A Day to Honor Our Most Cherished Landscapes

Nationwide Public Lands Day offers a time to replicate on the deep connection between Individuals and our public lands. This 12 months, 1000’s of voices throughout the nation spoke up in help of our public lands, from hunters and anglers to outside lovers to our personal Audubon members and supporters. We spoke up for wild and awe-inspiring locations, but additionally for our native trails and favourite birding spots. These reminders of the excessive worth the American folks place on public lands  proceed to resonate with decision-makers, who know and should proceed to recollect the significance of defending our shared legacy for present and future generations.

Public lands are one of many strongest examples of bipartisan American values. Eighteen presidents — 9 Democrats and 9 Republicans — have established or expanded greater than 160 nationwide monuments. Lots of the nation’s most treasured public locations, just like the Grand Canyon, have been first protected as nationwide monuments. Defending these locations displays the work of broad coalitions: Tribal nations, enterprise leaders, religion leaders, elected officers, hunters, anglers, hikers, cyclists, and conservationists. Collectively, these unlikely allies have stood as much as safeguard nationwide monuments and be sure that public lands stay public.

Public help has remained remarkably constant throughout areas and occasion strains. Within the West, 85 percent of voters favor creating new nationwide parks, monuments, wildlife refuges, or Tribal protected areas. That consensus displays a shared fact: public lands belong to all of us and are value defending.

From our iconic nationwide parks starting from Acadia to Zion, to our nationwide wildlife refuges that present vital stopovers for migratory birds—these nationwide lands are symbols of  america  not only for Individuals, however for tens of millions world wide. Public lands additionally embody nationwide forests, grasslands and rangelands the place hikers and cyclists discover renewal, sacred websites that protect 1000’s of years of Indigenous historical past, and the quiet streams the place anglers forged strains. And public lands help greater than 1,000 hen species, one-third of that are endangered, threatened, or of conservation concern. Not all of those lands are strictly protected, however collectively they embody public treasures that form our nation’s identification and maintain wildlife and communities.

Public lands additionally gas rural economies. A 2020 study of communities close to 14 monuments designated between 1991 and 2014 discovered that new companies and jobs elevated after monument protections have been put in place. Out of doors recreation contributed $639.5 billion to U.S. GDP in 2023 — 2.3 % of your entire U.S. economic system. 96 million Americans count themselves as birdwatchers, serving to to gas this outside economic system. Guides, outfitters, lodging house owners, and small companies in rural cities know this firsthand. Defending landscapes doesn’t shut doorways — it opens them.

But public lands proceed to face mounting challenges. As one instance, the Roadless Space Conservation Rule, a 2001 safeguard that retains practically 58 million acres of nationwide forests free from road-building and industrial logging, is under consideration for repeal. These roadless areas embody a few of the most ecologically wealthy forests within the nation, resembling Alaska’s Tongass and California’s Sequoia Nationwide Forest. For birds that rely on unfragmented forest habitat, together with the Marbled murrelet, Cerulean warbler, and Sooty grouse, the results may very well be dire[CD1] .

Defending America’s public lands isn’t just about birds — it’s about clear water, outside traditions, panorama well being, and making certain that future generations inherit a panorama as inspiring as those that now we have skilled in our lifetimes. President Theodore Roosevelt stated, “The nation behaves nicely if it treats the pure assets as property which it should flip over to the subsequent technology elevated, and never impaired, in worth.”

On September 27, Nationwide Public Lands Day, Individuals have an opportunity not solely to speak up for these lands but additionally to expertise them firsthand. Admission to all national parks is free that day; an invite to volunteer, hike a path, forged a line, watch a hen, or just stand in quiet awe beneath historic timber — and to recollect why these locations are value combating for.