Only in hindsight does the protection of a place seem obvious

PHOTO COURTESY OF GEORGE WUERTHNER
 

A vast majority of LandWatch's work centers around Oregon's state wide land use planning system, but the importance of preserving public lands on a national level is not lost on us.

Bend resident George Wuerthner's recent article in Sierra echoes a sentiment that we in the conservation community know all too well: "Only in hindsight does the protection of a place seem obvious; in the moment, any decision to guard the earth from our immediate needs takes some measure of courage." 

In "Some People Have Always Hated National Monuments—Until They Love Them," Wuerthner points out that many of our most beloved monuments had fraught beginnings where politicians argued that the economic benefit of logging, mining and drilling outweighed the intrinsic value of public land. Decades later, those same monuments provide not only abundant economic value, but they enrich our identities as Americans. Read Wuerthner's article here.