"Our wilderness areas and our national parks we all know as the places where we have those iconic outdoor recreation experiences." - John Sterling
John Sterling, the executive director of The Conservation Alliance, joins us to discuss the dangers our federally managed lands face today. John Sterling served as a board member of the Conservation Alliance, at Patagonia in the late 90's for 7 years. From there, he left to find a way to fund a full time staff position at the Conservation Alliance, which eventually came together in 2005 due to a partnership with Keen Footwear. John helped put together a process for laying out an economic rationale for preserving public alliance in wild places, which got business leaders to go out to Washington D.C and lobby for wilderness bills.
Bulletpoints
- There are members of Congress on the Republican side that don't believe in climate change and are openly hostile to conservation
- The study that OIA (Outdoor Industry Association is now the foundation of the conversation about the value of lands–the value of outdoor recreation for our economy
- One of the biggest concerns is that you do have members of Congress whose ideas are very well thought out in total contradiction to our values and what we want to accomplish on public lands
- We need to ensure that members of Congress that do want to give away federal lands to the states or back out of climate change deals, don't have their way
- Many people take our public lands for granted
- The federal government manages on our behalf, millions of acres of land under the BLM (Bureau of Land Management), the foresters, the park service, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service
- It's an official plank in 2016 Republican party platform to transfer federal lands to the states
- There is value in having all of our federal lands managed by one entity - That's how you can ensure that there's consistency in management
- States cannot run budget deficits - If there is a forest fire in Oregon, and they have to fund putting that fire out, it would bankrupt the state almost overnight
- Polling usually shows somewhere in the mid 70s for: "Yes, we need to preserve this public land system"
- We are at a political moment where if you care about your public lands, you have to get engaged in the effort to ensure that that system stays intact
Links
The Conservation Alliance:ConservationAlliance.com
Outdoor Alliance Protectourpublicland.org
Bureau of Land Management: BLM.gov
Outdoor Industry Association: OutdoorIndustry.com
