On Tuesday morning, I attended the La Plata County commissioners’ public hearing on their resolution supporting public lands. I was touched and educated by the comments of the public, and I was impressed by the commissioners who found common ground in acknowledging the incredible value of public lands and articulately supporting continued federal management.

Commissioner Brad Blake showed exemplary Republican leadership, proving that protecting public lands is a bipartisan concern. Our public lands here in La Plata County and the Four Corners receive visitors from all over the nation and the world, and so it makes sense that federal money is spent to manage them.

I recently graduated from Fort Lewis College with an emphasis in adventure education. I’ve depended upon public lands for my own education, and throughout my career will continue to depend on them for years to come. The recreational opportunities, habitat, ecosystem services, including those that mitigate climate change, and economic benefits of these lands are ultimately priceless.

Broadly, the Federal Land Action Group’s strategy of transferring federal lands to state ownership is nothing short of a scheme to divide and conquer public lands for private development, eroding our rich heritage of wilderness, national forests and wide-open landscapes. We’ve worked hard through the years to develop federal management of these lands that serves a diverse public interest, and throwing that all away in an experiment of state management is, at best, an incredibly foolish experiment. At worst, it is a shameless land grab driven by raw greed.

State Sen. Ellen Roberts has voted twice this year for these bad land-grab bills, while State Rep. J. Paul Brown has made comments supporting these bills. Both can do better. I commend the commissioners for seeing through federal land-swap schemes and speaking out against them, sending a clear message to Sen. Roberts and our other elected officials to oppose this kind of legislation. Work such as this serves the public good, protecting our community against interests that would recklessly privatize our precious, irreplaceable public lands.

Lionel Di Giacomo

Durango