Right before Memorial Day, the House of Representatives passed a Budget Bill that, if signed into law, would be devastating for public lands. The bill has now moved to the Senate, where a vote will likely happen later this month.
To make matters worse, Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) has announced his intent to reintroduce a Public Lands Sell-off Amendment, a version of which was rejected by the House. The House version would have forced the sale of over 11,000 acres of Bureau of Land Management (BLM) managed public land in Utah and at least 500,000 acres in Nevada.
Even without Sen. Lee’s sell-off amendment, the Budget Bill is deeply anti-conservation and anti-public-lands. It:
- Opens up public lands across the West and Alaska to new oil and gas drilling, while creating a “pay to play” scheme that would allow companies to buy approvals for controversial fossil fuel projects, all the while insulating them from judicial review.
- Attempts to kill the American clean energy economy by gutting clean energy incentives for wind and solar power; it also eliminates popular programs that protect the health and safety of communities from climate impacts and pollution.
- Threatens the health of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness by rescinding a mineral withdrawal, reinstating mining leases, and prohibiting judicial review of those decisions.
- Requires oil and gas leasing in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge over the next ten years, reinstates previously canceled leases, and exempts those decisions from judicial review.
All of these are on top of the many other awful provisions in the Budget Bill, which go after some of society’s most vulnerable and at-risk populations, all to pay for tax cuts for the ultra-wealthy.
If you’re looking for other ways to fight back, reach out to one of our regional organizers! Depending on where you live, we’ve got all sorts of options: volunteering at events to get the word out, making phone calls, hosting postcard-sending parties, and more!
