Though Carlsbad Caverns National Park just celebrated its 90th birthday, there's little to celebrate about efforts to bring oil and gas leasing to within 10 miles of the iconic park.

Arizonans know that water is life; it is vital to us all and sustains our livelihoods. We cannot afford to let powerful industry interests sacrifice our water to pollution or depletion. We also cannot let those same interests destroy a landscape that supports an unparalleled regional economy and the livelihood of citizens who depend on it. But our water and our Grand Canyon is under attack by these very interests that see profit in the ground and downplay the risk of negative health impacts for generations to come.

Our community of park enthusiasts are avid counters and collectors, of parks, passport stamps, pictures, pins, apparel, and any number of other things. All of us collect experiences and memories. Ask any serious park system aficionado how many parks they have visited, and you are likely to get a reflexive answer, given with the same depth of thought that goes into providing a name. Hi, my name’s Dave, by the way. I am one among fewer than a hundred people known to have claimed visits to all 419 current National Park Service units. We are a small group. But despite devoting much of the past seven years to exploring our nation’s park system at every opportunity, I often feel as if I’ve barely scratched the surface. The more I know and see, the more I must accept the vast unknown and unseen.

Ranching in Point Reyes National Seashore is a valuable heritage that is being falsely maligned. Anti-ranch activists contend agriculture was never meant to stay in the Seashore, citing one clause or another from enabling legislation or House hearings. But the first thing you learn when you try to go to the source is that there is no one source.