California pushes back against Trump public-lands grab!
On Oct. 6 Gov. Jerry Brown signed a landmark piece of public-lands-protection legislation into law.
Our national forests, parks and monuments are the birthright of every American. And with the passage of S.B. 50, The Public Lands Protection Act, the California legislature signaled that it will fight to preserve that legacy for every Californian.
California's 45 million acres of U.S. public lands and coastal waters (including some nine million acres of national forests) are under assault by an anti-conservation White House and its private industry backers. S.B. 50 will empower the state to shield our federal public land by directing the California State Lands Commission (which oversees much of the federal lands in the state) to exercise a right of first refusal of any proposed federal lands sale or conveyance to other parties.
This is a strong step in safeguarding public resources.
"We have a sacred duty to take whatever actions we can to protect public lands from any sale or lease that would result in their loss or degradation," said Senator Ben Allen (D-Santa Monica), the author of the bill.
For too long California's priceless natural lands have been allowed to be ravaged by greedy extractive industries! Logging, mining, grazing, development and fossil fuels extraction have too often left in their wake a devastated landscape and depressed and abandoned local economies.
S.B. 50 takes effect Jan. 1, 2018.
