Sam Forstag spent eight years on the fire line, four of them as a smoke jumper, before he organized the response when the federal government cut the people who manage wildfires. Now he is running for Montana's First District with a campaign built on defending public lands and rebuilding the agencies that protect them. 

The conversation covers the personal cost of firefighting, a thousand-hour overtime season, a near-death jump near Fairbanks that he says grew from 30 acres to 60,000 in a day, and the Windy Rock fire that he says cost Montana $56 million. Forstag lays out what he would do on the House Natural Resources Committee, expanding prescribed fire, hiring fuels crews, and keeping firefighting inside the Forest Service rather than separating it into a crisis-response operation. He also explains why he believes public lands are a winning issue in Montana, and how he is running a campaign with former Republican legislators as allies.

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Full show notes and links at our website, thewildidea.com.

A note on this conversation: Bill Hodge and Anders Reynolds live in Montana’s First District, where Sam Forstag is a candidate in the November 3, 2026 general election. The Wild Idea invited Forstag to talk about public lands policy and his experience in wildland fire and the Forest Service. This episode is not an endorsement of any candidate.