i grew up in nth alaba. we lived in an old log cabin. and all i wanted to do was be outside. we moved out to the west, and i remember these expanses of places where we were free to go rock climbing,

free to go hunting and fishing and camping. and nobody could call the sheriff on you. the idea of public land wasn't really in our vocabulary. but the scale of the freedom, we understood that. so, having spent the rest of my life and raised my family on public lands, there is a very personal blood stake in this game for me. my people have lived and survived off these lands for thousands of years. we are spiritually and culturally connected to this land.

and there's a lot more people waking up now. we're taking a stand and we're taking back our home. so... ready for the fight, because we're not gonna give up. the game is rigged against the people who depend on public land. if the case can't be made to protect this place, how can you expect to protect anything? it's a unique moment in this country's history... and this is really a story about coming together and reconciling differences for the sake of the landscape

and the people. was in my 30s before i ever heard that there were people who wanted to take those lands away from the american people and from me. the largest rollback of federal land protection in u.s. history. ...over public lands that are rich with both rare artefacts... ...public lands across the u.s. to mining and development... it's a sad day, it's a sad day... and as a journalt, for over 20 years now... i've come to understand what's actually happening. the serious issue of following the money... ...close ties to fossil fuel interests and the koch brothers. the plan would open more than a million acres to oil and gas exploration. ...plan to completely take over american energy. american energy dominance. but what'st stake is this enormous common wealth.

the american system of public lands. i think about that john jeavons quote. "man, despite his artistic pretensions, his sophistication and many accomplishments, owes the entire fact of his existence to a six-inch layer of topsoil and the fact that it rains." here's why i'm predicting a 2020 boom. when i saw yesterday how the press was reporting the same damn story... this is actually what i started out doing. i published in s.w.a.t. for gun stuff. "cure or curse? as chronic waste and disease appears again,

questions arise about the velvet antler trade." that one caused so much trouble, you couldn't even believe it. this is the economist story on the private lands conservation in mexico. i was still doing stringing for the economist. i think it was probably around like 1999. i was living in the bitterroot valley of montana, reporting on public lands and public lands issues and conflicts. and i me across this study, and it was called "how and why to privatize all federal lands now." and it was from perc, which at the time was political economy research center in bozeman. they had backing from very powerful interests. the koch brothers, coal, oil and gas. and what terry anderson did for me in writing this was to declare, once and for all, that the american public lands

was absolutely in the crosshairs of the wealthiest people in the worldas soon as they knew about them. hello, this is hal. and you follow that, and it just gets wilder and more improbable. i mean, like i said, i ain't the king of clout or nothin', but goddamn. thpreponderance of the evidence that i have discovered... there's an enormous well-heeled movement to take lands away from the american people to make vast sums of money for somebody and change our country forever. there are people in america who are ready to divest the public lands and enter whatever that uncertain future is. and all i want people to know is, before you enter that uncertain future, let's take a good look at what we have, how we got it, and what's at stake.

when most people think of public lands, they usually think of national parks. but the vast majority of the public lands are not in parks. they're national forests. grasslands. wildlife refuges. and many, many others. the public lands are really a uniquely american experiment. every one of us in every state, in every county, has used the public lands. a ball field, a park, a trail. biking, fishing, and hunting. climbing and skiing. and all the things we do on public lands. the american public lands comprise about 640 million acres, owned by the american people and managed in trust by the federal government.

