The Trump Administration’s Push to Privatize US Public Lands
In its first 100 days, Trump 2.0 has waged war on the lands, waters, and wildlife we all own.
This story was originally published in Grist.
America’s federal public lands are truly unique, part of our birthright as citizens. No other country in the world has such a system.
More than 640 million acres, including national parks, forests, and wildlife refuges, as well as lands open to drilling, mining, logging, and a variety of other uses, are managed by the federal government — but owned collectively by all American citizens. Together, these parcels make up more than a quarter of all land in the nation.
Congressman John Garamendi, a Democrat representing California, has called them “one of the greatest benefits of being an American.”
“Even if you don’t own a house or the latest computer on the market, you own Yosemite, Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon, Golden Gate National Recreation Area, and many other natural treasures,” he wrote in 2011.
Despite broad, bipartisan public support for protecting public lands, these shared landscapes have come under relentless attack during the first 100 days of President Donald Trump’s second term. The administration and its allies in Congress are working feverishly to tilt the scale away from natural resource protection and toward extraction, threatening a pillar of the nation’s identity and tradition of democratic governance.