Don’t (further) restrict public land in Iowa

The legislation SF 516 to curb public lands is wrong. In 1937, Iowa led the nation in establishing state parks. Today, they total a square roughly nine miles on a side if placed all together. Almost all can be walked in an hour and are losing biological diversity as usage and development for recreation continues to climb. Public land in Iowa (federal, state and county) now totals less than 3 percent.

Budgets for maintaining these areas have continued to be cut for years. We have transformed over 95 percent of our 37 million acres for human uses and eradicated 99.9 percent of the prairie which produced the very soil we are farming now. About two-thirds of Iowa have been reduced to two annual species, corn and soybeans, requiring massive amounts of poisons, petroleum, and fertilizers. Why would anyone want to see this state continue to be sacrificed for the benefit of a few people? Why would anyone move here or stay around to watch our natural resources, including butterflies and birds, continue to disappear? Why stay to see our water quality dying and requiring more money to make it even usable by the people or wildlife that are left?

We now live in the most biologically altered state in North America and import roughly over 80 percent of what we eat, which must travel an average of 1,500 miles to get here. Are we nuts?

Mark Edwards

Boone

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