You may never have heard of the Christmas Mountains. They are located northwest of Big Bend National Park. A 9300-acre tract of land there was donated to the state of Texas in 1991 by the Conservation Fund and the Richard King Mellon Foundation.

Now Texas Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson wants to sell that land to private interests and the donors are upset, although they wouldn’t have any objection to it going to the National Parks Service, which may also be interested in it. But Mr Patterson is a strong Second Amendment advocate and he doesn’t like the National Parks Service because they don’t allow hunting on their property. Of course, not very many people will be able to hunt on the land anyway once it is in private hands.

You can read more about it here and here. There is a petition you can sign too.

Of course private owners can be good stewards.  But Texas needs more public lands, not less.