If we fail to secure our statehood rights to the transfer of the public lands, it will not be because it is illegal, unconstitutional, or impossible.  If we fail to enforce this "solemn compact" of statehood, it will be because our leaders lack the knowledge or the courage to do what has already been done before.  

We Can't Afford Not To!

There has never been a more critical time for western communities and the nation to capitalize on the more than $150 trillion in mineral value (Institute for Energy Research) including "more recoverable oil than the rest of the world combined" (US GAO), locked up in federally controlled lands.  Failed federal no-harvest policies are destroying forests, endangering human life, devastating and devaluing private property, taking critical revenue out of schools and local communities, killing millions of animals, damaging air quality, and decimating vital western watershed for decades.  Because of the inordinate fuel load languishing in our forests, the FBI is now warning "Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula Encourages the Use of Wildfires as a Form of Jihad." An economic study recently presented to the Nevada Public Lands Management Task Force concludes that public land under state management generates on average positive net revenue of $6.29 an acre, while public land under federal management produces on average a net loss of $1.86 an acre.

The Only Solution Big Enough Requires Courage

As the courageous Thomas Hart Benton admonished, "...the members in Congress from the new States should not intermit their exertions, nor vary their policy; and should fix their eyes steadily upon the period of the speedy extinction of the federal title to all the lands within the limits of their respective States ..."

The only solution big enough to (1) fund education, (2) better care for our lands and forests, (3) protect access, (4) create jobs, and (5) grow local, state, and national economies and tax base is within our reach.  We simply have to band together and "do battle" to compel Congress through political persuasion, and litigation as necessary, to honor the same statehood promise to transfer title to the public lands.

Who will lead the charge in your state?  How will we lend them our courage and support?  If we don't, we will answer to our children, future generations of our states, and to our nation as a whole that we failed, not because it was illegal, unconstitutional, or impossible, but because we, and our leaders, simply lacked the knowledge and the courage.