Episode 177: Jack Loeffler’s Lifelong Quest to Rewild the Colorado River Watershed and Human Consciousness
June 26, 2026
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Jack Loeffler, author, activist, audio naturalist, and historian of the Southwest, photo by Philip Shulz
Episode Summary
In this poignant and historic episode of the Rewilding Earth podcast, legendary Southwest author, activist, and audio naturalist Jack Loeffler connects with host Jack Humphrey, just ahead of Loeffler’s 90th birthday. A living thread to the bedrock of the modern conservation movement, Loeffler shares deeply personal stories of running wild rivers and backpacking with his close friend Edward Abbey, co-founding the Black Mesa Defense Fund alongside Dave Foreman, and recording the sacred oral histories of Indigenous elders across the Americas.
The conversation bridges the gritty history of early eco-defense with the stark, contemporary reality of the Colorado River Watershed’s looming “dead pool” crisis, ultimately delivering an urgent plea to rewild our collective ethical attitudes, abandon post-war consumerism, and view the planet as a shared commons.
Key Talking Points
- Reality of Intuitive Rewilding: Loeffler describes how spending 100 days a year as a backcountry fire lookout taught him that true rewilding occurs when our raw intuitions finally override our intellect.
- Historic Battle of Black Mesa: The discussion covers the early 1970s resistance when Loeffler, Dave Foreman, and 63 Hopi elders united to expose devastating strip-mining operations and aquifer depletion on sacred lands.
- Flawed Legacy of Western Water Projects: Loeffler reveals a historic deathbed confession from former Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall, who admitted that the massive Central Arizona Project was a “dreadful mistake.”
- Colorado River Compact’s Missing Drop: The two examine the tragic irony of the 1922 Colorado River Compact, a legal framework that fully dictates water distribution for human development but guarantees absolutely nothing for the natural habitat itself.
- Indigenous Connection and the Meaning of “Querencia:” Reflecting on more than 50 years of field recording, Loeffler explains how traditional habitats shape cultural attitudes, anchoring his upcoming Santa Fe, New Mexico, exhibition on finding the place where you feel most at home.
- Breaking the Consumerist Campfire: The conversation ends on a hopeful note regarding younger generations who are actively critiquing and rejecting the broken, 80-year-old corporate consumer culture that has destabilized our ecology.
Extra Credit
- Querencia: Finding One’s Place in Nature — Find out more about Jack’s upcoming exhibit in Santa Fe and listen to a sound collage Jack provided for the Rewilding Institute to make digitally available.
- The Ethics of Resistance
- Episode 63: Jack Loeffler on Rewilding Human Consciousness
- A Talk With Jack Loeffler Part 1: Indigenous Worldviews, Desert Lessons, Direct Action
- A Talk with Jack Loeffler Part 2: Ed Abbey, Gary Snyder, Decentralization, Flow of Nature, Bioregionalism
- A Talk With Jack Loeffler Part 3: Soundscapes and Maps, Jack’s Toolkit, Nanao Sakaki, and the Heart of It
Director of Digital Outreach (D.O.D.O.) for The Rewilding Institute
Host and Producer of the Rewilding Earth Podcast
Jack started Rewilding work as Executive Director of Sky Island Alliance in the mid-1990’s, organizing the Sky Island Wildlands Network design, ripping up illegal roads on forest service lands, installing wolf acclimatization pens on Ted Turner’s Ladder Ranch & conducting howling surveys to help make way for the final stage of the Lobo reintroduction program in the Southwest.
Through the years, Jack has worked with Dave Foreman and the Rewilding Gang to further Rewilding initiatives and education.