In July (2025) the U.S. Congress passed (with only Republican votes) and the president signed and enacted the BIG federal budget bill—which amounts to “the most aggressive, sweeping attack on America’s environment and public lands in our nation’s history – and now it’s law.” Yet the dimensions and details of this atrocity has been barely reported or mentioned by the national news media, or for that matter the Democrat “opposition party” leadership.
 
Jim Pattiz in his “More Than Just Parks” July 11, 2025, online newsletter analysis condemned both the legislation and the inept media coverage and weak defense, saying that “every passage [in this legislation] that affects our public lands . . . would be bad on its own. Together it’s the most aggressive dismantling of public lands protection in American history.”
 
 In brief summary, according to Pattiz, the legislation:

• Mandates massive logging on public lands, with huge increases in required logging of forests – regardless of any protection status—on US Forest Service-managed national forests and Bureau of Land Management-managed lands. Required increases in logging every year by 250 million board feet on national forests and by 20 million board feet on BLM lands.  Regardless of being old-growth forest ecosystems and presently roadless wild areas, regardless of dangers of increased wildfires, regardless of designations of protected wildlife habitat or special natural areas.
• Extends timber cutting contracts from one to twenty years or more in duration.
• Rescinds 50-years-long prohibitions on timber cutting and road building in more than 150 million acres of federal lands that had been previously reserved as wild “roadless areas.”
• Silences public review and defunds environmental safeguards, with a short-term review period allowed to assess environmental impacts of proposed development and extraction. The legislation’s objective is to limit meaningful oversight and allow extractive industries to bulldoze and ignore public concerns while lawsuits die in the courts.
• Defunds endangered species defense and recovery, while funding their destruction. Driving many more species into extinction.
• Slashes federal funding for climate data collection, wildlife refuges, national parks management, communities’ and parks climate resilience projects. Thus it authorizes environmental destruction while defunding protection.
• Fast tracks leasing to industry without ability to study or review potentially harmful timber cuts or mining and gas leases.
• Eliminates to zero the century-long requirements on federal agencies to return revenues from timber cutting and resource extractions to local communities for public schools, roads, or other local needs. All timber cutting revenues now instead goes to the federal Treasury, and not even to the land management agencies. Consequently, communities where the increased logging operations occur will get no federal funding and more truck traffic, road damage, and environmental degradation.
• Mandatory oil, gas, and coal-mining leases on public lands with fast-track permitting time requirements and bargain-sale rates in many Western and Gulf coast states, with speculators enabled to lease huge swaths of land at rock-bottom prices.
• Cedes over four million acres of public lands immediately for coal-mining leasing (in some places allowing mining without even requiring leases) and cuts in half the federal royalty rates from coal mined on federal lands, thus starving federal and state budgets. Federal coal reserves are effectively privatized.
• Freezing most environmental safeguards at the weakest possible baselines and prohibiting federal agencies from specifying site-specific environmental protection restrictions, like for special wildlife habitats or buffer zones for streams and rivers.
• Rolls back royalties to “fire sale” $1.50 per acre return to federal funds and without competitive bidding requirement.
• Vastly expands oil and gas drilling in Alaska wilderness area.

 
Pattiz concludes, “how do you even begin to process the totality of this destruction?! . . . Why are they so hell-bent on turning America into a third-world country . . . to rip apart our own land, strip-mine our future, and sell off everything that makes this place worth living in, just to line the pockets of a handful of already wealthy men? . . . intent on dragging us back to a feudal society, where the wealthy do whatever they want and leave the rest of us to live in the wasteland they’ve created, fighting over the scraps they toss down to keep us quiet. This is America. We were the envy of the world. Today the world looks at us and sees a dumpster fire. A country willingly tearing itself apart. Trading its once bright future for someone else’s quarterly profits. And for what? So a handful of people who already have everything, while the rest of us lose everything that actually matters. . . . They want us quiet, tired, and resigned. Don’t give them that satisfaction.”

The Fight Is Not Over!    

​“. . . [W]hile I concede this election, I do not concede the fight that fuels this campaign, the fight for freedom, for opportunity, for fairness and the dignity of all people, a fight for the ideals at the heart of our nation, the ideals that reflect America at our best. That is a fight I will [and you should] never give up. . . .

[W]e will never give up the fight for our democracy, for the rule of law, for equal justice, and for the sacred idea that every one of us, no matter who we are or where we start out, has certain fundamental rights and freedoms that must be respected and upheld. . . . 

And we will continue to wage this fight in the voting booth, in the courts and in the public square, and we will also wage it in quieter ways, in how we live our lives, by treating one another with kindness and respect, by looking in the face of a stranger and seeing a neighbor, by always using our strength to lift people up to fight for the dignity that all people deserve. The fight for our freedom will take hard work. But like I always say, we like hard work; hard work is good work. Hard work can be joyful work. And the fight for our country is always worth it. It is always worth it. 

