Utah Senator Mike Lee, who supposedly represents me in my home state, is once again on his crusade to sell your public lands. The man, who represents a state where countless millions in revenue come from Utah's brilliant outdoors and public lands, seemingly hates the very concept of public land, and during his tenure in office, has made it his mission to sell off as much public land as possible.
He even went so far as to direct Utah's attorney general into filing a case with the Supreme Court on the constitutionality of public lands. Amazing, the Supreme Court told them to take a hike. But given his vehement belief public lands are bad, he began championing the concept once again when two House members added a whopping 1.5 million-acre public land sell-off in the Trump Administration's "One Big, Beautiful" reconciliation bill.
But once again, after outdoor folks came together and flooded their representatives' contact methods and stating they oppose those sales, public lands won, and all sales were removed from the bill. Yet, to paraphrase one of the stupidest lines in all of Star Wars, "Somehow, public land sales have returned," and Mike Lee is absolutely the cloaked villain behind it.
The fight, my friends, isn't over.
Asked whether he'd attempt to reinstate public land sales, which would likely be around 500,000 to 1.5 million acres total, into the Senate's version of the "One Big, Beautiful" reconciliation bill, Mike Lee told Politico's E&E News, "I gotta go vote, but yes," as he ran to vote for a defense measure. Honestly, for Captain Planet villain, as Mike Lee absolutely is and has repeatedly shown to be in his quest to sell off your public lands, it's not surprising to hear this. It's still bad, but there are two good takeaways from him admitting this.
First and foremost, we know it's coming. That gives public land advocates—hikers, fishermen, hunters, off-roaders, dirt bikes, campers, climbers, etc—the time to once again rally the troops, as we all did when they tried to sneak this BS into the bill originally. We have time to get with folks like Backcountry Hunters & Anglers, RMEF, Trout Unlimited, and others doing the good work of fighting these potential public land thefts.
The second thing to take away from this is that we fought this before and won; literally last week.
Mike Lee, and all those who support the dispensation (fancy word for sell-off) of public lands, have a losing cause. Everyone loves public lands. It's the one topic in all of American politics that everyone actually agrees on. And they hate selling off public lands just to make a few rich people all the more richer. It's ours, not theirs, and if we lose it, we ain't ever getting it back. And we have the winning playbook to use on this once again, and that's flooding their inboxes, their voicemails, showing up at their offices, faxing them, and not letting up.
All of which we already have access to, which you can find here: the House's main switchboard is (202) 225-3121, or call (202) 224-3121 for the Senate, we can email our representatives here, and we can fax them here. We have the tools to fight this. We can email both our Democratic and Republican senators and tell them that we oppose any sell off of public lands. And that if they vote for the selling of our most precious natural resource, we'll do whatever we can to ensure they don't have a seat after the next election cycle.
So please, please, please, call them, write them, and continue fighting for our shared public lands. Because if we don't, if we don't show up just as we did last time, we're going to lose them forever.
