Shawn Ryan believes that public lands belong to the American people and should not be sold off to private developers.

“That's land that's ours, the American citizen. That's my land. That's your land. That's land that Theodore Roosevelt set aside for people like us to enjoy and to do as we please on it.”

He supports strategic use of advocacy, resources, and policy to protect wild places and ensure future access to hunting and fishing opportunities.

“My goal and my task is to find ways to do that. How do we become even more strategic and focused on how we use MeatEater's platform and voice and content and resources of all kinds to fight for the future of wildlife and wild places. That's my job.”

He believes the hunting and angling community must actively fund and advocate for habitat management to ensure long-term sustainability of wildlife populations.

“But I think hunting, at least where I live out in the West, is going to have some hard times where herds are going to continue to drop and drop and drop, and they have for the last 20 years. But we're going to reach a point where people are going to say, you know what, enough of that. We're going to”