The Basics

What Public Lands Actually Are

Over 400 million acres of land in this country belong to every American equally. Not to a corporation. Not to a private landowner. To you. National parks. National forests. Bureau of Land Management land. Wildlife refuges. Wilderness areas. Stretches of coastline, desert, mountain, and river that were set aside over generations by people who understood that some things should never be sold to the highest bidder.

These are not just pretty places to visit. They are watersheds that supply drinking water to millions. They are carbon sinks that absorb emissions. They are ecosystems that support biodiversity, regulate climate, and anchor the economies of entire regions through recreation, tourism, and ranching.

"Some things should never be privately owned. Our ancestors understood that. We are being asked to forget it."

The Threat

Why Are They Attacking Our Lands?

The short answer is money. Public lands sit on top of enormous reserves of oil, gas, coal, and minerals. They also represent some of the most valuable undeveloped real estate in the country. When those lands are protected, that value stays locked away from private extraction. When they are opened or sold, that value flows to whoever is first in line.

In 2025 and into 2026, the federal government moved aggressively to open protected wilderness areas to drilling and mining, proposed the sale of public lands to private interests, and cut the agencies responsible for managing and protecting them. Entrance fees at some parks doubled. Staff at the National Park Service, the Forest Service, and the Bureau of Land Management were reduced significantly, leaving trails unmaintained, visitor services cut, and fire prevention crews short-handed.

The framing is usually economic: jobs, energy independence, reducing government waste. But the math rarely holds up. The long-term economic value of intact public lands, through recreation, tourism, water supply, and carbon storage, far exceeds the short-term revenue from extraction. What changes is who captures that value and over what timeline.

This is not a partisan issue. Hunters, hikers, climbers, anglers, campers, ranchers, and conservationists across the political spectrum have pushed back hard. Public land belongs to the public. That has always been the idea. And a lot of people across a lot of political backgrounds intend to keep it that way.

Follow the Money

Who Is Actually Behind This?

It is rarely one villain. It is a coalition of interests that have been pushing in the same direction for decades, and found a more receptive political environment in recent years.

The extraction industry is the loudest voice. Oil, gas, coal, and mining companies have lobbied aggressively for access to federal land for generations. The reserves sitting beneath protected wilderness areas represent trillions of dollars in potential revenue. Industry trade groups spend hundreds of millions of dollars per election cycle supporting candidates who will open those lands and weaken the agencies that protect them.

Real estate and development interests are the quieter voice. Certain parcels of public land sit adjacent to ski resorts, luxury developments, and high-value private holdings. A sale or transfer of those parcels to private ownership can be extraordinarily profitable for the right buyer. These interests tend to work through state legislatures and property rights advocacy groups rather than federal lobbying, which makes them harder to track.

It is also worth naming the political framework. Since 2025, executive orders have been used to reverse decades of land protections without going through Congress, bypassing the public comment and legislative process that normally governs these decisions. Some of this has been challenged in court. Some of it has held.

"The people pushing to sell your public land are not doing it for you. They are doing it for the extraction contracts waiting on the other side."

The Legal Question

How Are They Allowed to Do This?

This is the question most people ask first, and the answer is genuinely complicated. The short version: public land law in the United States is a patchwork of statutes, executive orders, agency regulations, and court precedents that have been layered on top of each other for over a century. That complexity creates gaps, and those gaps get exploited.

The President has significant executive authority over how public lands are managed. Under the Antiquities Act, a president can designate national monuments. Under executive order, a president can also shrink or modify those designations, direct agencies to prioritize certain uses, and fast-track permitting for extraction projects. These actions do not require Congress and they do not require public approval, though they are subject to court challenge.

Congress also plays a role. Budget riders, small legislative provisions attached to must-pass spending bills, have been used for decades to block or weaken specific environmental protections. Most people never notice them. They often pass in the middle of the night during budget negotiations when the alternative is a government shutdown.

The reason this is allowed is ultimately democratic: the people elected to office reflect the priorities of the people who voted for them and funded their campaigns. Changing who gets elected, and who funds them, is the most durable fix. Everything else is damage control.

The Human Cost

This Is About More Than Wildlife

When people hear about threats to public land, they often think of endangered species, which matters enormously. But the impact on human beings is just as direct, and far less discussed.

Public lands are where American drinking water begins. The forests and wilderness areas that feed rivers, aquifers, and reservoirs supply drinking water to roughly 180 million Americans. When those lands are logged, mined, or developed, the watershed is compromised. The water gets harder and more expensive to treat. In some cases it becomes unsafe.

Public lands are also where millions of people go to stay mentally and physically healthy. Study after study confirms what most of us already know: time in nature reduces stress, anxiety, and depression. Access to green space is one of the most significant predictors of wellbeing. Public lands are the great equalizer, a trail in a national forest belongs equally to a billionaire and to a kid from a low-income family who cannot afford a private resort. When those lands are sold, fenced off, or made too expensive to enter, that equity disappears.

And then there is the climate. Public lands store an estimated 7.5 billion tons of carbon. Drill them, mine them, or clear them, and that carbon goes into the atmosphere. The people who will feel that most are not the ones who profited from it.

"The water in your tap, the air you breathe, the trails your kids run on. All of it is downstream of public land policy."

Reasons for Hope

The Fight Is Not Over. Not Even Close.

Here is what does not make the news as often as the threats: the resistance is enormous, organized, and winning some significant battles.

The conservation movement has been here before. In the 1970s, public lands faced similar pressure from energy interests. The response was the passage of some of the strongest environmental protection laws in American history. The people who showed up then, who wrote letters, who litigated, who voted, and who simply went outside and demanded that the land stay open, made that happen.

The same tools are available right now. They still work.

Take Action

What You Can Do This September and Beyond

The best argument for protecting public land is using it and loving it. So go outside this month. Take someone who has never been. And then come home and fight for it.

Our Mission + Impact

Where We Stand

We did not start Me Mother Earth to sell products. We started it because we kept seeing a problem with no good solution on the shelf: people who cared deeply about the environment, buying plastic because there was nothing better available. We wanted to change what was on the shelf.

Protecting public land and fighting plastic pollution are not separate causes. They are the same cause. The plastic that gets made, used, and discarded ends up somewhere. A lot of it ends up on the lands and in the waters that belong to all of us.

These lands are worth fighting for. Go enjoy them first.