There’s no way to sugarcoat it: We’re in an all out war to protect our public lands from the Trump administration.
Buried in the admin’s budget request are calls for selling public lands and gutting federal funding for National Parks.
Put simply, they think public lands are products to be sold.
Why? They claim it’s about “balancing the budget,” but it’s really about bankrolling trillions in tax cuts for the ultra-wealthy.
But that’s not all. They’ve already fired over 6,000 federal employees from the Department of the Interior and U.S. Forest Service – the folks who help mitigate wildfires and keep our parks running and well-maintained.
Arbitrarily firing thousands of forest service workers risks running our parks into the ground and decimating the economy that supports them. It also leaves our backdoor open to wildfires and other natural disasters.
They’re putting Colorado at risk and forsaking our economy.
It’s as reckless as it sounds. Once those lands are sold or stripped of protections, they’re gone for good.
But, this fight is far from over.
The reality is that Republicans have the votes right now to jam their budget through Congress – but their margins are paper-thin. (I’ve already voted against their disastrous budget twice1 – and I’ll do it again when their final bill comes to the Senate floor!)
But we still have work to do: we have to turn up the pressure on every member of Congress to not support these disastrous provisions. We need to make sure every voter knows what’s at stake: the future of our national parks, local jobs and economies, and cherished open spaces.
We’re using every microphone we can get our hands on.
At the end of May, we joined Congressman Joe Neguse, public lands advocates, and local elected officials outside of Rocky Mountain National Park in Estes Park to call out these reckless assaults.
We broke down how these attacks will hit communities across Colorado.
Greater wildfire risk. Dirty and poorly maintained restrooms and campgrounds. No trail maintenance. A big hit to Colorado’s $17 billion outdoor recreation economy which employs more than 132,000 Coloradans.2
We highlighted the bills we introduced to restore the illegally fired National Parks Service and U.S. Forest Service workers3 and actually increase funding for our national parks and forests.4
We also talked about how our public action campaign to fight back is already working.
Recently, Republicans in Congress tried to sneak in a provision into their budget proposal that’d permit the sale of public lands to pay for their huge tax cuts for the ultra-wealthy and massive corporations.
We called their effort out.
We spoke on the Senate floor.5 We introduced amendments against the measure.6 We forced each Senator to vote on the record. We made sure voters across the country understood what Republicans were proposing.
And it worked. Moderate House Republicans felt enough pressure that they dropped the provision from their bill.7
But, we can’t let the pressure campaign ease up. Just this week, we learned that Senate Republicans are already trying to sneak the provision back into their version.8
We can’t let that happen.
The Trump admin has made it clear that they view our public lands as assets to be sold – not the treasures we need to protect for generations to come.
We’re doubling down on our fight in the Senate but we need every voice with us.
Join us. Speak up. Talk to your neighbors. Organize your friends. Record a video. Make noise.
Our public lands belong to all of us — and we’re going to fight like hell to keep them that way.