Gail Symons: That Federal Lands Measure Would Have Betrayed Wyoming

The Big Horn Mountains have always been the backdrop in my life.

Every drive to town, they stand sentinel in the distance, reflecting the changing seasons and weather. Sunday drives, floating on an air mattress at Lake Sibley, and days and nights at the 4-H Mountain Camp were staples in our summer routines.

They represent to me the legacy of our public lands.

That legacy was nearly undermined this week.

A proposal floated in the Senate this month would have forced the sale of millions of acres of our public lands across the West. Its proponents tried to sell it as “less than one percent,” a drop in the bucket, a painless fix for a federal budget mess.

The measure looks dead at this juncture, since its author, Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, offered to pull it Saturday night after massive backlash in Western states.

But let’s be clear about what it was: a reckless, mandatory sell-off of the land we share, for short-term political convenience.

When President Eisenhower warned that “we must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow,” he was talking about this kind of thinking.

Senator John Barrasso, a Republican and Wyoming’s senior delegate to the upper chamber, once quoted those very words on the Senate floor in 2007.

Where was he on this? When it mattered most, he fell silent. That silence is nothing short of complicity.

Because this isn’t a partisan issue. Opposition to this proposal flowed from every corner of Wyoming. Republicans and Democrats. Ranchers and hunters. Small business owners, county commissions, former governors of both parties. People who rarely agree on much of anything united in rejecting this plan.

Why? Because they understand what these lands mean.

They’re where we hunt, fish, graze cattle, ride horses, hike, and camp. They’re a cornerstone of our economy and our way of life.

Losing access to even small tracts near our communities isn’t a minor inconvenience. It’s the loss of the places where we teach our kids to respect the land and carry on traditions that have defined Wyoming for generations.

Once sold, those lands are gone forever. You don’t get them back. That’s not development. That’s theft from our children and grandchildren.

Supporters of this plan spoke of affordable housing and local control. Let’s call that what it is: a smokescreen. This bill wouldn’t have solved Wyoming’s housing crisis. It would create playgrounds for the wealthy.

Local governments might get the “first right of refusal,” but the process forces a fire sale whether communities want it or not. That’s not local control. That’s Washington dictating what we’ll lose.

They claim these are “checkerboard” parcels or “surplus” lands.

Ask anyone who hunts mule deer on BLM a few miles from town, or grazes livestock on those same tracts, if they’re surplus. Those are the places working people actually use. They’re close to home, accessible after a day’s work, and essential to families that can’t afford a week-long backcountry trip.

What’s worse is how tried to sneak this through. The current text of the bill was released early on a Saturday morning to keep it buried and on track for a July 4th signing. They knew it wouldn’t survive real scrutiny in the light of day.

Because once people saw it clearly, they’d see it for what it was: a rushed, sloppy attempt to raise cash off our heritage, with no meaningful sideboards or accountability.

This plan doesn’t improve management. It bypasses the careful, public process we already have in place under the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976. That law requires local consultation and environmental review.

It’s deliberate for a reason. Selling public lands shouldn’t be easy. It shouldn’t be secretive. And it shouldn’t be mandatory.

Our entire congressional delegation knows all of this. Senator Barrasso. Senator Cynthia Lummis. Congresswoman Harriet Hageman. They know how Wyoming feels. Yet they’ve either sat silent or tried to spin this as some reasonable fix.

We deserve better.

We deserve elected officials who will fight for our access, our heritage, and our way of life—not for DC deal-making that treats our home as collateral.

So here’s what we can do. Call them. Write them. Visit their offices. Tell them this is unacceptable. Remind them that we will remember who fought for us and who didn’t.

Because this isn’t about party lines or political points. This is about the soul of Wyoming. About whether our public lands stay in public hands. About whether our kids will know the same freedom, opportunity, and beauty that we’ve been privileged to experience.

We’ve fought these battles before. We’ll fight them again. And we will keep fighting, for as long as it takes, to ensure that our public lands remain exactly that -- public.

Gail Symons can be reached at: GailSymons@mac.com