04/18/2026
This is what “drill, baby, drill” looks like in practice—and it is devastating. 💔
I arrived in Northern New Mexico yesterday, camera in hand, ready to document the raw beauty of the Lybrook Badlands. Instead, I found a landscape under siege.
The Trump regime has been fast-tracking leases to fossil fuel corporations, handing over our Public Lands to the highest bidder. But “extracting” this fossil juice comes at a steep price that isn’t measured in dollars:
• Fragmented Ecosystems: A sprawling network of wide industrial roads now crisscrosses the badlands like scars.
• Destroyed Crusts: Decades of growth in fragile cryptobiotic soils—the literal foundation of this desert ecosystem—have been crushed under heavy machinery.
• Industrial Blight: Where there should be silence and vast horizons, there are now pumps, pipes, and holding tanks.
Our Public Lands belong to all Americans, not to the balance sheets of oil executives. Once this wilderness is industrialized, it can never be truly “restored.”
My heart hurts for this land. We cannot let these sacred spaces be sacrificed for short-term profit. We must stand together to protect what remains.
Will you join me in telling Washington that our Public Lands are worth more than the oil beneath them? SaveTheBadlands
