Should Public Lands Remain Public? A Precedent is Being Set.
Careless closures, or needed necessity?
This week there has been a lot of movement when it comes to National Forests and State Parks being closed to public use. A few days ago Santa Fe National Forest started off the closures with an announcement saying their borders would be shut for the rest of the year. This was not met with much pushback because indeed, they have a massive emergency response within their borders. Folks saw the need to control entry and exit into the 1.6 million acre public forest.
I had people reaching out to me applauding this closure and wanted even more forests to be closed to the public. Responses such as “Keep the idiots out!”, “close them all year”, and “good, more should do the same” trickled into my inbox. Well, they got their wish because a day later the Carson National Forest Managers decided that their 1.5 million acre forest was now off limits to all visitors. This took 3.1 million acres of public land off the table for taxpayers. Many thought this would most likely be enough to quell the threat of human caused wildfire in the area. However, the keyboard warriors wanted more… and they got it.
Next the Cibola National Forest announced that they would begin large scale closures in the coming days. The Cibola National Forest is 1.63 million acres. So in just days this brings the total public acreage deemed off limits to almost 5 million acres. After these announcements,
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