Threats to Public Lands

For many veterans, public lands are where we find peace after war, reconnect with our families, and remember what we served to protect. Across generations and political parties, Americans have safeguarded these places for those who come after us. If we let them be damaged or lost, we lose part of the country we served, and our children inherit less than we did.

Current threats to our public lands

  • Data Centers on Public Lands

    The federal government is accelerating data center development on public lands, with a project already approved in southern Nevada. These industrial facilities can demand substantial electricity and water for cooling. Expanding their footprint raises concerns about how our shared lands and resources will serve nearby communities and future generations.

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  • Big Bend National Park: Border Wall and Infrastructure

    Plans for border barriers, roads, and surveillance infrastructure threaten Big Bend’s desert landscapes, wildlife habitat, and access to the Rio Grande. Construction activity has already damaged sensitive areas. Although the administration is considering changes to the project, this national park’s future remains uncertain.

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  • Arctic National Wildlife Refuge: Oil and Gas Development

    Renewed oil and gas leasing threatens one of our country’s last great intact landscapes. Development could fragment wildlife habitat and disrupt the caribou herds that sustain Gwich’in communities and their way of life. Once roads, pipelines, and drilling infrastructure spread across this landscape, future generations may never know the Arctic as it is today.

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  • Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante: Monument Rollbacks

    President Trump has dramatically reduced these two Utah national monuments, stripping protections from vast landscapes and opening previously protected lands to mining and mineral leasing. These rollbacks put sacred Tribal sites, irreplaceable cultural resources, and some of our country’s most remarkable canyon country at risk.

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  • Repeal of the Roadless Rule

    The Trump administration is proposing to repeal protections that limit roadbuilding and logging across roughly 45 million acres of national forests. Removing these safeguards would leave more of our remaining undeveloped forests vulnerable to new roads and timber harvest, putting clean water, wildlife habitat, and quiet places to recreate at risk.

    Proposed repeal of the Roadless Rule also threatens protections across roughly nine million acres of Alaska’s Tongass National Forest. More logging and roadbuilding could damage ancient forests and salmon streams that sustain wildlife, hunting and fishing, and Alaska Native communities. These are places that took centuries to grow and cannot be replaced in our lifetimes.

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“A policy of destruction of the game and the big trees… would be a crime against future generations… These wonders should be preserved in their grandest integrity.”

– Captain Charles Young (U.S. Army Buffalo Soldier & First Black National Park Superintendent)