Four acres every minute. Each day, 6000 acres. So for last year, more than two million acres, gobbled up by development, lost forever to parking lots and housing tracts and shopping malls.
In 2008, let us resolve to protect as a natural legacy at least that much land.
The great news is, unlike some New Year's resolutions we personally make, this one we can clearly get done. First, all the land we wish to hand down as a gift to future generations is publicly owned, and that give us much more sway in whether it should be protected than we have over private land. Second, pending right now in Congress are 20 bills to add very special places into the National Wilderness Preservation System, and the most viable bills, serendipitously enough, total almost two million acres.
The Campaign for America's Wilderness focuses on those bills. After five years, we have learned quite a bit about the approach that guarantees the most success. Five years ago, one million acres gained statutory protection. With your help, we believe we can garner twice that much next year. As wilderness great Aldo Leopold wrote, "We are not fighting progress. We are making it."
