Cover Photo - Bryce Canyon in snow/Bryce Canyon National Park/Utah/Winter
June 26, 2025
How many of you have heard the phrase: America’s Best Idea? Or, our National Treasures?
America's Best Idea was coined by Wallace Stegner who felt that our National Parks embody the best qualities and/or values of America. These are qualities that all of us have grown up with: qualities such as freedom, preservation, compassion, empathy, honesty, integrity, democracy, etc.
These qualities and more represent the best of America and are embodied in our National Parks and Monuments and should be, I believe, extended to all public lands. All of our public lands serve an infinite number of positive purposes that benefit all of us.
These two phrases: America's Best Idea and National Treasures have typically applied to our National Parks and Monuments. Yet, our National Parks, Monuments, Refuges, Preserves, Wilderness and Recreation Areas, National Forests and BLM lands are threatened with destructive changes that is meant to undermine and very possibly privatize them.
They are under threat from a predatory and corrupt administration that is the antithesis of the democratic and compassionate ideals of America’s Best Idea.
The first tangible threat came from the first Trump administration came when Bears Ears and Grand Staircase - Escalante’ National Monuments were reduced to a shadow of their original size. This was a serious warning shot to not only to America’s National Treasures and the wildlife and scenic beauty that they hold within, but to all public lands.
The importance of protecting all wildlife species, rests in protecting their changing habitat and intact ecosystems in National Parks, Monuments, Refuges, Preserves, Wilderness Areas, National Forest and BLM lands.
These public lands are not only critical to protecting wildlife and stunning landscapes, but also provide an infinite number of benefits to all American citizens, including providing water for agriculture and drinking for millions of Americans.
Do we wish to continue to show compassion, tolerance, and acceptance towards wildlife and wilderness? Do we wish to continue to enjoy breathtaking landscapes, breathe in clean air and hear the songs of birds, the rustling waves of rivers, streams and seas and possibly the howls of wolves?
Do we wish to continue to hike, backpack, mountain climb, fish, hunt, camp, canoe, photograph and recreate further in a variety of ways throughout our public lands? Do we wish to feel the quiet solitude of wilderness and witness its expansiveness?
Here in Denali, when the park was established in 1917, it was established primarily for the protection of wildlife. But in so doing, it didn’t just protect wildlife, it protected entire species, their interactions, their habitat, the food chain, plants, insects, the geology, glaciology and in fact, the entire ecosystem that these various species are dependent upon.
In so doing, it has protected them for the past 108 years allowing both current and future visitors a glimpse into the day to day lives of wildlife and into a working intact, ever changing wilderness ecosystem.
None of us will ever experience the millions of bison that use to thunder across the midwest. None of us will ever witness grizzly bears walking on the beaches of Malibu or countless other examples that are lost to the past.
Yet, we can still have similar experiences in National Parks and other protected areas that have bison, grizzly bears and other wildlife. These experiences are personal, unique and priceless.
National Parks and other protected lands are snapshots of what has been lost but also what can still be experienced by all of us and future generations. If and only if, they are fully funded, staffed and ferociously protected from political and corporate marauders who wish to privatize, corporatize and defile them for profit.
Any loss of these lands and wildlife is a loss of experience to all and to all future generations. In effect, it robs the present and future for the profit of the few.
America’s Best Idea needs America’s Best to protect, preserve, fund and to fiercely guard it from the malicious few who would desecrate it. And America's Best is all of us.
Those who work in National Parks cannot achieve this alone; we need everyone to stand up in support of all of our National Treasures.
For more information, see the following: 250+ million acres of public lands eligible for sale in SENR bill
And just today: https://wsww.hcn.org/articles/maga-and-the-developers-are-coming-for-your-public-lands/
And this regarding National Monuments: DOJ says presidents can revoke monuments, not just create them
Editorial by professional nature photographer Tom Mangelsen: Public Lands Vital To Future Of Both Young Humans And Wildlife
Please contact your Senator while they are debating the current budget bill and ask them to vote it down and to keep all public lands.......public. America's priceless National Treasures are not for sale.
Thanks for reading and all the best.
Bill