AUSTIN -- An environmental pressure group is trying to push Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott to intervene in the contentious sale of a mountain range near Big Bend National Park.

Environment Texas (ET) launched an on-line petition drive earlier this month calling on Abbott and Governor Rick Perry to direct their appointees on the deciding land board to vote down the sale of the west-Texas Christmas Mountains.

Texas Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson, also chair of the deciding School Land Board (SLB), blocked an effort by the Big Bend National Park (BBNP) Supervisor to consider making the mountains part of the park. That ruling prompted ET to write Abbott and Perry to intervene.

Patterson was forced to scrap the original sale after mapping problems emerged but has again tendered bids for the property. He refuses to sell the land to the BBNP because the National Parks Service doesn't allow guns on its property, according to a posting last week by ET Director Luke Metzger on liberal blogsite TheTexasBlue.

Abbott appointee David Herrmann of San Antonio and Perry appointee Todd Barth of Houston could out-vote Patterson on the three-person SLB on the Christmas Mountains issue. The land was originally donated to the state in 1991 by the R.K. Mellon Foundation.

"Commissioner Patterson is unreasonably blocking this conservation effort, so it's up to Gov. Perry and Attorney General Abbott to show leadership and save the Christmas Mountains," Metzger stated earlier this month.