Last week, DGR co-founder Derrick Jensen interviewed Janine Blaeloch on Resistance Radio.
Listen here (Firefox sometimes doesn’t work with this link – try another browser)
Blaeloch is founder and director of the Western Lands Project. She earned a degree in Environmental Studies (B.A., University of Washington), with a self-designed program focusing on Public Lands Management and Policy. Janine has been a public-land activist since 1985. She worked as an environmental planner in both the private and public sectors before founding WLP in 1997. They talk about efforts to stop the giving away of public lands to large corporations, among other things.
Here is a description of the Western Lands Project:
Western Lands Project fights public land privatization in order to protect the environment and the public interest. Our mission is to scrutinize public land trades, sales, giveaways, and any project that would cede public land, and their impacts on habitat and wildlife, natural resources, land use, and communities. Our goal is to keep public land public.
Each year, approximately 200 land deals are proposed by the Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service, in addition to those introduced by legislation. Western Lands Project scrutinizes them all, challenging those that threaten wildlife, natural resources, open space, and the public interest.
We rely on project monitoring, policy/agency reform, public education and empowerment, legal challenges, and advocacy. Since our founding in 1997, this multifaceted strategy has proven successful in defending public lands from privatization. By fighting harmful land deals on the ground and by working to improve top-down policies, we are able to tailor an effective and focused response to all kinds of privatization schemes.