ACTION ALERT: Tell Congress to Keep Public Lands in Public Hands
https://epic.salsalabs.org/public-lands/index.html
“Members of Congress are planning to sell off your public lands and increase the amount of logging, timber sales, and industrial development on them in an attempt to reduce the size of the country’s budget for Fiscal Year 2025 through a process that is called “budget reconciliation”. Congressional intentions to privatize public lands have become increasingly apparent. Last month, one of the first actions taken by the new Congress was the passage of a rules package that makes it easier for Congress to give away and sell off federal public lands. A short time later, a leaked document obtained by Politico Pro revealed Congressional leadership’s proposal to pursue the sale of public lands and increased timber sales on public lands to pay for large tax cuts for wealthy individuals and corporations. There have also been public statements and bill introductions from various Members of Congress that call for the large-scale selloff of public lands. For example, Senator Mike Lee from Utah has introduced legislation that would call for selloffs of public lands for housing development. Unfortunately, Sen. Lee’s legislation is trying to use the very real housing crisis across the West to push his land sale agenda. We anticipate more legislation that will also push the public land sell-off agenda soon. The agencies already have the authority to sell or swap small parcels of public lands when it serves the public interest. This process is typically carried out in collaboration with local cities and municipalities, ensuring that the land transfer aligns with community needs and development plans. We also have reason to believe that Congress will use the recent termination of more than 5,800 staff from the agencies that manage our public lands (Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Forest Service, National Park Service, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service) as a pivot to an argument that public lands should be sold off. This is a years-long campaign mounted by anti-public land lawmakers to undermine federal land management, claim that the federal agencies are not able to properly manage the land, and then advocate for the land to be given away or sold off. Members of Congress are currently working on the country’s budget for Fiscal Year 2025. The deadline for them to come to an agreement is currently March 14th. However, we cannot wait to let them hear from us, since budget negotiations have already begun. Please contact your member of Congress now to tell them that you strongly object to any large-scale selloff of public lands (or increased timber sales) to be used as part of budget reconciliation or for any other purpose and that you want public lands to stay in public hands. Please also share this action alert with others you know who love our public lands.”
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In the Western USA, large amounts of land in several states, ranging just as sample numbers from Nevada's 80% to Arizona's 38%, are controlled by the federal government(https://ballotpedia.org/Federal_land_ownership_by_state) usually BLM and the US Forest Service. National parks and monuments have different legal protection status than typical USFS and BLM managed federal lands. These are public lands which by law are multiple use lands, while monument status and national park status lands are regulated differently, where far less of the public can use those lands, and in many cases, even access those lands. I can take you many places where the enlargement of Grand Canyon national park to the west and some to the east, north side, has blocked off access that remains viable even 100 years or more after the first track to an interesting canyon or water source was found and developed( per the Matthes-Evans 1908-1923 survey). This means less of the public can access public lands. That is elitism defined, until we get Star Trek's transporter beam in public commercial use( then we will get something similar to "geo-blocking" used in ride share control...).
Public lands are supposedly for the public, not just particular segments of that public. And harvesting trees as well as breccia pipe mining done in much of the southwest (as is common for particular and often rare minerals) is hardly devastating use of public lands. Strip mining and open pit mining, yes, that is largely devastating until remediation, and that is only partly successful.
FYI, I do not find Politico a neutral source on policy, given that outlet's choices on printing sensitive material.
oh dear. made the necessary phone calls. one person at a time adds up.
I find the risk of increased exploitation in our sensitive mountains very concerning.
Commercial logging, housing development, mining, and overgrazing threaten clear streams and remaining mature forests—irreplaceable features of the land which must be preserved for the future.
Not to mention cuts to USFS could mean losing control of unsustainable tourist behavior.
How will the community respond if the USFS loses the ability to preserve public land?
This leads to the method used to create The Russian oligarchs.
Publicly owned lands, buildings, timber, power plants, mines, services, broadcasters, etc , were sold off for staggering discounts making a few well connected individuals extremely rich and powerful.
They will sell off Big Sur's redwoods if we let them.
From Wikipedia:
Privatization in Russia describes the series of post-Soviet reforms that resulted in large-scale privatization of Russia's state-owned assets, particularly in the industrial, energy, and financial sectors. Most privatization took place in the early and mid-1990s under Boris Yeltsin, who assumed the presidency following the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
Private ownership of enterprises and property had essentially remained illegal throughout the Soviet era, with Soviet Communism emphasizing national control over all means of production but human labor.[1] Under the Soviet Union, the number of state enterprises was estimated at 45,000.[2]
Privatization facilitated the transfer of significant wealth to a relatively small group of business oligarchs and New Russians, particularly natural gas and oil executives.[3] This economic transition has been described as katastroika,[4] which is a combination of catastrophe and the term perestroika, and as "the most cataclysmic peacetime economic collapse of an industrial country in history".[5]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privatization_in_Russia
Public lands should remain in public hands. They should not be sold or swapped to solve the unbalanced budgets of congress!
Once gone, they can't be replaced.
Bev Kreps
Bkreps1017@gmail.com
Within the Santa Lucia Coast range , starting in mid to late 19th century the Dept. of Interior forced homestead land ,160 acre tracts , on local native people who called this their homelands . Then around 1910 the USFS with help of BLM change maps and names of places, rivers and streams . Then by hook or crook stole homestead land from Esselen, Salinan and Northern Chumash.
I think if our new government wants to sell or give public land away to cut government spending start with the descendents of these tribes.
Give it back and let the healing begin.
Thanks, Timothy.