Living The Dream
For many in Colorado mountain towns, March motivates plans for the coming spring. After working 2 or 3 jobs all winter nothing sounds more liberating than loading up our cars and trucks and heading out to our favorite spots on public land. It’s why we love Colorado and so many of our Western states. All can access open spaces at any time, visit the funky restaurants on the way and share photos of our journeys showing that we are truly living the dream.
Most of the West’s population lives in cities, but that doesn’t define who we are. It’s the vast open spaces that inspire us given that this past year 95% of Coloradoans visited public lands. The rugged mountains, the adorned deserts, the rivers that run through the land are part of our heritage and identity. The recreational opportunities provided by national public lands are awesome but only one of the many benefits living near protected open space that we take for granted. Clean air and water, space for wildlife habitat and interaction, traces of ancient cultures and the opportunity for true solitude are a few more. Our national public lands — over 24 million acres in Colorado alone — are uniquely American, and what make this country so great. These lands belong to all of us, regardless of social grouping, privilege, tax brackets, race, gender or residency. This land is your land — lets keep it that way.
If you agree with me, now is the time to act. Our national public lands are currently being attacked by special interest groups across the West, most notably in Utah, and now the same out-of-state ideologues are pressuring our state senate to undermine national public lands within Colorado’s boarders. The most egregious manifestation of this land grab effort in Colorado right now is Senate Bill 39, which asserts the states “concurrent jurisdiction” over national public lands. Concurrent jurisdiction purposes that the state assume responsibility and control over decisions regarding land management, which could seriously damage our ability to act swiftly in the face of wildfires, continue our tradition of multi-use permitting and could inflame relationships with local land managers. You should be asking questions like what motivates such drastic measures?
The answer is simple really, you probably already guessed. It’s Money. This newest attempt to seize national public lands and put them into state control has a focused objective to increase energy development and auction off our lands to the highest bidder. If Colorado were to be in charge of managing 24 million acres of public land it would cost upwards of 300 million dollars annually, a cost we can’t afford. Thus, we’d see massive sell-offs of land to private developers of all kinds, most of which would be the big corporations that are pushing these land grab bills to increase the profits already being made. Currently, only 20% of land managed by the state is open to the public — the other 80% is used to maximize profit, and the public has been locked out. Lets not allow special interests to push our state legislators into allowing our public lands to go the same way.
To keep living the dream in this beautiful and rugged state we need to protect and preserve the peoples right to public land, now and forever. Your public lands need you. They’re not just a right but also a privilege that takes work and commitment. Contact your legislator today and urge them never to support SB 39, or any effort to seize or transfer our heritage, our identity, and our dream.
