Telling the Truth About the Coming Public Lands Storm

by Mark McGlothlin on April 29, 2015

in Access and Public Lands

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There’s a storm brewing, a big one, and it’s closer than we’d all like to imagine.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past year there’s simply no way as an outdoorsman you could miss the growing malaise over the rumbling potential disaster that wholesale public land transfers would be.

There’s been some incredibly insightful prose penned online and in print and much, much more to come. Now and then a piece comes along that reaches in and grabs you, resonating deeply, maybe even making you squirm a bit with a slap of cold reality and a call to get off your couch or desk-bound ass, take up (figurative) arms and get in the fight.

PBTruth2Matthew Copeland’s piece over on Stalking the Seam (one of those must read blogs you should be following these days) posted just such a piece last week – This Land Was Your Land; here’s a cut from it…

Stacks of informative articles and level-headed opinion pieces have been written of late about our slinking progress toward wholesale public land transfer and the ongoing efforts to stop it. See Todd Tanner, Bob Marshall, Scott Willoughby, Ben Neary, Judith Kohler, Raph Graybill, and as always Hal Herring for particularly eloquent examples. What follows here will not be as civil. I am angry, and I am frightened. I believe that anyone who isn’t angry and frightened, isn’t paying attention. And I believe the time for polite discourse has passed.

Open-minded, well-informed consideration of every issue is critical to the functional health of any democracy. In fact I think the erosion of such vigorous debate in our society explains many of our current ills. But public lands transfer is not a topic on which reasonable adults can disagree. It’s not a “topic” at all. It is an attempted robbery – a bald-faced, unabashed, mass swindling of the first order. And the crooks have damn near pulled it off already.

Which would be difficult enough to swallow if it were just land at stake. Our public lands are our most economically valuable national asset, responsible for raking billions of dollars directly into the national coffers each year and supporting far more lucrative free market economic activity. We are literally talking about selling off 28% our country. But politicians’ hands have swept mankind’s pockets ever since we outbred the hunter-gatherer clan structure, maybe longer. What’s a few hundred million more acres pilfered from the people?

It’s not about the land or the money though. What’s ultimately at stake here is a way of life…

We’re working on a long form, multipost piece about the issue but this is one of many wonderful messages from the heart that you shouldn’t miss; please click over and read the entire post on Stalking the Seam.

There’s a band of thieves prowling around the public lands henhouse, and they’re not going away any time soon. There are a few good men and women telling the truth about the public lands storm that’s brewing out there – we’ll be rounding up some resources to help you stay in touch consistently with what’s happening over the next few weeks as well as picking the brains of some of the folks working very hard to keep public lands open and accessible for all.

If you haven’t signed the petition at Sportsmen’s Access, do it now.

More to come.

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