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Western public lands are not for sale

Ask most Americans and even foreign visitors to describe the American West and words like “big,” “open,” “wild,” “challenging” and “freedom” are likely to be mentioned. The protection of our big natural and scenic landscapes came about because of the vision and commitment of leaders like Teddy Roosevelt. Generations of all sorts of folks have enjoyed the benefits of landscape-sized tracts of federal land that are owned by all of us and managed at a federal level for the protection and wise use of these national treasures.

Yes, there are problems with federal management – sometimes serious. Demands on our western natural resources are growing, and solutions are becoming more complex. However, reasonable solutions can come from dedicated people working in a collaborative manner, like the grass-roots efforts that resulted in the recently passed Hermosa Creek Watershed Act.

Efforts by small-minded, self-interested fringe groups like the American Land Council and supported by the Koch brothers’ hitman Rick Berman, (http://bermanexposed.org) seek to fragment and sell off our natural land heritage to the highest bidder as a way to build fortunes and dismantle a part of the federal government they apparently disapprove of so much that they are willing to sell the baby and the bath water.

Roosevelt got it right: “Our duty to the whole, including the unborn generations, bids us to restrain an unprincipled present-day minority from wasting the heritage of these unborn generations. The movement for the conservation of wildlife and the larger movement for the conservation of all our natural resources are essentially democratic in spirit, purpose and method.”

It is time for all of us who enjoy our big, open wild western public lands to stand up and say enough is enough.

Our great western public lands are not for sale. Period. No study is required.

Legislative efforts to “study” the transfer and sale of federal public lands, like Colorado SB 232, are misguided and intentionally misleading. We need to urge Sen. Ellen Roberts to kill this bill immediately.

Dan Parkinson

Bayfield



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