Why Public Lands Need Protection More Than Ever

Land can mean many things. For some, owning it brings status and power. For others, it represents freedom. Whatever it means to you, our protected lands and waters belong to all Americans. They are our shared inheritance—something we choose to safeguard together. That is why the fight to protect them has always been about more than just the scenery.

For generations, Americans have come together to defend the mountains, forests, rivers, deserts, and coastlines that help shape our identity as a people. We have preserved wilderness areas, blocked mines, created national monuments, and kept sacred places safe.

But now, these shared spaces are on the line.

The Trump administration has made its intentions clear. Trump’s allies in Congress, like Utah Republican Senator Mike Lee, are trying to sell off public lands, shrink national monuments, and roll back hard-won protections. They tried to give it away—to the fossil fuel oligarchs funding their campaigns, to mining companies, to corporate developers—in the push to pass Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill, but they failed. Why? Because protected lands are beloved by Americans of all political stripes—Democrats, Republicans, and independents alike.

Across the nation, including 11 western states, Sierra Club members joined in the fight to preserve our public lands. Organizing rallies, visiting local and federal legislators, making calls, sending postcards and emails, writing op-eds, sharing social media messages, and holding signs at protests—people took action. They sent a strong message to legislators: Say no to the sale of public lands. These actions showed once again what people power, and the power of partnership, are capable of achieving.

This is not just about policy. This is about values. It’s about centering our communities and the issues they care about as we build a strong movement together.

Public lands are not just pretty landscapes. They are proof that we can choose shared benefits over private greed. They are evidence of what democracy can do when it puts the public good and the well-being of future generations first.

Ask someone in Michigan if they want Line 5 pumping oil under the Great Lakes, or someone in Utah if they think uranium mines belong near sacred sites. Ask anyone who hikes, camps, or hunts whether the protected wild places they enjoy matter to them. And these lands are not just for recreation. They are repositories of history too.

The Sierra Club’s Outdoors for All campaign is lifting up the stories embedded in our public lands: the Underground Railroad routes that led people to freedom; the homesteads of Black farmers who persevered through discrimination; the trails where Latino and Filipino laborers marched for justice; the parks built when the New Deal put people to work and reshaped our nation. These stories need to be honored.

The Trump administration is attacking the historical interpretation of these sites. It wants to erase references to racism, slavery, and civil rights. That is not patriotism. It is revisionism. It is whitewashing.

This fall, I encourage you to go outside. Visit a park. See the sandstone cliffs at Zion or the sprawling acres of colorful autumn foliage at Shenandoah. Take your family to a national monument. Learn something you did not know. Ask whose ancestral land you are standing on. Connect with the beauty of the earth and the complexity of our history. And commit to protecting both.

The Sierra Club will keep fighting. We will organize to defend every acre under threat and lift up Indigenous and frontline voices. We will never relent in our fight to stop the pipelines, the drilling, the mines, and the lies. Because these lands are not for sale. They belong to all of us.

And the only way we lose them is if we forget that truth.

We the people are stronger together. Through collective action and building a strong grassroots movement, we can make change.