To the young people [I say] it is okay to feel sad and disappointed, but please know it’s going to be okay. On the campaign, I would often say, when we fight, we win. But here’s the thing, here’s the thing, sometimes the fight takes a while. That doesn’t mean we won’t win. That doesn’t mean we won’t win. The important thing is, don’t ever give up. Don’t ever give up. Don’t ever stop trying to make the world a better place. You have power. You have power, and don’t you ever listen when anyone tells you something is impossible because it has never been done before. 

You have the capacity to do extraordinary good in the world. . . . [D]o not despair. This is not a time to throw up our hands. This is a time to roll up our sleeves.

This is a time to organize, to mobilize and to stay engaged for the sake of freedom and justice and the future that we all know we can build together. . . . 

So let their [the young people’s] courage be our inspiration. Let their determination be our charge. 

And I’ll close with this, there’s an adage and historian once called a law of history, true of every society across the ages, the adage is, only when it is dark enough can you see the stars. I know many people feel like we are entering a dark time, but for the benefit of us all, I hope that is not the case. But here’s the thing, America, if it is, let us fill the sky with the light of a billion brilliant stars, the light of optimism, of faith, of truth and service. And may that work guide us, even in the face of setbacks toward the extraordinary promise of the United States of America. . . .”

I seldom make recommendations to friends and colleagues, but sometimes it is necessary to share an exceptional book, article, or video. Not long ago I “attended” the live, online presentation by Dr. Tom Fleischner, founding director (now retired) of the Natural History Institute based in Prescott, Arizona. I’ve recently become immersed in the institute’s programs and mission, and highly recommend that you too investigate its resources, including its online programs.
 
The 50-minute PRESENTATION by Tom Fleischner is in essence a summation of his life’s work to bring the “study” of natural history back to the attention of a larger portion of the public, because this “oldest continuous human endeavor” is, frankly, at its lowest point ever in the realm of human attention. Please watch/listen to this presentation on the importance of natural history (including the concluding Q & A dialogue). 
 
Natural history—a verb, not a noun—is the practice of falling in love with the natural world. It is about paying attention. Natural history integrates science, art, and the humanities (e.g., literature and storytelling). “We need to love this world! Loving the natural world matters,” says Fleischner. 
 
Natural history forms a basis for moral behavior. Quoting Aldo Leopold and his simple definition of a Land Ethic: “A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise. . . . We can be ethical only in relation to something we can see, feel, understand, or otherwise have faith in.”
 
Through attention to and immersion in nature, we develop kinship and a reciprocal relationship with the more-than-human world. Thus, the practice of natural history might promote healing for both ourselves and the world. Please listen and be moved by this lecture. Pass it on, and most important: let’s work to move others to discover or rediscover natural history.
                                                                                                              —Chuck Roe, President, Southern Conservation Partners​

We highly recommend watching this eight-minute video. Grasslands are a surprising part of the North Carolina Piedmont’s (and much of the Southeast's) ecological history. Learn how planting native grassland species in our yards and other open areas mimics historical landscapes while improving the soil and fighting our changing climate. This story is part of the Pulitzer Center’s Connected Coastlines reporting initiative and was produced by PBS-NC.

On ​September 6-8, 2022, Southern Conservation Partners teamed with the North Carolina Natural Heritage Program, North Carolina Botanical Garden, The Nature Conservancy, and others to co-sponsor a three-day forum on the Future of Conservation that brought together over 140 participants and key experts on biodiversity, changing climate resilience planning, environmental justice and inclusion from all over North Carolina for dialogue and to develop strategies to better understand and protect imperiled species and ecosystems. (View the PROGRAM here.)
  Below download slides from the introductory plenary presentation, titled Diversity, Resilience, Learning, Place, and Conservation, by Dr. Alan Weakley,  University of North Carolina Herbarium Director. 

​The first four months of President Biden’s administration have presented a watershed change in priorities, promising renewed emphasis on environmental protection, natural resources and land conservation, and mitigation of climate change consequences. We greet this news with renewed hope, even as evidence of the catastrophic consequences of climate change continues to mount.

​​The Washington Post is keeping a TALLY of the administration’s environmental actions. In four months, President Biden has begun to transform the nation’s energy and environmental landscape, according to the Washington Post’s analysis, by overturning 34 of former president Donald Trump’s policies and finalizing 21 of his own, as of this writing. From pausing new oil and gas leasing on public lands and waters to rejoining the Paris climate agreement, Biden has elevated the issue of climate change across the U.S. government and signaled a shift away from fossil fuels. In April he pledged that the United States would cut its greenhouse gas emissions between 50 and 52 percent by the end of the decade compared with 2005 levels—a commitment that will trigger major changes in the ways Americans live, work, and travel.​     

“I talked to the experts, and I see the potential for a more prosperous and equitable future. The signs are unmistakable. The science is undeniable,” Biden declared at the virtual climate summit he convened on Earth Day. “The United States isn’t waiting. We are resolving to take action.”       <continued . . .>