Project 2025 and Public Lands
If you like to hike, bird, camp, hunt, kayak, fish, mountain bike … you should read this!
I love public lands. National Forests; Bureau of Land Management lands; National Parks, Preserves and Monuments; National Wildlife Refuges; National Conservation Areas; National Seashores and Lakeshores – I love them all. I believe that high on the list of what makes the United States a great nation is its public lands – lands owned collectively by US citizens.
As I type these words, I look out my window and see acres and acres of San Isabel National Forest, some of the public lands I speak of. How lucky I am, to live so close to such natural beauty. The water I drink, the clean air I breathe, the hiking trails I hike, the wildlife I appreciate – these and so much more depend on the health of these lands.
The forested land I see outside my window is but a tiny portion of the public lands I have visited and enjoyed. Over the past several months, I have spent time on many public lands, including Zion National Park in Utah, Gunnison National Forest in Colorado, the San Pedro National Conservation Area in Arizona, Rio Grande del Norte National Monument and Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge in New Mexico. I’ve hiked, camped, backpacked, birded, watched wildlife, spent time with friends and family, all on our nation’s public lands.
I am certainly not alone in my appreciation for our nation’s public lands. In 2023, the National Park Service saw 325,498,646 recreation visits across four hundred sites. And these are only visits to lands managed by the Park Service.
Several years ago, I was sitting on a panel discussing public lands in the United States at a University. At one point, a professor in the audience shared something that drove home the point that we are so fortunate to live in a country with such a vast array of lands open to all Americans: “Many of my students are exchange students from other countries around the world. When these students realize that there are millions of acres of lands in the United States that are open for anyone to visit, their reaction is always the same, ‘In my country, if you want to hike, or hunt, or do so many kinds of outdoor activities, you need permission from a private land owner. We don’t have public lands in my country. You don’t know how lucky you are.’”
Indeed we are lucky, but it is going to take more than luck to keep our nation’s public lands public.
The history of our public lands has been a contentious one, with a multitude of stakeholders sparring over how they should be managed. Wide pendulum swings between preservation/protection at one end and extraction/private profit at the other end characterize much of this history. There have always been those, particularly in corporate extractive industries, that see only dollar signs in public lands, dollar signs that they cannot access.
Enter Project 2025. Have you heard of Project 2025? If you care about any number of issues – the climate and biodiversity crises, civil rights, women’s rights, LGBTQ+ rights, public lands – then you need to know about it. Spearheaded by the right-wing think tank The Heritage Foundation, Project 2025 is a presidential transition plan for a second Trump term. Reading the list of Project 2025’s coalition members is like reading through a who’s-who of right-wing extremism. It purports to be “unparalleled in the history of the conservative movement … systematically preparing for successful conservative governance in our nation’s capital.”
Reading the Project 2025 chapter on public lands (entitled Department of the Interior) was alarming, to say the least. Project 2025 “would take a wrecking ball to public lands,” according to an article in the Huffington Post. The public lands chapter was authored by William Perry Pendley, a powerful attorney and anti-public lands zealot. “Pendley’s dream for the more than 500 million acres of federal land that the Department of Interior manages is to effectively turn them into a playground for extractive industries — the same interests he’s spent most of his career representing in court.”
A particularly disturbing part of Project 2025’s plan for public lands has to do with the Antiquities Act of 1906. According to the National Park Service, “The Act was the first U.S. law to provide general legal protection of cultural and natural resources of historic or scientific interest on federal lands.” The Congressional Research Service writes that the Act “authorizes the President to declare, by public proclamation, historic landmarks, historic and prehistoric structures, and other objects of historic or scientific interest situated on federal lands as national monuments.”
Since its enactment, the Act has been used by eighteen presidents to designate over 160 National Monuments. Many of our nation’s most popular National Parks, such as Arcadia, Olympic, Zion, and Arches were first designated as National Monuments through the Antiquities Act, and later upgraded to National Park status.
Among these is the Grand Canyon. Recognizing the magnificence of this natural wonder, and frustrated by lack of congressional action to protect it from exploitation by developers, miners, ranchers and others, President Teddy Roosevelt established Grand Canyon National Monument in 1908. Speaking from the canyon’s south rim during his first visit to the Grand Canyon, Roosevelt said, “Let this great wonder of nature remain as it now is. Do nothing to mar its grandeur, sublimity and loveliness. You cannot improve on it. But what you can do is to keep it for your children, your children’s children, and all who come after you, as the one great sight which every American should see.”
I have been surprised, and disappointed, at how many people I talk to that have never even heard of Project 2025, let alone know what it would do to our country, and our public lands.
Project 2025 is not a fan of the Antiquities Act. According to an article in Politico’s E&E News, Pendley (remember him, author of public lands chapter of Project 2025?) “says the next Republican president should slash the footprint of national monuments from Maine to California, and press to bar future presidents from wielding executive power to protect federal land.” Historian Heather Cox Richardson wrote of Project 2025 in a recent Substack post, “It says a second Trump administration ‘must seek repeal of the Antiquities Act of 1906.’”
Had there been a successful parallel to Project 2025 at the start of the twentieth century, an imaginary Project 1901 would have been staunchly against seeing the Antiquities Act become law. Can you imagine if it had been successful? Would there even be Grand Canyon National Park, or Arcadia, Zion, or Arches National Parks? Or numerous other parks and monuments?
I often hear that “elections have consequences.” If our public lands could speak, I am sure they would agree.
I have been surprised, and disappointed, at how many people I talk to that have never even heard of Project 2025, let alone know what it would do to our country, and our public lands. If you like clean air and water, if you want wild places protected, if you like to hike, bird, camp, hunt, kayak, fish, mountain bike, river raft… I hope you will do your own research on Project 2025. Click the links in this article as a start. Look up “Project 2025 and public lands” in your favorite search engine.
While you are at it, Look up “Project 2025 and women’s rights,” “Project 2025 and Indigenous rights,” “Project 2025 and LGBTQ+ rights,” etc. Find out for yourself what will happen with other issues you are concerned about. I believe you will be as alarmed as I am!
I often hear that “elections have consequences.” If our public lands could speak, I am sure they would agree. Public lands may not even exist had our ancestors not acted to protect them – through activism, through passion, and through political action, including voting.
As Teddy Roosevelt said, public lands are a gift to your children, your children’s children, and all who come after you. Please vote with the wise words of Terry Tempest Williams in your heart: “The eyes of the future are looking back at us and they are praying for us to see beyond our own time. They are kneeling with hands clasped that we might act with restraint, that we might leave room for the life that is destined to come. To protect what is wild is to protect what is gentle. Perhaps the wilderness we fear is the pause between our own heartbeats, the silent space that says we live only by grace. Wilderness lives by this same grace. Wild mercy is in our hands.”
hiya Dave--I suspect you are preaching to the choir. Nonetheless, when you put your words out there into the universe, some element of being always hears them and I can't help but feel that the earth is grateful for yours.
Thank you Dave for this writing! Mother Earth thanks you as well myself. I am spreading the word for people to really know about Project. 2025💚🌎