1. United States
2. Calif.
3. Letter

Block the Western Solar Plan and stop its implementation before another acre of wild public land is handed over to private developers. Millions of rooftops, parking lots, warehouses, and shopping centers sit near existing power infrastructure and could host enough panels to power the country indefinitely. There is zero justification for destroying wild spaces when better options are sitting idle. The Mojave Desert is not a wasteland. Wildlife biologist Laura Cunningham of Basin and Range Watch has documented that desert ecosystems sequester up to 28 percent of land-based carbon uptake. BLM's Western Solar Plan would carve 7,000 acres from the proposed Bahsahwahbee monument, a sacred site where Western Shoshone ancestors were massacred. Private developers profit, local communities see few permanent jobs, and the ecological damage is permanent. Congress must act now to protect these wild spaces. Public lands belong to all of us. We go there for quiet, for wildlife, for open space, not to encounter transmission lines and access roads built for corporate energy projects. Rooftops and parking canopies near cities are the right place for solar. Our wild lands are the last place it should go.