On October 28, President Biden announced the framework for the Build Back Better Act. In response to the confirmation, Hispanic Access Foundation’s President and CEO Maite Arce released the following statement:

On October 20th, 2021, National organizations unite to launch a new ethnically and racially diverse coalition as a stakeholder in the National Monument narrative.

The Silver State is made up of thousands of acres of beautiful landscapes. From sandy deserts, forested mountain slopes, snow covered mountains, grassy valleys, Nevada has a lot to offer in terms of natural beauty and outdoor recreation. Until now, I haven’t had much of an opportunity to explore the landscapes beyond my hometown of Henderson, a small city in the shadows of Las Vegas. However, the recent trips I’ve taken, like fishing at Lake Mead and touring caves at the Great Basin National Park, have left me in awe of the amount of outdoor recreation opportunities that Nevada has to offer.

If you are a Nevadan, like me, and have never been to Great Basin National Park, you are missing out on one of our state’s most iconic landscapes. More than just the park itself, the public lands and scenery around the park made me promise my family and friends that this is the first of many trips to the Great Basin area. Last month we took a trip with my church, Centro de Adoración Familiar — CAF — and for most of us this was our first time visiting the park. Not only did we admire this beauty on our visit, but we learned to understand more concretely how important it is to protect this divine landscape and how we must be the stewards of these places as God intended us to be.

When I got back home from my trip to Great Basin, I did a bit more research about the area, where I can take my community to fish and camp on future trips, and also how to better steward these lands. I came to realize that the Bureau of Land Management is leasing places all around the national park to oil and gas companies for single-digit dollar amounts. What’s worse is that they are being leased for next to nothing because they are considered “non-competitive terrain.” This means these lands have very little to no potential for actual oil and gas development, and taxpayers don’t even get a return on royalties for leasing out our public lands to these companies.

I wholeheartedly believe that our public lands are worth so much more than what the BLM is leasing them for. On my trip back to Henderson from visiting Great Basin, we stopped in a little town for lunch. This was the only town for miles and there were visitors both heading up to recreate and spend time with family, as there were people heading home from an exciting trip out hunting, hiking, or camping with their loved ones. Looking back on this pit-stop, I realize that if the BLM continues to lease these places to companies, it is small town restaurants like these and communities that depend on tourism and visitors of these places who will ultimately suffer.

Nevada’s public lands, communities and wildlife are currently facing an unprecedented threat as the current administration continues to accelerate oil and gas leasing throughout the state, including on lands where there is little drilling potential. Lands which harbor sensitive wildlife, water, and scenic resources. On Dec. 17, the Bureau of Land Management held an oil and gas lease sale that put over 268,000 acres of public land in Nevada at risk, including areas on the doorstep of Great Basin National Park. This sale was the fourth lease sale that was held by the Department of the Interior in just the last four months of the year. Leasing this land for development can not only limit the access the public has, but it can also harm the wildlife in the area and the local economies that benefit from outdoor recreation like camping and hunting. And, it was only because of the outspoken opposition of local officials, as well as Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, Rep. Steven Horsford, and Gov. Steve Sisolak, that BLM withdrew leases from this sale that were within the drinking water supply area of Mesquite.

We were constantly taken aback by the beauty in our state — we even pulled over a few times on our drive back to Vegas to take in the setting sun over the mountains. After visiting this unique place and learning about wildlife and indigenous history that make it so special, it has never been clearer to me that these spaces need to be protected. This experience opened my eyes to my responsibility as a steward of these public lands to advocate for their protection. In order to protect the wildlife and local communities and to preserve the diverse landscapes of Nevada, we must raise our voices to urge Congress to protect these public lands and keep them in public hands. We also thank the members of our congressional delegation who have recognized the threat that the administration’s leasing efforts pose to our wildlife, recreation, and water resources, and encourage them to move forward with reforms that will avoid these conflicts in the future.

We must set stronger limits and boundaries on the Bureau of Land Management’s oil and gas lease sales, and we must do so before we see more of Nevada’s public lands leased for drilling.

Andres Almanza is the director of Outreach Operations/Events for Centro de Adoración Familiar church.

In 2019 alone, the Bureau of Land Management leased an astronomical number of public lands to oil and gas developers, a large number of which have no- or very low- potential for yielding oil and gas royalties back into the taxpayers’ pockets.

The Land and Water Conservation Fund — a government program that has been instrumental in providing Latino and other diverse communities with access to the outdoors — may receive its highest appropriation in 17 years next year, but Congress failed to make permanent dedicated funding a reality this year.

We are in an age of transition, with new technology evolving at an accelerating rate. It seems that every day we are adapting to a new world. With every new adaptation, we are leaving a way of life behind, changing our lifestyle and culture. As we push forward it is easy to overlook what is being forgotten. It is important to take time to preserve certain traditions and values before the history, importance, and stories are lost to memory.

Nevadans, as well as our state’s sportsmen and women, are getting a raw deal when it comes to speculative oil and gas leasing on public lands.

New Mexico is a state with abundant natural resources, but, unfortunately, our water supplies are in short supply. That’s why we need to work collaboratively to ensure that we can sustain future generations of our communities, families and businesses on the land we share.

When I think about the places I have lived and loved most in my life, they have always been near the ocean. When I was a child, my family lived on the shores of El Sauzal, Baja California, a small settlement for fishermen and their families near el Valle de Guadalupe. Growing up in this beautiful town I called home, my family primarily lived off of food from the sea.

I recently had the opportunity to join Hispanic Access Foundation on a trip to Petrified Forest National Park — my first visit to this breathtaking corner of Arizona.