an unlikely foe of politicians of the day who would attempt to sell off federal lands to their cronies.

DeVoto, although a Westerner by birth in Utah, would head East, attend Harvard University, and eventually, for a time, join its faculty. He was also a prolific author, including a series of history books about the West that would win him both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award.

As author of the influential “The Easy Chair,” a column he wrote for Harper’s Magazine for 20 years, DeVoto found his weapon to fight for public lands and, in the process, was caught up in America’s shameful history when Sen. Joe McCarthy was busy blacklisting prominent Americans as communist sympathizers.

McCarthy’s absurd targeting of DeVoto, something he did most likely given his close friendship with Sen. McCarran, was sheer nonsense. DeVoto volunteered for World War I and voted Republican for most of his life, notwithstanding his alliance with Democratic presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson, who agreed with DeVoto’s concerns about the attacks on public lands.

DeVoto was hardly the stuffy academic to take McCarthy’s attacks sitting down. He hit the lecture circuit and spoke about the Bill of Rights and the protections it guaranteed Americans. He traveled the West far and wide, warning Westerners of the cabal of stock growers’ associations and rapacious politicians in Washington attempting to sell off federal lands.

The 1947 Idaho Legislature picked up on DeVoto’s warnings and passed a memorial declaring that handing over federal lands to private interests “would result in feudal ownership and private ownership and restriction of human liberties.”

As for Sen. McCarran, he was clearly DeVoto’s public enemy number one. At one point, McCarran withheld funding for the National Park Service just to flex his congressional muscle and show his disdain for federal lands. DeVoto savaged McCarran in an “Easy Chair” column, “The West Against Itself, “ that became a classic on how to take on the wealthy and powerful who use public office to enrich themselves at the expense of America’s national treasures.

Aside from his plots to sell off public lands to the states, McCarran also authored an anti-immigration bill in 1952 with not-so-subtle antisemitic restrictions against Jewish immigrants. It’s not surprising that in today’s world it became controversial in Nevada that the McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas for a long time had the name of a public official who, in concert with Joseph McCarthy, did so much damage to civil liberties and plotted to sell off federal lands to private interests.

(Last December, the busy Las Vegas airport was renamed after another longtime Nevada senator, and is now Harry Reid International Airport.)

The DeVotos’ legacy of saving millions of acres of public lands by blowing the whistle on politicians scheming on behalf of cattle and sheep rancher associations was a team effort. Bernard DeVoto’s wife, Avis, was an equal part of the DeVoto success story. A constant companion and adviser, she carried on his environmental legacy after his untimely death — he was felled by a heart attack at age 58.

Idaho finds its way into the DeVoto story in more than one way. A critical meeting in Boise is where DeVoto heard from whistleblowers just how the land grabbers intended to steal public land. For thwarting those efforts and all he accomplished in protecting federal lands, a senator proposed naming present-day Nez Perce-Clearwater National Forest after Devoto, but Republican Sen. Herman Welker of Idaho blocked the effort. Welker’s politics was such a carbon copy of Sen. Joe McCarthy’s that his nickname in Washington was “Little Joe from Idaho.”

The legacy of Bernard DeVoto got in the last word as far as Idaho is concerned. In the far northwestern corner of Idaho lies a grove of western red cedars, some of the tallest trees in the land. Among his many travels across the West to defend public lands, he loved visiting this Idaho grove. After his death, his ashes were spread across what is now the DeVoto Memorial Cedar Grove. A bronze plate reads, “In memory of Bernard DeVoto 1897-1955 Historian and conservationist of the West.”

Author Nate Schweber’s masterful treatment of the DeVotos’ crusade to save America’s wild closes by claiming that Bernard DeVoto gave his life defending public lands and the National Park Service. In Wallace Stegner’s biography of DeVoto, Avis is quoted as calling her husband “the bravest damn man that I ever knew.”

That brings us back to the initial question. Who’s going to fill his shoes?

We do know who’s going to fill the shoes of public land grabbers like McCarran. In 2019, Republican Sen. Mike Lee, of DeVoto’s home state of Utah, proposed selling off public lands to fund public schools, which the Salt Lake Tribune described as selling the cow to buy milk.

Unfortunately, the Republican zeal to hand off public lands to private interests is alive and well in Idaho, evidenced in the speeches and campaign promises of a good number of Republican elected officials.

A Wilderness Society report in 2016 found that Idaho sold off about 1.7 million acres of land for development, often cutting off access to public lands used traditionally for recreation. To make matters worse here, the Idaho Land Board is mandated by law to manage public lands for profit, not for public access. These are tough headwinds to manage for those who value Idaho’s wilderness, especially in an essentially one-party state.

Who’s going to fill DeVoto’s shoes? The days of electing a Democrat like Frank Church are long gone, but the legacy of his fight and successes for public lands must stand as our model for our own advocacy on behalf of Idaho’s wilderness. It will take all of us. None of us can afford to sit on the sidelines.

Bob Kustra served as president of Boise State University from 2003 to 2018. He is host of Readers Corner on Boise State Public Radio and is a regular columnist for the Idaho Statesman. He served two terms as Illinois lieutenant governor and 10 years as a state legislator.