If you’ve followed Senator Mike Lee for more than 5 minutes, his latest stunt won’t surprise you. The man has built an entire career out of trying to dismantle America’s public lands.
Selling them off didn’t work. Handing them to states didn’t work. Gutting their funding didn’t work. So now, he’s getting creative.
His newest masterpiece is called the Border Lands Conservation Act. It sounds nice, which is always how bad ideas start. The bill would rewrite parts of the Wilderness Act to allow roads, surveillance towers, motorized vehicles — and just about anything else the Department of Homeland Security wants to build within 100 miles of our northern and southern borders. That includes national forests, wildlife refuges, and designated wilderness.
In other words, if Mike Lee can bend “border security” into an excuse to bulldoze wilderness, consider his new personal theme song, Ice Ice Baby.
Security as a Scapegoat
Lee swears this is all about keeping cartels and illegal activity out of our protected areas. He says park rangers are too busy picking up trash to do their jobs. He says the Border Patrol’s hands are tied by environmental protections.
That’s nonsense. Homeland Security already has waiver authority to act when there’s a legitimate security threat. Agencies already cooperate across borders. Lee isn’t solving a problem. He’s manufacturing one to justify rewriting the most important conservation law in American history.
The Wilderness Act of 1964 was created to preserve lands “untrammeled by man.” Lee wants to trammel them with bulldozers, drones, and tactical infrastructure. It’s not about security. It’s about control.
Pattern of Destruction
This isn’t Lee’s first rodeo. He’s been swinging at the idea of federal land management for years. He’s proposed everything from selling off millions of acres to “transferring” management to state governments, moves that conservationists, sportsmen, and rural residents alike have shot down time and again.
When that didn’t work, he started dressing his attacks in softer language. He’s backed bills about “access,” “recreation,” and “multiple use.” Every one of them reads like an invitation for bulldozers and corporate developers. He’s a master at disguising land grabs as public service.
Now, with the border as his prop, he’s trying to sneak in what he’s wanted all along: a weakened Wilderness Act.
What’s Actually at Stake
Let’s talk about what happens if Lee’s bill passes. Wilderness loses its teeth. The quiet places that give wildlife sanctuary and humans a little humility turn into construction sites. Roads split migration corridors. Helicopters buzz overhead. The same spots where you glassed elk or camped in silence become zones of “tactical advantage.”
It won’t stop at the border. Once you carve a hole in the Wilderness Act, the precedent spreads. “If we can do it there, why not here?” That’s how sacred protections die: under the weight of political convenience.
And make no mistake, the 100-mile buffer zone isn’t just the border. In the north, that’s Glacier National Park, the Bob Marshall Wilderness, and parts of the Boundary Waters. In the south, it swallows desert ecosystems that can’t handle another tire track.
The Same Old Song
Mike Lee keeps recycling the same message: public lands are government overreach, wilderness is a waste, and only deregulation will save us. He’s wrong on all counts. Public lands are the backbone of rural economies, the lungs of wildlife habitat, and the last truly bipartisan value left in this country.
Hunters, anglers, and backpackers have all lined up against this bill. Conservation groups from Utah to Montana are calling it what it is: a backdoor attack on the Wilderness Act. Nobody is fooled, except maybe the people who want to be.
What You Can Do About It
This isn’t one of those times when we shrug and move on. This is the time to call your senators. Tell them to kill this thing in committee. Tell them wilderness isn’t negotiable.
Support organizations like Backcountry Hunters & Anglers, the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, and the groups fighting this nonsense head-on.
Lee has made it clear he’ll keep trying. So the rest of us need to make it just as clear that we’re not backing down.
Final Shot
Mike Lee doesn’t just dislike public lands. He despises them. He’s spent years trying to sell them, strip them, or rewrite them into meaninglessness. This latest “border” bill is only the newest excuse to bulldoze wilderness for ideology’s sake. And to all you residents of Utah: You have the power to vote this thorn out of our sides in 2029. DO IT.
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