A recent poll shows most Arizona voters agree that protecting public lands should not be a partisan issue.
The Wilderness Society – a conservation advocacy group – commissioned a poll that found that Arizonans value the freedom to recreate on public lands.
Mike Quigley, Arizona State Director for the Wilderness Society, says voters understand that conservation and economic success go hand in hand.
“Protecting our public lands ensures Arizona remains a thriving place for us to live, work and recreate and invest, and that’s for us today, but also for future generations,” Quigley said during a roundtable discussion between conservation stakeholders and lawmakers on Tuesday.
Nearly 1,000 Arizona voters were polled and nearly half were oversamples of Republican leaning voters and voters in Arizona’s 6th Congressional District.
Oversampling is the practice of intentionally collecting more responses from a specific subgroup.
95% of that sample had been to Arizona public lands including national parks, monuments, forests and wildlife refuges.
Eight in 10 Arizonans overwhelmingly opposed shrinking national monuments and nine in 10 said protecting clean drinking water sources is an important reason to protect public lands as national monuments.
Protecting the state’s water supply ranked higher in priority over economic issues, immigration and affordable housing.
The poll also showed that voters overwhelmingly opposed selling public lands to private developers to build housing. Opposition to the sale of public lands was stronger among Republican women than Republican men. However Republicans were more supportive of increased resource extraction, particularly oil and gas drilling.
Of those polled, only very conservative Republicans approved of expediting drilling and mining projects on public lands.
Democratic voters felt that the role of tribes in managing public lands is especially important.
More than two in three independents said a Congressional candidate’s stand on protecting public lands would affect their vote.
