Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

LETTER TO THE EDITOR:

Keep public land in public’s hands

Jennie Scherbinski, who wrote the Jan. 9 guest column “Nevadans deserve a fair return on public land leases,” is absolutely right: Reforms to the outdated federal oil and gas leasing program are common sense.

Nevada has few to no oil and gas reserves, meaning that the practice of speculative leasing, by which oil and gas CEOs can scoop up parcels of public land for mere pennies on the dollar, is harmful both to Nevada’s taxpayers and to our public lands.

Until the Department of the Interior makes long-overdue changes to the broken federal oil and gas leasing program, oil and gas companies will continue to take advantage of the status quo at the expense of all else. Nevada’s wildlife and communities deserve better.

Our public land shouldn’t be subject to speculative and noncompetitive leasing practices that offer no returns for Nevada’s taxpayers. The Department of the Interior and Congress must act quickly to reform the leasing program, as they recently recommended in a report at the end of last year, to ensure that our outdoors are prioritized for recreation and wildlife protections that benefit all Nevadans and visitors, not just oil and gas CEOs.

The writer is an organizing representative for the Sierra Club.