Biden Administration Seeks to Shutdown More Public Lands
As many of you know, Arizona and many western states have very little private land. Between national and state parks, monuments, tribal lands, and other designations, most land is off limits to Arizonans for anything other than snapping a picture – if that.
In 2015, I noted that 81.8% of Arizona land was publicly held and only 18.2% was open to private owners. The Arizona Republic thought I was wrong and “fact checked” me but concluded that “Gosar correct on private land in Arizona.”
Not content with owning a majority of all land already, the Biden Administration is seeking to take even more. The goal is to stop energy and mining in our country under the deconstruction strategy to weaken our nation. If we can’t mine or drill in our country we will have to rely on China, Russia and other countries that believe in themselves and their own sovereignty.
The Biden Administration and the Department of Interior released its initial strategy for its “30 by 30” initiative, a measure to lock up millions of acres public lands and water from economic productivity. Locking up vast swaths of land and water under onerous designations ignores the scientific principles embodied in numerous federal, state and local fish and wildlife laws. True conservation supports communities by providing both a cleaner, healthy environment and a robust economy. Conservation means caring for what you have, not using more than you need and managing your precious resources for this and future generations. Common-sense, practical solutions that rely on science and leverage the knowhow of local stakeholders are the best path forward to ensuring we have a healthy environment that we will leave better than we found it. In response, I cosponsored the 30×30 Termination Act to terminate this Executive Order, ensure no net loss of non-federal land, and prevent withdrawing federal lands from mineral development.
