As we mark our nation’s 250th anniversary, it’s worth celebrating what we the people have in common.
What we literally have in common – own in common – are our public lands, our national parks and forests. In the West especially, glance at the photo library on your phone and it will probably look a lot like the person’s next to you in the coffee shop. Your parents’ and grandparents’ faded photo family albums probably have similar pictures too. That’s because our public lands shape us. They hold our uniquely American stories.
Memories of that backcountry trip. High meadow lakes. Campfires. A bird dog, smiling next to grouse. A successful deer hunt. A first fish. A family picnic. Close your eyes for a second, and you can probably see your own moments in a wild place.
All of this comes from the wild public lands we all still own. Which is why it is so unsettling that the administration continues to try to hand those places over to the highest bidder. And why it’s so disturbing that they are pushing deeper into our forests, threatening future generations’ freedom to experience what we have been lucky enough to know.
It’s hard to keep up, but the direction is clear: sacrificing our wild public lands.
Recently, the president tossed aside executive orders from Presidents Nixon and Carter that formed the foundation for how agencies manage recreation on our public lands. The process is called travel management planning and it helps identify the best places for ATVs, dirt bikes, horses, hikers and mountain bikers so people can enjoy public lands safely, responsibly and without undermining each other’s experiences. We have enough public land to support many different ways of getting outside, but only if we plan carefully.
These agreements can be hard to forge, but they help protect access, reduce conflict and keep public lands healthy for all. By ending the basis for them, the administration has left many public land users rightfully nervous about what will happen now.
Meanwhile, the media reported that the administration plans to direct the Forest Service to open lands recommended for wilderness designation to development and other damaging uses. Through an ongoing review, the administration has also signaled it plans to take a similar approach to more than 100 million acres of wildlands managed by the National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
The result would be permanent and intentional: wild places degraded so badly that they would no longer qualify for wilderness designation. Because once wildness is gone, you can’t bring it back.
Most troubling of all is the largest proposed rollback of conservation protections in American history. The administration has announced it intends to remove protections on 45 million acres of national forests and instead allow roads to be punched into some of our wildest public lands.
Here’s what happens when roads get built: they bring wildfire. They pollute streams. They harm wildlife. In my home state of Montana, 97% of summer elk habitat is on unroaded forests, away from civilization, high in the mountains, in cool, deep cover. Such forests also provide clean drinking water for millions of people. They are where people go to hunt and fish and camp and hike — where memories are made.
So why these attacks on our wildest forests? Why steal from future generations? Why open remote places to development when there is an enormous and urgent need to manage the forests near communities, to protect them from wildfire? Why develop wild lands when we could instead put people to work improving access and maintaining trails?
Our country is blessed with lands that are still wild, where wildlife can roam freely, cold creeks still flow, and a person has the freedom to wander. These lands are our common ground. They are where we go to remember what freedom feels like. In a way, conquering them conquers us.
One force can stop this: the people who own these lands, all of us. We can demand better of our elected officials now, and at the ballot box in the months and years ahead. Future generations are counting on it.
Tracy Stone-Manning is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to lively conversation about the West. She is president of The Wilderness Society and The Wilderness Society Action Fund.
Idaho, hiking in the Selkirk Mountains photo by David Gluns
