Photo provided by Sierra Club Outings
Late last week, I attended an event celebrating the life and legacy of Stewart Udall. A former Secretary of the Interior, he helped enact many of America’s most meaningful conservation laws, including the Wilderness Act, the Endangered Species Act, and the Land and Water Conservation Fund Act. He also helped protect more than 100 parks and places from Washington State to the Appalachian Trail up the east coast. His conservation legacy is one people everywhere still benefit from today-- and one that is more important than ever to continue.
We are facing a climate and extinction crisis. Scientists tell us that to halt mass extinction and mitigate climate change we need to not only preserve existing wild spaces, but protect more nature -- a lot more. In the US, we need to protect about 30% of our remaining undeveloped areas by 2030. With only 12% of our country’s lands currently protected, reaching that goal means more neighborhood green space, more wilderness, and everything in between.
Protecting wild places will keep the drilling and logging industries from dumping new pollution into the air and suck existing climate pollution out of the air. It will also provide protection from extreme weather, homes for wildlife, and opportunities for people to enjoy the outdoors together. But we need to act quickly before our remaining wild places are lost.
Thankfully, the idea is gaining steam in political, scientific, and advocacy circles in the US and abroad. Communities across the country are starting to map out what protections in their neighborhoods might look like. At the celebration event on Friday, an official from the Blackfeet Nation, a National Geographic Explorer ,and former Secretaries of the Interior all called for bold action to save 30% of the country’s wild places. The U.N. Convention on Biodiversity has even released a draft plan, expected to be endorsed at their gathering later this year, calling for 30% of remaining wild places to be safeguarded by 2030.
While much of the climate crisis conversation has been focused on energy, a large piece of the solution lies literally at our feet. In the US, public lands are a central player in both preventing new climate pollution and drawing down existing pollution.
Fossil fuels extracted from public lands are responsible for greenhouse gas emissions equal to 25% of our total national emissions. Obviously, stopping new dirty fuels leasing is key to keeping those emissions from growing further. But studies have also shown that smart land conservation and management practices could actually offset 21% of US greenhouse gas emissions. Forests certainly play a part in storing carbon: They store more carbon per acre than any other terrestrial ecosystem on the planet. Already, some 30 million acres of forests on National Forest lands store seven times the greenhouse gasses emitted by the US each year. Forests also present some of the biggest opportunities for increased protection.
The potential for public lands as a climate solution though is broader than forests. Sixty percent of lands in the continental US are in, or could be restored to, a largely natural condition. The US ranks as one of the top five countries in the world for remaining wilderness-quality lands.
This potential sits against a backdrop of not just urgent crises, but also an increasing awareness of how important getting outside can be for people’s health and well-being. And of course, efforts by the Trump administration to enact policies that seek to rollback any environmental safeguards that might inconvenience industry. (See their latest efforts to open formerly protected public lands in Utah to drilling and logging, and an ongoing list of policy changes still in the works here.)
Uthans rally at the Utah State Capitol to protest public lands rollbacks. Photo provided by Utah Sierra Club.
Protecting 30% of U.S. lands and waters by 2030 will require immense political will, aggressive policymaking, and an energized grassroots movement. But the policies that need to be implemented are neither complicated nor entirely new. In fact, Stewart Udall’s son, Senator Tom Udall, and his colleague in the House, Representative Deb Haaland, have already introduced Congressional resolutions to get started. Udall’s legacy provides a starting point as we look to tap the conservation powers of federal, state, and local governments -- from the executive reach of the president to the zoning authorities of city councils -- to make 30% by 2030 reality.