1. United States
2. Iowa
3. Letter

Recently, members of the House Resource Committee added a 33 page amendment to their budget bill. It passed 26-17 under the cover of night, and will allow the government to sell public land. No public input, no transparency, no serious discussions. It is beyond belief this activity is happening, especially since it disregards OUR public lands that have been protected for so many years. There are some very disturbing things in this amendment: - Forcing the sale of 100,000 acres of public land in Nevada and Utah (and potentially up to 500,000 acres in total) - Open up millions of acres more to drilling, logging and mining - Gut environmental law reviews - More fossil fuel leases including in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge - Mandated timber harvesting - Fees on environmental groups challenging permits All this is happening while the funding for the agencies that protect public lands and thousands of federal employees have been decreased substantially. As you can surmise, this will be a disaster for some of the most pristine public land we have, and will turn many areas into industrial wastelands. Out of control private industries will decimate and ruin so many places without any environmental review or oversight. It is totally reprehensible and extremely irresponsible to disable and disregard the decades of hard work it took to protect these lands in the first place. Please do everything you can to STOP this bill. You need to take some responsibility for the planet we live on and wake up to the fact this is being done to support tax breaks for the wealthy.