Source: SFGate
“Republican Sen. Mike Lee is back with another bid to reshape America’s public lands — and this time, he’s framing it as a border security initiative. The Border Lands Conservation Act, introduced a day after the federal government shutdown began Oct. 1, is the latest in a long line of the Utah senator’s proposals to roll back federal land protections. On paper, the bill reads like an rescue plan — a response to what Lee called, in a news release, ‘environmental destruction on federal public lands as a result of the Biden Administration’s open-border policies.’ He says the bill will safeguard parks, forests, and wildlife refuges from trash, vehicle abandonment and wildfires supposedly linked to border crossings. If passed, the proposal would hand sweeping authority over millions of acres of federal wilderness to the Department of Homeland Security. (10/18/25)