Heinrich’s drop into rhetorical attacks is misplaced, and the result is an attempt to fear monger people into believing that those of us who want to engage in real, on-the-ground conservation and local management of public lands are trying to steal them away from the public. Nothing could be further from the truth.

True-blue conservation is not done by those sitting at desks in Santa Fe or in Washington, D.C. It is not done by government bureaucrats in federal agencies making one-size-fits-all decisions based upon environmental rhetoric. No, true-blue conservation is done by the people who live on the land. It is done by ranchers, loggers, hunters, farmers, fishermen, etc. It is done by people who make their living actively caring for the land. True-blue conservationists, like Roosevelt, know that when you use the land in a responsible manner, it thrives. It will be there tomorrow to provide for us. They know it will be there for generations to come.

In contrast, the green movement or environmentalism is based upon the premise that the only way protect the environment is to exclude people from the lands. That movement represents the single greatest threat to the preservation of our Western landscapes, the wildlife and the people whose customs and culture depend on healthy landscapes.

A great example is the environmental push to end logging by abusing the Endangered Species Act under the guise of protecting the Mexican spotted owl. Twenty-plus years ago, environmentalists like or including Sen. Heinrich pushed to end logging under the guise of saving the spotted owl.

It turns out that logging wasn’t the greatest threat to the continued existence of the owl. Now, the federal government admits that the greatest threat to the owl is catastrophic wildfire — the kind of catastrophic wildfire that is created when you don’t actively manage the forest with cutting and thinning and prescribed fire. The greatest threat to the continued existence of the endangered spotted owl is environmentalism that has caused our forests to be overgrown and has devastated rural communities and our watersheds.

That is what the debate is about in the West. Moving federal lands to state control is not a land grab. It is a discussion about this idea: Instead of managing public lands based upon environmental rhetoric from Washington, D.C., we actually engage in local and state management of public lands. We base our management upon the knowledge of those living on the land and more closely tied to the issues. The destruction of our forests and the Mexican spotted owl is no shock to communities that have existed on the land for hundreds of years.

This debate is not about taking the land away from the public, it is about caring for the land through active conservation for the benefit of the public. This debate is about realizing that the green religion of Sen. Heinrich is destroying our public lands.

We need real on-the-ground, locally driven conservation so that future generations of Americans and our wildlife can actually enjoy healthy Western landscapes instead of devastated moonscapes after catastrophic wildfires.

Aubrey Dunn was the Republican candidate for state Land Commissioner, apparently winning a close race against incumbent Ray Powell.

This article was originally printed in the Santa Fe New Mexican.