Opinion - Public lands are a national treasure and must not be sold

Montanan Tracy Stone-Manning, former director of the Bureau of Land Management and now director of The Wilderness Society, writes with passion about our heritage of public lands. Yet selling parts of that heritage is the goal of the current administration, whose budget bill will be under consideration starting this week. Stone-Manning warns that once public lands turn into private profit centers for energy extraction or housing, wildlife will suffer, and all of us who love the still-wild outdoors will begin to lose what makes America unique in the world.