When I was 8 years old, I visited the Outer Banks for the first time. Stepping out of my parent’s rental car, I instantly sprinted over the sand dunes, careering down to the sandy beach. There, I froze, stunned by the beach’s beauty. For as far as I could look on either side of me, a picturesque, unadulterated view of nature shone back. There were no buildings, porches or any other human made structure that obstructed my view, just waves, sand and any citizen who wanted to enjoy it.

Yet currently, a couple in Emerald Isle want to take this view away. Gregory and Diane Nies, a retired couple from New Jersey, recently challenged the city of Emerald Isle’s longstanding ordinance that forbids the building of beach structures or equipment within the stretch of beach between the high tide line and the front of the natural sand dunes. Essentially, Mr. and Mrs. Nies want this land to no longer be preserved as public land for anyone to relax or recreate on, but instead to be privatized —a land set aside for up-close master bedrooms, “picturesque” patios, or whatever else an owner wants to build so close to the ocean.

Not only would this create a nasty eye-sore to North Carolina’s more than 300 miles of shoreline, but doing so would mean that, at high tide, no public land would border the beach. North Carolina’s beaches, then, would effectively become useless at high tide.    

Thankfully, the Nies’ lost in a Superior Court trial and the North Carolina Court of Appeals upheld that decision. However, the North Carolina Supreme Court’s recent decision to hear and try the case for a third time throws North Carolina’s most cherished public lands into question once again.

Whatever the courts decide, however, the Nies’ proposal speaks to a disturbing reality: There’s a concerted effort underway in America to turn public lands private. This is terrifying.

It wasn’t too long ago when, on Jan. 2 of this year, armed protesters led by Ammon Bundy took over a federal building in rural Oregon in order to “restore public lands” to private property. Bundy and the rest of the protesters believed that the general public should no longer have the ability to experience the wonders of millions of acres of the United States’ public land, land that is their birth-right to explore.

Yet, this view isn’t just out held by a select few, the Nies’ and Bundy’s of our society. Last year, in April 2015, a group of United State Senators proposed Senate Amendment 838, which sought to jumpstart “the disposal of certain Federal land.” The proposal, which called for the selling off of thousands of acres of national forests, wildlife refuges and wilderness lands, failed, yet simply its proposal should cause every person who’s experienced the wonder of any section of our countries public lands to raise alarm.

A heist on our nation’s public lands has begun. From North Carolina’s beaches, to rural Oregon, there are those among us who seek to remove public access to vast expanses of priceless land. They must be stopped.

As a child, I gazed upon North Carolina’s beaches with the same steadfast adoration that I today gaze at the rest our countries millions of acres of public lands. From the small Bureau of Land Management patch in Southern Utah where I first wandered through a tight slot-canyon, to the high mountain peaks I climbed in Montana’s National Forests, to even the simple, yet still equally striking walk I took this weekend in William B. Umstead State Park, our nation’s public lands should be adorned as the treasures they are, not sold off as worthless tracts of government overreach as some would have us believe. The Nies’ and the rest of their ilk don’t care about the public good, and they certainly don’t care about an 8-year-old boy visiting the Outer Banks for the first time in his life. They only care about one thing and one thing only: turning our public lands into a privatized places that only a select few can enjoy.

Their aversion to public lands is repulsive, and it’s up to the North Carolina Supreme Court to side against the Niles, defend North Carolina’s beaches, and send a message to the rest of our country that public lands are not for the taking. I want my children to see North Carolina’s beaches as they are today, beautiful public places for all to enjoy, not a sliced up and privatized muck, something no longer resembling nature and, worst of all, no longer public.