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About 640 million acres of land in the United States — permanent wilderness, national parks, national wildlife refuges and other protected areas — belong not to the states or to individuals, but to Americans as a whole through ownership by the federal government. The land is ours to conserve, protect, enjoy and, in some instances, to lease for oil drilling, mining, ranching and other commercial uses.

In this election season, it will come as no surprise that Republicans and Democrats are split on how public lands should be managed. In brief, the Republicans want the states to take over much of the job – which defeats the purpose of federal land. Democrats want to build on current conservation policies and protection efforts.

The Republican party platform calls for turning “certain federally controlled” areas over to the states to develop for revenue, as long as they keep some of the land open to the public for “recreational shooting” and other “appropriate activities.” The platform also calls for stripping the president of legal powers, granted by Congress in 1906, to unilaterally set aside natural areas as federally protected national monuments.

The lands most in danger of exploitation under the Republican plan would probably be the nearly 250 million acres overseen by the Bureau of Land Management that currently allow for some commercial use. But the platform gives no assurance that state control and commercial development would be limited to those areas.

The stated rationale for the transfers is that “residents of state and local communities know best how to protect the land where they work and live.” Think about that and raise your hand if you think national parks, national monuments and other protected areas would exist today if not for federal laws and executive authority.

The Democratic platform pledges to “help expand local, state and national recreational opportunities, rehabilitate existing parks, and enhance America’s great outdoors – from our forests and coasts to neighborhood parks.” The aim of the effort, according to the platform, is to ensure that public lands are “held in trust for future generations,” for all Americans to “access and enjoy.”

The Democrats also give a nod to commercial development – calling for the “collaborative stewardship” of public lands and noting the lands’ immense economic potential. But those calls are made in tandem with, not in place of, conservation efforts. The platform opposes oil drilling in the Arctic and off the Atlantic coast and pledges to gradually reduce the extraction of fossil fuels from public lands, while expanding the production of renewable energy “from wind in Wyoming to solar in Nevada.” It opposes efforts to weaken the Endangered Species Act and supports federal efforts under the Clean Water Act to protect Alaska’s salmon fisheries from mining.

When it comes to public lands, today’s Democrats are better conservatives than today’s Republicans who, on this issue as on so many others, put profits ahead of the public interest and, in the process, deny and demean what their party once stood for.