As we mark our nation’s 250^th 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.

The post For 250th, speak up for public land appeared first on Park Record.

When I led the Bureau of Land Management under President Biden, the hardest part of my job was reassembling the agency after the first Trump administration had scattered its headquarters from our nation’s capital. The move crippled the agency — as intended. 

That experience led me to understand that the current Trump administration’s unpopular plan to move the U.S. Forest Service headquarters will be every bit as destructive. It will hurt forests, wildlife and communities that rely upon our public lands and waters.

In 2020, almost 90% of the BLM employees ordered to move West chose not to, forcing them out the door. With those seasoned employees went years of wisdom and knowledge of how things are supposed to work, of how to deliver for the American people. 

Today’s Forest Service plan goes farther, aiming to close regional offices and shutter dozens of the agency’s research centers, as we face what some say will be a horrific wildfire season.  

The Forest Service and the BLM combined manage 20% of our country’s lands and waters. These public lands, the places we camp, hike, watch birds, hunt and simply wander in nature, are truly one of America’s best ideas. For Westerners, they are a deep part of our identity.

There is a reason Forest Service headquarters are based in Washington, D.C. It’s where our nation’s leaders work. Believe me, I did not want to move to the capital from my home in Montana to run the BLM, but to be able to fight for Western people and places, I had to go to the seat of our nation’s power. 

I was often in the interior secretary’s offices. I frequently walked to work with the director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, talking through thorny problems such as how to protect wildlife while permitting transmission lines. Washington is where people manage relationships with Congress, where budgets get made.

The administration says all their changes are about bringing leadership closer to where the work happens. That’s a political talking point, and it’s false.

If DOGE’s dismantling of government agencies last year provides any lesson, then cruelty and disruption are the real point. These changes aim to create  chaos, deliver the administration’s stated goal of traumatizing employees, and imperil the very existence of public lands — lands that belong to all Americans.

We improve the management of our forests by giving foresters the resources they need and letting them make decisions based on sound science and collaboration, not by gutting their agency.  

Over the course of the past year, the Forest Service forced or coerced roughly a quarter of its approximately 30,000 employees to leave. In this latest round of engineered chaos, thousands of people will be reassigned and ordered to move.

If BLM history is any guide, almost all will leave their positions rather than uproot their families. The agency could soon be left with roughly half its former ranks. 

Think of your job. Now, think of half of your colleagues gone. Would your organization be able to recover from the loss and demoralization to do its work? 

There are inevitable repercussions to this radical attack on our public land management agencies: Campgrounds will close. Trails won’t be maintained. High fuel loads near communities will go unaddressed. Wildfires will become even harder to fight. More sawmills will close. The health of our land, waters and wildlife will decline.

With things going wrong on the ground, some will demand that these lands be transferred to states or sold to private industry.  

That’s exactly what the people in power today want. The choice of Utah for the Forest Service headquarters — home to Sen. Mike Lee, who leads the charge on public land selloff, as well as to the state that is suing to try to take over millions of your public lands — reveals the administration’s true agenda.

The inevitable does not need to happen. There is one power to stop our public lands from being mismanaged to the point of selloff: It’s the outrage of the American people.

Americans overwhelmingly support public lands and want future generations to enjoy the freedoms found in them. Our public forests, rivers and deserts deserve to be treated better, and the federal land managers who work tirelessly deserve better. It’s up to us to demand it.  

Tracy Stone-Manning is president of The Wilderness Society and a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West.

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