1. United States
2. Ind.
3. Letter

As your constituent and as a supporter of our national parks, I urge you to oppose the reconciliation bill language released by the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. This is an anti-national parks bill. The National Park Service has been understaffed for over a decade. But this bill cuts funding for national park staffing and programs. The oil and gas industry should be paying their fair share when drilling on public lands and waters. But this bill promotes more drilling while lowering the rates that oil and gas companies pay to drill. And the bill greenlights the destructive Ambler industrial mining road through Gates of the Arctic National Preserve in Northwest Alaska. And worst of all, the bill requires the sell-off of millions of acres of public lands across the West without any community input or guardrails on what could be developed. Many at-risk lands border national parks and are critical to the ongoing protection of wildlife habitat, clean water sources and public access points to nature. This bill is the opposite of what is needed and could do irreparable harm to our parks. It is an effort to dismantle the National Park Service. I urge you to oppose these dangerous provisions as the Senate moves forward with reconciliation.