NRDC Activist,

The Trump administration is barreling ahead with a spate of proposed public lands giveaways to the fossil fuel industry — and it's using the worst public health crisis in a century as cover.

As the COVID-19 pandemic rages on, the assault on our shared public lands is not getting the media coverage it deserves. The administration offered up more than 200,000 acres of cherished public lands for drilling and mining during the first month of the crisis alone, and they're even targeting lands near beloved national parks like Sequoia in California and Arches and Canyonlands in Utah.

These fire sales will destroy treasured lands and shackle us to even more climate-destroying fossil fuels for decades to come. They are also an attack on our health, especially for Black people, Indigenous people, and communities of color who often live closest to the places where the dirty fuels drilled and mined from public lands get processed and burned. We must fight back.

The very first step is to raise our voices against the wholesale destruction of our shared public lands. Will you join me right now in calling on Interior Secretary David Bernhardt to take immediate steps to close these national treasures to climate-destroying energy development?

These are just the latest in a long line of Trump administration attacks on our shared public lands over the last three years. NRDC is in court right now fighting to restore protections for Utah's Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments and they are preparing to go to court to stop the administration from selling off the pristine Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and advancing the disastrous Pebble Mine project.

The road to a greener future begins on public lands. Call on Secretary Bernhardt to put people before polluters by closing our shared public lands to this fossil fuel onslaught here and now.

Thank you for standing with us in defense of our health and environment at this challenging time.

Sincerely,

Robert Redford
Trustee, NRDC