Hands Off Our Public Lands

Dear Editor,

The current administration seems bound and determined to inflict the most amount of pain in the shortest amount of time possible. The latest scheme arrives as part of the so-called 'Big Beautiful Bill' in the form of a landgrab - buried in the bill's text is a proposal authored by Utah senator Mike Lee that aims to sell of up to 3 million acres of public lands to help fund the bill's proposed tax cuts.

Let that number sink in - 3 million acres. Vast swathes of our country's free-spirited heritage in the American West, for sale to the highest corporate bidder. The cognitive dissonance is jarring, to know that your lands, your PUBLIC lands bought and managed with your taxes, can be taken from you and stripped for parts.

This is wild land, whole ecosystems. The purported goal is to increase land available for housing, but get real - this administration is only out for money, and any corporation that buys this land will almost certainly mine it for whatever resources it's worth.

This is land worth preserving: buffer zones against our environmental degradation elsewhere, wild spaces where species not seen elsewhere can thrive, and should not be for sale. Educate yourself on this disaster of a bill, then call your Senate and House representative and tell them - hands off public lands.

Sincerely,

Nathan Dombeck

Janesville, WI