a hodgepodge of federal agencies are tasked with managing the public lands for multiple use, which means recreation, consvation, climate change, resilience. on the other side of the line you have oil and gas development, logging, grazing and mining. the probleis that there's a very precarious balance to strike between industry and the common good. because of the great wealth in our public lands, that balance is never gonna be fixed. it's always gonna be in flux. it's like, like having all this is like totally unique in the world. why did i think that people weren't targeting this, given that it was probably the greatest cash cow left on the planet, you know? when you think about our western states, where the majority of our public lands are, you have states like utah,

where two-thirds belong to the federal government. specifically within san juan county, you gin to see what ignite the fire of resentnt. we're following some major stories this morning, major stories th have had developments all morning. over the weekend, thousands of proteors gathered... we've seen a coalition of indigenous people. they're concerned about the protection of sacred land. holding a potential fortune in oil, gas and uranium. let me show you the epicenter of what is the biggest fight of the day. those are the bears ears. who did this art? well, as i was saying before... that petroglyph right there, that whole rock art piece, is the wolfman panel. - which one? - right there. oh, that man, gotcha, that guy. i didn't see that. yeah. ah. but again we're talking about this from a euro-western american view, right?

them ning it wfman panel. probably have no idea what this place really is. - yeah. - which is fine for me. you know, bears ears is filled. like, thousands upon thousands of ancient sites and beautil rock art that are literally our... kind of library of congress, if you will, on the wall. inside bears ears, there's probably like 200,000 different sites. you can't go anywhere in this landscape in any direction without running into something. - that's owl canyon right here, right? - yeah. a lot of the ute folks still go down there and hunt. when i was a kid, i grew up just wandering around in the canyons. hunted with my uncles.

exploring all the different ancestral sites. when i'm out there on the landscape, my relatives, my ancestors... they're here. feel it in my body, feel it in my mind, in my spirit. and they're always with me. astounding. you wanted to see the uranium mines, too, correct? yeah. so, you know, uranium in general, the area's been pretty controversial. that's definitely what we've been hearing. the mine is right in front of me. gotcha. before these were public lands, they were native lands. and i think it's really important to remember that. and public lands have many meanings to many people.

but right now the understory of bears ears is uranium. the understory of bears ears is oil and gas. we've had a long legacy of oil, gas and uranium extraction in these areas. dried up springs and the contaminated water. you can just see like how the landscape is just decimated and scarred. it's really just been take, take, take and run. i believe we are in a climate where, if we do it right, the lands in our state could be revenue productive. we are joined today by leaders in business... whenou start connecting t dots, you see ut politicians opening the doors to industry without any regulations, wiout listening to native people. this is team utah, this is what team utah looks like, and as we move forward...

people will say, "oh, the public land belongs to all the people." if it belongs to all the people, i'd like them to tell me which part is mine 'cause i wanna sell it. they'd drill in a cemetery if there was oil there. it's as if there were oil and gas under notre dame and somebody chose to make the money fromhat oil and gas rather than preserving the cathedral. there are battles raging all over the country wherever there's public land. i take great offense, sir... it's all happening in plain sight. it's at county commissioners' meetings, it's in the halls of congress, it's in your local newspaper. and most of us don't really see it. you go down the thompson divide roadless area in colorado. they've been fighting over that for 20 years. uranium leasing around the grand canyon. goldmining right outside of yellowstone national park. the absolute destruction of everglades national park

due to industrial agriculture upstream. these are also some of the last untouched and functioning ecosystems in the world. what's been clear from the beginning is that, if there is a valuable resource of any sort on public land, there's gonna be a conflict. i'm spencer shaver. i'm a sixth-generation minnesotan. for the better part of my career, since graduating college, i've been trying to protect the boundary waters. i will shoot him an email now with all these questions. thanks a lot. appreciate it. - thank you. bye-bye. - yep. the boundary waters is a federally protected wilderness

in northeastern minnesota. it's 1.1 million acres of lakes, rivers, streams. it's a huge part of our identity. people like me, we don't own things. we go to places where it's been set aside and the resource has been protected. you know, it's like our little secret garden. but it's not at all secret. a hundred and forty thousand jobs in minnesota are outdoor industry jobs, right? it's a huge regional economy, dependent on the boundary waters. the boundary waters has been protected in various ways for, it's been almost a hundred years. originally, people came here to work at the taconite mines. the iron range was crucial to the war effort in world war ii.

