Patagonia CEO: Trump Shouldn’t Sell our Public Lands

Public lands have been described as America’s “best idea.” They are natural sanctuaries, sources of generational inspiration and for some, ancestral homelands. Every citizen has a right to experience them and a paired responsibility for their welfare and protection. So, recent news coming from Washington, D.C.—possible plans to sell off our public lands and the firing of the staff needed to protect and access them—has the outdoor sports community’s attention.

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We know that when we come together and push back, we can win. Indeed, following public outcry, Trump may be backtracking on the staffing cuts. However, the Trump Administration’s potential plans to liquidate public lands to fund his sovereign wealth fund still linger.

In 2017, more than 2.7 million people sent comments to President Donald Trump opposing his plans to shrink or modify 10 national monuments. However, Trump issued a proclamation that shrank Utah’s Bears Ears National Monument by 85% and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument by 50% anyway. 

Despite Trump claiming the change was meant to give the land back to the state and “free up” its use, it became evident that the dramatically reduced boundaries were drawn to provide easier access to uranium deposits. It also became clear that the Trump Administration lacked legal authority to unilaterally shrink the monuments in the first place.  

The Antiquities Act of 1906 gives a president power to create national monuments but not to rescind or reduce them. That power belongs to Congress. Patagonia joined a coalition of Indigenous and grassroots conservation groups in a lawsuit challenging the reduction of Bears Ears National Monument. In October 2021, then-President Joe Biden restored Bears Ears and Grand Staircase to their original boundaries.  

Today, however, the threats are even more dire, and the consequences more devastating. This Congress and the Trump administration are trying to make it easier to lease or sell 640 million acres of public lands, including America’s most iconic landscapes, and turn our back on the Indigenous and local groups that championed their protection. The government’s plans could revoke our access to hike, climb, camp, fish and hunt in the places we treasure. Small-business owners who rely on tourists would suffer from the drop in visitation. The entire surrounding communities would be affected by the economic shift and the pollution that would come when the drilling or mining starts. 

There is too much at stake to look away. 

As we have for decades before, Patagonia will mobilize our community and use our position as a business and supporter of grassroots conservation groups to protect public land and water regardless of who is in the White House. In the long run, all businesses stand to lose more than they gain from these policies due to their reckless disregard for planetary health.  

Our public lands and waters provide an opportunity to find connection with the natural world. They offer important nature-based climate solutions by acting as carbon sinks and sequesters. They protect significant cultural and archaeological areas and serve as refuges for the country’s biodiversity and wildlife. They also give us a way to disconnect, put down our screens and rekindle an ancient, uniquely human connection to nature we often cannot find in other places—which is all the more critical as technology touches nearly every facet of our lives. Selling off our public lands is a mistake and a con, to borrow a favorite phrase from the commander-in-chief, “the likes of which we have never seen before.”

Trump’s potential cuts to our public lands is not about reducing government waste. In fact, protection of public lands is grossly underfunded, as we’ve seen budgets for recreation and other land management programs cut year after year despite a steady rise in visitation. 

All land and water policy protections in place today are the result of the tireless work of dedicated, local communities, and it is unconscionable to declare all of it can be dismissed with just a signature from a politician. They are far more than “assets on a balance sheet” and should not be available for liquidation. It has never been more urgent than it is today that we as a society come together to defend them. Public lands are for the public—the millions of us citizens, not the billionaires.  

Polls have shown that Americans, regardless of political beliefs, want to protect nature. Whether it’s through the courts or calling members of Congress, our public lands need and deserve all the defense we can pull together.  

This is just the beginning of what may become the most ruinous four years in U.S. climate action and conservation history. The Trump Administration claims we are in an energy emergency even though the U.S. is the largest exporter of oil and natural gas in human history and oil and gas are reporting record profits.  

Consider this an open invitation to any business leader and citizen to take a stand with us. We saw in 2017 how powerful a coalition of passionate people and businesses could be. Together, as citizens, recreationists, conservationists, scientists, conservatives, liberals, businesses and activists, we can remind Congress that our public lands aren’t for sale.

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