Our friend Terry Tempest Williams, who spoke at a Conservation Alliance event in 2007, responded eloquently in a Los Angeles Times op-ed to the BLM's proposal to sell gas leases adjacent to Utah's spectacular National Parks. Her piece concludes:
"The last-minute land grab in Utah's spectacular desert must be seen for what it is: not a boon for business but a bankruptcy of the imagination. What is actually being sold is the soul of a nation, one public parcel at a time."
I strongly encourage you to click here for the full article.
On a related note, you may have heard that Tim DeChristopher, a college student in Salt Lake City, monkeywrenched the BLM gas lease auction by bidding on many leases that he never intended to pay for. His actions cost other bidders hundreds of thousands of dollars, and prevented 22,500 acres of public lands from being sold to energy development.
Click here to read DeChristopher's explanation of why he did what he did.