back in the late '70s, early '80s, it was the primary producer of iron ore for the steel industry in this country. and that's really changed. today, we have a viable, outdoor, amenity-based economy because of the boundary waters. about four or five years ago, a mining company, twin metals minnesota, started buying up mineral leases from public land. so you can see here, like the red, these little red blocks, those represent mineral leases, so it's two of them. the spruce road deposit is right next to the edge of boundary water canoe area wilderness. they're looking develop an industrial-scale copper mine on the edge of the boundary waters. this type of mine has never been proven to be successful

in a water-based environment or a wet region. copper-nickel, it has a significant component of sulphur in the rock. when you expose the sulphide to air and water, that turns into sulphuric acid, which is a really potent toxin. so the concern obviously is that if any dam breaks, i mean, anything that can happen with the mine is going to have a major impact on downstream water. twin metals is a subsidiary of a larger chilean mining company called antofagasta. a foreign corporate mining conglomerate. mining company promises between 400 and 650 fulltime jobs. there are 17,000 boundary waters jobs directly depend on the boundary waters, right? the chilean company that wants to build this mine isn't doing it to create economic growth in northeastern minnesota.

they're doing it to get as much mineral wealth as they can and take it out. in amongst the people that you know here who are big proponents of the mine, are any of them concerned that a chilean company wouldn't necessarily have the best interests of ely, minnesota at heart? - no. - has that ever come up? i've tried bringing it up and they don't care. because to them, this is foreign investment coming into the community. like, to them it doesn't really matter who owns it, it's the fact that a mine's gonna be open and they're all gung-ho for it. there was one of these copper mines in 2014 in british columbia called the mount polley mine. and one of the retention ponds where they store all this waste water burst. this is the polley mine disaster in the headwaters of the fraser river. one of the major salmon producing rivers of the planet.

the same company that designed the dam that failed here has been engaged to do the tailings on the copper mine in minnesota at the boundary waters. mining company went bankrupt. and they left the taxpayers on the hook to pay for the cleanup, right? anit cost them $40 million, and theining company paid nothing. how we got all our public lands mixed up in all of this, i'm still working on that one. in american history, we were very reckless with the environment. in the early 20th century,

we were wreaking havoc on the continent. deforestation. poisoned waters, unsanitaryonditions. then the dust bowl. wead environmental disaster. nothing grew. beginninin about 1932-'33, people were not happy with the ck of regulation about these lands. and they really began to see the necessity of maintaining and protecting the public lands. people said, "we've got to save what remains of our wilderness and through the years, every president or politician got measured on, "what's your record on conservation?" i tend to shock people when i ask them, "do you know w created the epa anendangered species and clean air and water"? we c no longer afford to consider air and water comm property,

free to be abused by anyone without regard to the consequences. the public in the '60s and '70s demanded that our public lands be protected. they used to say, "public lands is bipartisan. it doesn't belong to a party, it's about americanism." but at the time, oil and gas and mining was still largely unregulated. after world war ii, they created the bureau of land management. 1963, wilderness act. increase the beauty of america. 1970, the clean air act. ...enforcing these strict standards. '72, thelean water act. ...deal with water pollution. '74, the endangered species act. and in 1976, ey created the federal land policy and management act,

or, as it's called in the deral government, flpma. and flpma was to allow the multiple use on public lands. the act directs the bureau to administer the public lands for the benefit of all americans. so, yes,ou can have mining, yes, you can have oil and gas exploration, cattle grazing, but under a certain federal standard. so now all of the sudden, there are all these restrictio on cattle grazing on public lands. so farmers and ranchers were quite upset. ranchers are complaining that the bureau of land management, blm, doesn't identify with ranching problems. what we think of as the sagebrush rebellion began in 1976. there were genuine cattlemen who had a lot of anger over management of public lands. as the sagebrush rebellion progressed, there was kind of a evolution of ts anger

