I'm writing to you about our national parks, national monuments, and the boundary waters.
Our unspoiled wilderness is a majestic and sacred heritage.
It makes America great.
I am appalled at recent EOs to slash employment at national parks and permit logging.
The national parks make a profit. There is ZERO cost-saving benefit from making them less available and less well cared for.
As we have seen, the courts continue to find DOGE firings and cuts illegal.
Let me remind you of some facts:
• For the roughly $2.9 billion in the annual federal budget, our national parks generate $55.6 billion to the economy.
• Our National Parks System offers life changing experiences for an annual pass of $80.
• The NPS is our most popular federal agency, viewed favorably by 3 out of 4
Americans, and unfavorably by just 7%.
• NPS had 331 million visitors last year, a record. Put another way, the equivalent of the entire US population visited a national park in a single year.
It aint broke, don't let DOGE wreck it or turn the majestic lands into private profit money spinners for a few oligarchs.
Please use all the tools and mechanisms available to you to preserve and defend our national parks and to retain the staff and protect all species.
Tools available should include oversight and subpoenas, amicus briefs and criminal and civil referrals. Remember that judges continue to find DOGE cuts and firings illegal.
I also ask you to support Senator Tina Smith's bill to protect the boundary waters.
In addition, I ask you to vote NO on HR 978. This bill would have catastrophic effects on one of the most precious areas of America's wilderness, the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. HR 978 doesn't just undo the 20 year ban on mining in the BWCA watershed and give Twin Metals their leases to undertake toxic copper mining. It also prohibits judicial review: a poison pill.
Please vote YES for H.R. 588 (IH) - Boundary Waters Wilderness Protectionand Pollution Prevention Act
This act will provide for the protection of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness and interconnected Federal lands and waters, including Voyageurs National Park, within the Rainy River Watershed in the State of Minnesota.
History will remember what you did while our rights, the rule of law, the constitution, our alliances, and our national parks and monuments, were under threat. Do not be remembered as the ones who allowed this precious heritage to be ruined on your watch.
First sent on May 2 by Mary
