We won, the Budget Reconciliation bill won't include the sale of nearly 1.5 million acres of public land throughout Utah and Nevada, and it wouldn't have happened without the public's awesome pressure on our representatives. Public land advocates need to rightly enjoy this moment, as everyone came together as a collective, called their representatives, and told them that these lands need to be conserved and it worked.
They backed down. Honestly, I didn't think it'd happen, as the folks at the top who've been leading this charge, i.e. my own senator Mike Lee, seems to hate public lands more than he loves anything else. Which is odd given Utah derives so much revenue from those same public lands, but the world is full of idiotic contradictions.
But this fight isn't over, as that same Reconciliation Bill—by a single solitary vote—passed with a host of other provisions and amendments that will impact how we, the owners of our public land, will be able to utilize and recreate on them going forward. So, yes, we won the battle. But the war ain't over.