into political theater. the rebellion floundered until last summer, when ronald reagan pledged his support during the campaign. i don't know about you, but i happen to be one who cheers on and supports the sageush rebellion. reagan, as one of his first acts, appointed a guy named james watt. you brought a certain constituency to your office as secretary... oh, sure. i brought the american people in and i made people part of the environntal equation. we've got to p america first, create american jobs. watt believethat the bible, if not god, had told him that the land was to be drilled and blasted in god's name. james watt thought all conservationists were pagan. that it became more of a religious divide as well as a polical divide. the reagan administration used the sagebrush rebellion

to turn the people against the federal government. ...an agency in washington can tell you exactly what you can or can't do with your land in the name of environmentalism, which is the greatest threat in 200 years. and people embraced it with incredible fervor. it's the bureaucrats forcing regulations down on us. we're not gonna back down, we're not gonna go away, and we will win this battle. well, it turned out the sagebrush rebellion, including the pitchforks which they all used to wave on television, was bought and paid for by the big extractive companies. the sagebrush rebellion became a facade for other interests working behind the scenes to gn accesso the reurces on pubc land. at the same time, there was this massive rush by the oil and gas companies to open public lands.

interior secretary james watt allowed the land to be leased at "fire sale" prices. the low prices allowed coal companies to make windfall profits. and that rush continued all over the country. millions of acres of public lands, probably 70% of the potential oil in the united states, is probably hidden in those lands. this is particularly true of part of alaska. in the frozen tundra of alaska, the largest oil field in north america is suddenly discoved in the deadhorse area outside prudhoe bay. and the state of alaska is suddenly super rich. since the first discovery of oil, prudhoe bay has been the scene of an ongoing adventure. alaska became a company town.

around the time that oil came in is when don young was elected. thank you. and then frank murkowski was elected in 1980 during the reagan revolution. there are strange things done 'neath the mnight sun by the men who moil for gold. together, they fought these land battles, which were part of the new oil perspective. because of money coming from oil development, the come tax w repealed in alaska and the state sends you money in t mail. so that was the successful strategy by the development crowd. because today alaska is hungry for oil money like a heroin addict needs a hit. all the great stuff you've gotten from prudhoe bay, this 40 years of gravy train, we're gonna get you another one.

the arctic national wildlife refuge is sacred lands to the gwich'in. known to my people as... the sacred place where life begin and makes me proud to know that this is one of our last untouched ecosystems in the world. over the years, 19 million acres has been set aside, which is the size of south carolina... for one enormous ecosystem called the arctic national wildlife refuge, or what's known as anwr.

when you go there, you feel the beginning of creation. what it was like a million years ago on planet earth. it's our serengeti. and the seation of being there just once lives within you eternally. it's home to the porcupine caribou herd. this remarkable migration that happens every yea across thousands of miles. some of the last, best wild lands that we have left on the planet. for over 30 years, they've been trying to open the arctic refuge

for oil and gas development in t calving grounds of the porcupine caribou herd. the gwich'in steering committee was founded in 1988 by the elders and chiefs of the gwich'in nation. this is our traditional chief, trimble gilbert. and our mission is to protect the porcupine caribou herd from oil and gas development. "...mr. president, from our front door to yours." this is lorraine and i at the white house. we're not asking for money or schools or offices, like we'reust asking to continue to keep our identity. for over 40,000 years, we migrated with the porcupine caribou herd. all our songs, all our stories, all our dances are directed to them.

the porcupine caribou herd is 80% of our food diet. the primary source of food is just what we can get on the land. yeah. that's how we survive. you know, if you take a look at the boundaries of the gwich'in nation, our boundaries are very, very similar, almost exactly the same, as the porcupine caribou herd, and so it's a life-giving herd and it gives life to the gwich'in people. so the most important part is the calving grounds. up here, right on the coas and that's where they want to drill. so the whole refuge is 19 million acres, with this 1002 area that's a critical habitat for the porcupine caribou herd. that's got the highest potential for oil and that's been the political football that's bounced back d forth for all the decades since. this area consists of a million and a half acres. we're begging to access a small fraction. it's like the hair on your head. you pull one hair, you're not gonna miss it.