America’s 640 million acres of national public lands -- including our national forests and Bureau of Land Management lands -- provide hunting and fishing opportunities to millions of Americans. They represent the uniquely American values of freedom and adventure that are the envy of the world.
Public lands need to remain federal public lands. Why? Simple: Individual states do not have the ability to shoulder enormous costs associated with fighting wildfires, maintaining roads and trails, eradicating invasive species, and conducting habitat restoration on millions of acres. Without the money to maintain public lands, states would sell off vast chunks of land, at bargain rates, to the highest bidders, which would include billionaires who would close access, and foreign corporations that would strip America's lands for private profits parked overseas.
1 comment:
Foreign high bidders and federal maintenance are two great facts to hammer on in the public-lands debate. I believe the morons SUPPORTING the state-ownership argument believe that somehow the land will remain "theirs", intact and open to some kind of folksy "our backyard" approach to management. The people DRIVING it are certainly just looking to convert it to cash, anybody's cash, and get their percentage. Annual auctions of grazing rights to the actual highest bidder might remind some of the bovine-federal-welfare people of how that might work.
That said, I think the support for keeping them federal is going to be a success story among this chaos in DC.
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