SACRAMENTO, Calif. — On Tuesday, California lawmakers held a news conference introducing a bipartisan environmental bill — Assembly Bill 1624 — aimed at strengthening protections for the Golden State’s public lands from federally backed “privatization and irreversible development.”

Led by Assembly member Rick Chavez Zbur, D-Hollywood, the conference took place on the southwest lawn of the Capitol, where Zbur criticized the Trump administration’s push for land policies that could cause significant environmental harm for California’s lands.

“In recent years, we’ve seen repeated efforts at the federal level to weaken protections for public lands, that includes opening land to oil and gas drilling, expanding logging across national forests, rolling back roadless rules and even asserting the authority to abolish national monuments,” Zbur said.

Zbur’s remarks referred to the administration’s proposals last year to add elements in a sweeping budget reconciliation package, which would have opened the door for more than 250 million acres of federal public land in Western states to be sold off or transferred into private hands.

While some of that language was stripped from earlier drafts after facing public and political pushback, Zbur cautioned that there are still indications the administration could try to revisit similar ideas in the future.

According to Zbur, AB 1624 is mapped out as a backstop so that if the federal government sells or transfers public lands in California to private buyers, those acres would fall under the state’s open space and conservation-focused zoning rules, limiting speculative development and requiring projects to meet high environmental and community standards.

“Let me be clear — California cannot stop the federal government from selling federal land, which is why we need to act now before it’s too late.”

Noting the land’s historical and cultural significance, Assembly member Jeff Gonzalez, R-Indio, a coauthor of the bill, said in a news release on Thursday the measure is intended to preserve the area for future generations while still allowing projects to proceed under existing state and local planning and environmental review rules.

The conference was also joined by advocates from Environment California and Trout Unlimited, the two environmental groups sponsoring the bill.

Laura Deehan, state director for Environment California, pointed to Yosemite National Park, Joshua Tree, and the newly designated Chuckwalla as examples of California’s treasured public lands that must be protected from being sold off, while Matt Clifford, the California director for Trout Unlimited, celebrated the bipartisan efforts to protect the state’s lands against looming federal threats.

“There’s nothing liberal or conservative about protecting our public lands heritage,” Clifford said.

“These lands belong to all of us. We all enjoy them, and we all have a stake in them."

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