The four largest holdings of publicly owned land in America make up 643 million acres, an expanse which includes mountains, forests, lakes, rivers and streams, deserts, prairies, and grasslands, rolling hills, dramatic canyons -- even swamps and tundra.

These are lands set aside for all Americans to enjoy, and are held in the public trust by our government in National Forests, National Parks, Wildlife Refuges and land administered by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). These lands provide clean air, water and soil, recreation, wildlife, spiritual and psychological renewal; and a glimpse of the way our nation was over 500 years ago.

Unfortunately, our government and corporate industry cannot be trusted to follow its own laws, to protect our heritage from harmful resource extraction and the short-term economic gain that comes as a result of harmful resource extraction on your publicly owned lands.

Logging, grazing, mining, drilling, and the use of off-road vehicles are all important aspects of our economy, but do not need to be pursued at the expense of your tax dollars, or at the expense of our public lands ecosystems.

The arguments against these practices are wide-ranging, including an honest emotional attachment to the intrinsic value of old-growth forests, as well as simple irrefutable economics.

The position of the Council is based on the simple logic that corporations are manipulating our laws and destroying our lands for profit, and in each and every industry, we can prove this fact with evidence gained the old-fashioned way: years of hard research and journalistic digging. Our arguments against these practices are categorized above.

We hope that you too will discover that our natural heritage is best kept Forever Wild, and will be motivated to help us toward our goal: a full and permanent stop to all resource extraction on publicly owned lands.