Please join us for a special meeting of the Weminuche Audubon Society that will take place at 6:30 pm on Oct 4th in the PLPOA clubhouse on Port Ave.  The speaker will be Walt Dabney, whose career in the National Park Service and Texas State Parks spans more than 40 years, including several years in Southeast Utah, where his responsibilities included Hovenweep NM, along with the other national parks in that region.  After 30 years with the National Park Service, Walt finished his career in public lands administration as Director of State Parks for Texas Parks and Wildlife from 1999 to 2010.  He continues to teach new professionals entering into public lands administration through a number of organizations, including Texas A&M University.

Many Americans use public lands for recreation and business but don’t understand how those lands came to be in the public domain. Sitting as we do in Pagosa Springs in the midst of National Forest lands, his talk will surely be of interest to us. We hope to see you there.
Dabney will cover topics including;
The origin story of public lands
The US Constitution and public lands
Statehood acts/state constitutions and public lands
How public lands became privately owned
Why most public lands are in the West
The creation of the National Forest Service, National Park Service, and the Bureau of Land Management
The economic value of public lands
Efforts to transfer public lands from public ownership