Native Plant Conservation Campaign News: Outside Magazine reports “Americans Voted Overwhelmingly to Protect Wild Places”
November 14, 2018
An article in Outside Magazine reports that voters from both parties voted to protect publicly owned lands in last tuesday's election.
Excerpts from the article:
“Overall, the observance is that conservation issues were on the ballot across the country,” says Jenny Rowland of the Center for American Progress, “and we’re seeing that voters are rejecting the Zinke- and Trump-branded attacks on parks, the oceans, and national monuments.” All told, the
Center for American Progress reports that public lands and environmental issues played decisive roles in at least 14 races.
.......
From Montana to Minnesota, to states as far from the West as Connecticut and Georgia, voters turned out in decisive numbers to support pro-public-land candidates and to oppose the pro-industry favoritism of President Trump and interior secretary Ryan Zinke. Equally noteworthy, several races wound up with Republicans and Democrats toeing the same line of public-lands support—lending credibility to the idea that conservation issues offer a rare space for politicians and voters from both parties to meet in the middle. “You look at the big picture and candidates in swing states realized that pro-public-lands stances are a beneficial place to go,” says Aaron Weiss of the Denver-based nonprofit Center for Western Priorities. “It’s one of the last big issues that really speaks to folks in both parties.”
These observations are consistent with
polling data that show increasing support for conservation of natural areas.
The NPCC will continue to work with our partners to
Get Out The Vote so that the public's support for plants, wildlife, public lands and the environment can be transformed into public policy!
