On Monday afternoon, Darcy McGrath joined thousands of others in Santa Fe’s De Vargas Park to express her opposition to taking U.S. lands out of public hands. “One of the reasons I moved to Santa Fe from the Midwest was to be closer to the wilderness, to public lands — not only in New Mexico, but Colorado and in Utah,” she said. “I don’t want them destroyed.”
The event, organized by the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance, drew nearly 2,000 people who were angry about Utah Sen. Mike Lee’s proposal to sell off 3.2 million acres of federal public land and then make at least another 250 million acres available too. As the protesters prepared to march to the nearby luxury Eldorado Hotel, where the Western Governors’ Association was hosting Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and several other Trump administration officials, Santa Clara Pueblo Gov. James Naranjo addressed the group. “We’re fighting for Chaco Canyon, we’re fighting for Bears Ears, Tent Rocks, Puye Cliffs, Bandelier, Valles Caldera,” Naranjo said. “All our national parks are in jeopardy.”
Inside the Eldorado at their annual meeting, both Democratic and Republican governors had already expressed concern about the proposed land sales. “Those kinds of decisions should be made on a local level with a very robust process that does not say we’re going to wholesale get rid of our public lands, but we’re going to look at certain places where the adjustments that we can make just make better sense than what we have today,” Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon, a Republican, said at a Monday morning press conference.
“All our national parks are in jeopardy.”
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, who has publicly called for the transfer or lease of “underused” federal lands to states and localities, did not even mention Sen. Lee’s proposal during his remarks to the governors on Monday morning. Instead, he spoke more generally about the need for “innovation” in energy development on public lands.
“You can have amazing national parks, national historic sites, national monuments, you can work collaboratively with the tribes,” Burgum told the governors. “And you can still contribute mightily to the nation’s economy and the nation’s security.”
Late Monday evening in Washington, D.C., the Senate parliamentarian ruled that Lee’s proposal could not be included in the Republican budget package, which, under the budget reconciliation process, requires only a simple majority to pass. Instead, Lee and his allies will need to secure the 60 votes required to overcome a filibuster — a near-impossibility in a Senate with only 53 Republican members. Before the decision was announced, Lee tweeted that he would revise the proposal so that it could still be included in the budget package. Among other measures, he wrote, he planned to “SIGNIFICANTLY REDUCE the amount of BLM land in the bill” and stipulate that “Only land WITHIN 5 MILES of population centers is eligible.” Text reflecting these changes was circulating on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, reported E&E News.
Opponents of the proposal said they would remain vigilant. “Democrats will not stand idly by while Republicans attempt to circumvent the rules of reconciliation in order to sell off public lands to fund tax breaks for billionaires,” Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., said Monday night. “We will … review any changes Republicans attempt to make to the bill.”
That night, two of the protesters were surprised to learn of the parliamentarian’s decision as they waited to sing karaoke at the Cowgirl restaurant. They quickly informed the bartender, who responded by yelling, “What a stupid relief!”
Meanwhile, back at the Eldorado, the American Hunters & Anglers Action Network were projecting an image of a red-eyed Burgum on one of the hotel’s exterior walls, captioned “PUBLIC LANDS BURGLED BY BURGUM”.
The following morning, the conference resumed at the Eldorado. Jacob Malcom, who resigned from his post as director of the Interior Department’s Office of Policy Analysis in February to protest the administration’s mass firing of probationary employees, prepared to listen to U.S. Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer. “I’m part of the Valentine’s Day Massacre,” he said.
Shortly after leaving his job, Malcom founded Next Interior, a group that seeks to build advocacy networks to support the Interior Department’s efforts to protect natural and cultural resources and uphold treaty obligations to tribes.
“I worked on national wildlife refuges for eight years and spent a lot of years on the parks and out on BLM land. It’s part of our shared heritage,” Malcom said. He welcomed the news about Lee’s proposal. “This was a response to people kicking up a fuss,” he said. “This is good.”
As the conference ended on Tuesday afternoon, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, R, became the new chair of the association, which represents 22 governors in the West. By next year’s meeting in Park City, Utah, Cox said, he hopes the governors will have aligned their priorities with the Trump administration’s energy policies and have more local authority over and oversight of federal projects.
As the Western leaders left the Eldorado, they were hit by monsoon rains, which flooded the historic Santa Fe Plaza and halted all the road construction that had surrounded the event. Construction workers in green high-visibility safety shirts hastily moved diggers away from flood zones.
Forty-five miles to the north in Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo, ceremonial dancers prepared to finish their final prayer to mark the summer. A crew member on a road construction project, unexpectedly off the clock due to the storm, shouted, “Let’s get up there quick for the last plate.” He walked by a large orange sign labeling the muddy worksite a “Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham Highway Improvement Project” that was supported by a mix of funds, including federal Inflation Reduction Act money — an illustration of the federal-state collaboration common in the West, and endorsed in Santa Fe by governors from both parties.
The rain continued, a reminder that, in the end, the land always leads.
This story is part of High Country News’ Conservation Beyond Boundaries project, which is supported by the BAND Foundation.
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