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Don't Let Congress Give Away Our Great Outdoors

By William Wiley and Phil Young, president and secretary of REP's New Mexico Chapter, published December 4, 2011 in the Santa Fe New Mexican

As we enter the season of giving thanks and enjoying the simple pleasures of family and friends, we believe it's also important to take a few minutes to reflect upon not only what we have, but also what we stand to lose.

So, as we take some time to reflect between Thanksgiving and Christmas, we would like to consider a significant threat to New Mexico's public lands and wild places.

Two congressional bills would eliminate protections for wide swaths of backcountry public lands that are vital to our Western way of life.

Neither bill is consistent with the traditional conservative ethic of stewardship exemplified by Ronald Reagan and other past leaders who championed land protection.

The legislation includes a bill by Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., that would remove protections from more than 60 million acres of roadless forests and wilderness study areas. Another, by Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, would put 3.3 million acres of public lands up for sale.

It's hard to wrap one's head around 63 million acres. Consider this: The entire state of New Mexico is just shy of 78 million acres — which means we are essentially talking about an area of public lands that is more than three-quarters of New Mexico's size at risk of losing protection.

If the McCarthy bill becomes law, New Mexico alone stands to lose protection for 1.6 million acres of roadless forests and more than 400,000 acres of Wilderness Study Areas. Another 800,000 acres of New Mexico public lands would go on the auction block in a buyer's market, heightening the risk that taxpayers would get a poor return for unloading their assets.

As if that weren't alarming enough, bills have been proposed to weaken the Antiquities Act — the remarkably effective law dating from Theodore Roosevelt's time that he and 15 other presidents from both parties have used to protect such treasures as White Sands National Monument, which was protected in 1933 by Republican President Herbert Hoover.

All this legislation amounts to a great outdoors giveaway, at long-term expense to the American taxpayer.

Bills weakening land protection do not follow the important principle of balance that is essential for managing our public lands — ensuring that a variety of important needs are met, including protecting drinking water sources, wildlife habitat, outdoor recreation opportunities, and scenic and historic preservation, as well as producing timber, minerals and energy.

Extractive uses of public lands create jobs, but so does conservation. A recent report by the nonprofit Outdoor Industry Association found that active outdoor recreation supports 47,000 jobs, most of them sustainable and long-term, in New Mexico and contributes $3.8 billion a year to the state's economy. Eliminating protection of backcountry lands puts outdoor recreation jobs at risk.

As Republicans and as conservationists, we wish to remind our Republican leaders that good stewardship is part of what it means to be a conservative. Ronald Reagan once said: ""What is a conservative after all but one who conserves, one who
is committed to protecting and holding close the things by which we live ... And we want to protect and conserve the land on which we live — our countryside, our rivers and mountains, our plains and meadows and forests."

What Reagan knew in his time bears repeating today. America's freedom, prosperity and strength are inextricably bound with our backcountry lands, where we escaped the impediments of old ways of thinking and learned our national traits of enterprise and entrepreneurship.

So, as Americans and as New Mexicans, we all have a powerful interest in protecting our public-lands heritage. More importantly, we can do something about it, by contacting our congressional delegation and telling them that we value our lands and expect our elected representatives to be good stewards.

As we approach a new year and a fresh start, we can think of no better gift for our nation than protecting for our children what our parents and grandparents protected for us.