Eagle County commissioners: Keeping public lands public is not a debate, it’s a requirement
Valley Voices
The large-scale sale of public lands recently proposed in the United States Senate is catastrophic and must not occur, now or ever.
Sen. Mike Lee of Utah introduced, this June, a provision into the One Big Beautiful Bill Act to sell millions of acres of federal public land, including vast swaths of Vail Mountain and land along the Colorado River.
This was an unacceptable betrayal of the public trust. Unfortunately, it was just the beginning for Sen. Lee and his allies.
They lost an important battle on June 24 when the most jaw-dropping parts of Lee’s proposal were removed from the One Big Beautiful Bill. But as Lee has said on social media, he’s not done yet.
Why is Lee doing this?
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In our view, he is employing three tried-and-true tactics. First, he and his vastly outnumbered supporters had hoped to slide the large-scale sale of public lands into the larger reconciliation process because they knew the idea could never pass on its own.
Secondly, now that the first round of blowback is over, they hope that whatever’s next will seem tame by comparison.
Thirdly, and ultimately, Lee and his friends want America to engage in a point-by-point debate to hear “both sides” of the story. Over time, they hope more folks will buy into the paper-thin arguments that large-scale public land sales and the stripping away of long-standing public land protections will actually be a good thing.
We will not fall into this trap, and neither should you. This is not a debate.
Our public lands are a foundational component of our nation. The first public lands were acquired almost 250 years ago, only six years after the birth of our nation. Over time, protecting and preserving these lands became a central pillar upholding the greatness of the United States. Public lands set us apart from all other nations now and throughout history.
Their vast resources powered our economic rise. Their proper management allows these economic resources (like timber, oil and gas, hiking, hunting, fishing, and skiing) to be tapped into while leaving extraction and recreation options to future generations. Sometimes they are most valuable when left untouched, as a treasure in and of themselves.
State and local governments, wealthy individuals, or private corporations do not have anything close to the capacity needed to manage these lands, nor the ability to collectively harness the value of these lands as a unified, national, and iconic resource.
Extraction is a booming business
Even more baffling: Areas of high productivity on our public lands are already widely available for extraction industries (e.g. the current Western Colorado BLM land management plans).
The United States is the largest producer of crude oil and natural gas in the world. The United States is also one of the largest timber-producing nations in the world. Yet many complain that the public process is too burdensome.
We agree that the public lands management process can be improved or streamlined, but for the most part, that’s not what we are seeing out of Washington.
Why?
Supporters of Lee’s provision, and others like it, don’t care about the inspiring history or promising future of our public lands.
They want the money. Selling public lands for short-term gain is being considered to help balance the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which includes tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations. Even then, the money falls short. This bill is still estimated to be $2.4 trillion shy of providing a balanced budget.
Your national heritage, your lands, your hunting grounds, your grazing pasture, your river access, your ski runs and bike trails are being teased as a way to balance the budget and even then, this ill-fated effort would not produce enough cash to right the scales.
We are strongly against such actions.
Next steps
The three of us are doing all that we can to strongly fight all provisions that weaken the value of our public lands.
Please join us in this effort. Share your opinions on the issue with friends, family, and your elected officials.
Join us for a public meeting on the issue on July 1, at 1:30 p.m., at the Eagle County Building.
Let’s ensure that no politician in our lifetimes ever considers mentioning this kind of nonsense again.
Jeanne McQueeney, Tom Boyd and Matt Scherr serve on the Eagle County Board of Commissioners.
