I'll make this short. The federal government wants to sell your public lands. Potentially today or tonight. And while we can fight about why they're attempting to do so in a later story, the gist of the matter is that through the budget reconciliation process, a lot of the United States' public lands will be opened up for sale.
Again, potentially today. At least it could be unless you call your representatives right this moment.
UPDATE: It's actually 1.5 million acres, as discovered by our friends at onX. Original story follows.
There's no bones about it, our public lands will be sold off for pennies of what they're worth to housing developers, as well as mineral and gas extractive industries. They'll be closed off to the public, it'll harm native ecosystems, it'll impact terrestrial animals that use these locales, and you won't get to enjoy them anymore. No fishing. No hunting. No camping, hiking, dirt biking, climbing, ATV'ing, UTV'ing, snowmobiling, or any outdoor activity you love to engage in. This is not an outdoor tribal issue. No one group will be affected. Everyone will. Every single outdoor activity will be touched.
We can still fight it, though. We can fight these ghouls who stand to make a quick dollar off what the great conservationist Randy Newberg calls the "greatest form of undistributed wealth ever created." We can call the congressional switchboards at (202) 225-3121 for the House of Representatives, and (202) 224-3121 for the Senate, telling them not to sell our land.
You can find their emails here. I've already sent emails to my representatives, as well as fax them, which you can do here.
Suffice it to say, we're at the precipice of losing a good chunk of our public lands, and I keep emphasizing those words as public lands are not politicians'. They're merely the stewards, but they're sure as hell not acting like them right now. So it's up to us to fight for our public lands today, because they've decided it's unimportant to this country's welfare.
Ahead of the vote, our friends at Backcountry Hunters & Anglers stated, "At 1 a.m. Wednesday, the House Rules Committee will finalize the budget reconciliation bill—our last chance to remove provisions that would sell off nearly half a million acres of public lands in Utah and Nevada. But that’s not all. The bill still includes language that threatens fish and wildlife habitat in iconic places like Alaska’s Brooks Range and the Boundary Waters—mandating leasing and development without science, public input, or accountability."
So please, I implore you, flood their phones, flood their emails, flood smoke signals for all I care. But reach out to your representatives and tell them they should not go through with this proposed land sale. Because I can guarantee you one thing that'll come from these 1,500,000 acres being sold off, and that's it'll only be the tip of the iceberg.
Tell them that public lands are not for sale.
