Public Trust

I imagined my second 2020 Mountainfilm Festival selection would be a Ken Burns-style documentary on our nation's public lands. Director David Garrett Byars begins Public Trust with a soft opening of luscious landscape photography accented by a voice-over narration of a man from Northern Alabama having relocated to a Western State pontificating on the joyous freedom of fishing and hunting in the vast open spaces in the West.

After the stunningly beautiful opening sequence, however, Public Trust, executively produced by Robert Redford, turned into a wild ride through the United States of America's exploitation of pristine public lands with roguish, jackaloon demagogues sowing fear and distrust in any receptive audience at their disposal. Truth is damned as greed, hate-mongering, and sheer stupidity rear their disgusting, revolting, and reviling heads as the public is duped time and time again with misleading rhetoric from politicians and Trump Administration department heads. Alaskan public lands are salivatingly seen as gravy trains with stores of oil, gas, uranium, and copper as mining revenues traditionally have been dispersed to Alaskans with royalty checks. As one commentator noted, "it's akin to a heroin addict getting a fix."

Utilizing recent news footage, present-day interviews with tribal leaders, historians, government whistleblowers, journalists, added perspective and insight emanate into the bold and brazen Trump Administration political appointees to the United States Department of the Interior. The once protected public lands are being moved under individual states' control to maintain - although the states cannot afford to protect and maintain the lands for public use. As a result, much of the land is being sold to the highest bidders, those with the deepest pockets. As one particularly ignorant pol snidely commented, "just let me know what my piece of the public lands is so I can sell it."

The newest Secretary of the Interior, David Barnhart, has relocated his office into the same building with Exxon and numerous oil and gas mining corporations after Ryan Zinke, who now serves as "an advisor" to Turnberry Solutions, a lobbying firm stacked with former Trump administration advisers and campaign aides, resigned in 2019 among numerous ethics violations. The powerful extractive industries, backed by similar regulation-slashing state legislators and federal agencies, believe public lands across America should be unlocked for mining and exploration with little if any, regard for the environmental scarring and cultural diminishing effects. And, these entities will say anything to get their way.

Interestingly, in closing Public Trust Byars leaves the viewer with pertinent questions about the future of America's public lands. For instance, who will have unfettered access to these lands? Because as it stands right now it appears the oil and gas industries, in conjunction with mining operations, will solicit more revenue-generating activities from the American people. Imagine futuristic concessionaires charging fees to take you and your family to the mountaintop for sunset while the surrounding lands are stripped until all profit has been removed, and the lands permanently abandoned in an unrestored, highly toxic state. It's the Trump Administration's vision of the new American Way of Life.

Public Trust is a very-well researched and thought-provoking documentary. For me as a person who has enjoyed public lands immensely, the film is revealing not only from a cultural and environmental perspective but even more so from a political perspective. Highly recommended.

Public Trust does a fantastic job at exposing the powerful forces working to eliminate public lands in favor of industry and profit. It paints a clear picture of industry and government working hand-in-hand over decades, often in incredibly deceitful ways by promising to protect public lands only to turn around and break those promises for the special interests that finance their campaigns.

Despite its strong storytelling, and narratives of indigenous peoples standing up to massive industries in order to protect their livelihoods and beautiful ecosystems, there is one glaring oversight in this film: cattle. The film briefly mentions cattle grazing on it's list of industries who have been eying and gobbling up our land space, but if fails miserably to call cattle grazing out for the destructive force it has become, particularly in arid western states like Utah. The Center for Biological Diversity states that "(t)he ecological costs of livestock grazing exceed that of any other western land use," including "the most widespread cause of species endangerments."

In fact, the film goes out of it's way to paint ranchers as the victims and as stewards of land protection, when in fact that couldn't be further from the truth. It's not surprising, given that Patagonia is a major proponent of Regenerative Agriculture, including grazing, and I guess somehow feels that if they acknowledge the problems of cattle grazing they are undermining their own mission. And no doubt ranchers and hunters make up a sizable portion of their consumer base.

Of course they are a some ranchers who are doing things more "sustainably" and truly do value the land and ecosystems they work in. But the fact is that raising cattle is inherently damaging to ecosystems and hugely resource intensive, especially for the vast majority of land where cattle graze (and over graze) on our public lands for pennies on the dollar.

If there is one issue, it has to be this one. We need to protect our public lands for the collective wellbeing of the earth and people. I appreciate the work and support that went into this timely film. I was moved and motivated.