PARKS 2 public fed land
age of trump 12/17 renamed PARKS 2 promoted primary
maybe belated, redundant
SEE BURGUM
MIKE FUCKING LEE
see also doi, zinke, blm
pendley
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MTA GMAIL 8 26
The Trump regime is paying German energy giant RWE $1.22 billion not to build offshore wind farms. It is the fifth such deal this year, pushing the public cost of dismantling clean-power projects toward $4 billion.
This is not an isolated decision. This administration has attacked pollution limits for power plants, sought exemptions allowing industrial facilities to release more toxic chemicals, weakened methane controls, and moved to erase the scientific foundation for regulating greenhouse gases. Trump officials proudly call this the largest deregulatory campaign in American history.
They're not stopping there, the 2027 fiscal budget proposal, is signaling a catastrophic shift that would reduce National Park Service funding by over 25% percent. The proposal slashes $736 million from national park operations while simultaneously allocating $10 billion for “Presidential Capital Stewardship Program” focused on vanity projects in Washington, D.C. Compounding these cuts, Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum has introduced another deferred resignation program and voluntary early retirement to further decimate the workforce on our public lands.
The beneficiaries are no mystery: oil, gas, coal, and other corporate polluters and extractors. Neither is the political bargain. During his campaign, Trump reportedly told oil executives that if they raised $1 billion to return him to the White House, they would receive a lucrative policy payoff. Now our tax payer dollars are paying companies to abandon clean energy while major polluters receive weaker rules and fewer consequences.
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gubmint wacko bitch about socialism in a national park?!
AN 7 26
Trump is targeting American history itself in a new push that looks less like patriotism and more like political control.
Trump is specifically targeting the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, or ACHP, which *The New Republic's* Timothy Noah warns is at work trying to destroy historic preservation of national sites and even Native American tribes.
ACHP regulators deal specifically with Section 106 of the 1966 National Historic Preservation Act, which requires federal agencies to consider how their projects might affect historic places before proceeding. So, if a project could damage or change a historic building, site or landmark, the ACHP steps in and works on ways to reduce harm. Trump, by contrast, wants to make huge changes that forever damage or eliminate historic landmarks, such as his bulldozing of the White House itself.
In his report, Noah said that Trump's ACHP is "reviewing" Section 106. The process of "reviewing" it is further along than Noah said he fully realized.
"Now the ACHP, which is under the firm control of President Donald Trump, has produced a draft notice of proposed rulemaking (text here and here) that would make it significantly easier for Trump 'to fast-track projects that destroy, or cause irreversible damage to, our historic places, with virtually no public oversight,' according to Sara Bronin, who chaired the ACHP under President Joe Biden. The ACHP is expected to publish the notice of proposed rulemaking by the end of this week," Noah wrote.
So far, Trump's plans have involved things like erecting his Arc de Trump, blocking Arlington National Cemetery and building the National Garden of American Heroes in West Potomac Park. However, projects like the East Wing prove he's fully prepared to take a wrecking ball to some of the most important public land in the United States.
"These regulatory changes would be like handing a box of matches to an arsonist," wrote Noah.
Greg Werkheiser, founding partner of Cultural Heritage Partners, told Noah, "We’ve never seen a proposal that would do this much damage to this much of the country’s history in one stroke.”
His group is currently dealing with litigation over Trump’s Kennedy Center overhaul, and Trump's idea to whitewash the grey Eisenhower Executive Office Building.
"Cultural Heritage Partners has set up an online war room to fight against the proposed Section 106 changes," Noah reported.
Bronin said, “I would encourage people not to get distracted by the types of projects that have been in the news, because these changes are geared toward a more systematic overhaul of the process” to “benefit some of the most destructive projects that are in the federal pipeline."
She explained that it isn't merely about building statues of himself in Washington; it's also about oil and mining operations in national parks protected by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
One case dates back to an effort by former GOP Sens. John McCain and Jeff Flake of Arizona, who slipped in a provision into a 2014 defense bill that moved an area of Arizona’s Tonto National Forest from ownership of the local indigenous community to an Australian mining company called Resolution Copper. The mining operation would "obliterate" the native community. The one thing standing in its way has been Section 106. However, the use of the term “geographically compact” is now preventing the land from being protected because it's so expansive.
Noah also said that the text claims “noncompact, unimproved natural features such as mountains, valleys, bodies of water or landscapes, including ethnographic landscapes, do not qualify as property for the purposes of section 106.”
It will likely grant Trump the license to dismantle the entire Oak Flat area, known as Chi’chil Biłdagoteel.
“These two words,” Bronin warned, “would greenlight a wave of destruction of our historic and culturally significant properties that we’ve never seen before.”
CONTEXT
- Atlantic Monument Reopening: In February 2026, President Trump issued a proclamation revoking protections to allow commercial fishing in the 4,913-square-mile Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument off the New England coast. [1, 2]
- Pacific Monument Access: Through Executive Order 14276 and subsequent proclamations, the administration has moved to allow commercial fishing in the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument and directed reviews for other protected Pacific sites. [1,, 3]
- Dismantling Ocean Sensors: The administration began removing hundreds of deep-sea scientific instruments, pulling more than 900 sensors from the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. This decades-long observation project was defunded over concerns about cost and the program's focus on climate research. ]
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Y MAIL 3? 26
Despite community outcry to stop the project, the Black Hills National Forest just issued a permit to drill for graphite at Pe’sla -- a Lakota sacred place within the Ȟe Sápa, known in English as the Black Hills, and a place of ceremony and prayer for thousands of years.
This violates the treaty rights and religious freedom of the Oceti Shakowin, the Lakota, Dakota and Nakota peoples.
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an 4 26
Arizona’s legislative leaders can’t dismantle a new national monument near the Grand Canyon that they claimed would harm both the state and local governments, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday.
In the memorandum ruling, a three-judge panel on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously agreed with a lower court ruling made more than a year ago. Both courts ruled that Republican legislative leaders lacked standing to bring the lawsuit because all of the harms they claimed the monument would cause were speculative.
Republicans in the Arizona Legislature have criticized the creation of the Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni — Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument since President Joe Biden designated it in 2023. That designation effectively barred mining on the roughly one million acres of land near Grand Canyon National Park that make up the monument.
Mining on the land within the monument is already barred until at least 2032, but the new designation will ban it indefinitely.
Senate President Warren Petersen and former House Speaker Ben Toma, both Republicans, filed a lawsuit in 2024, asking the court to declare the creation of the monument unlawful and to set aside its designation.
Joining in the suit were State Treasurer Kimberly Yee, who is also a Republican, Mohave County, Colorado City and the town of Fredonia.
Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, alongside Gov. Katie Hobbs, both Democrats, intervened in the lawsuit to argue for the preservation of the monument.
Mayes celebrated the win on Wednesday.
“Today’s ruling is a victory for the people of Arizona and for the Indigenous communities whose ancestral homelands are protected by this monument,” Mayes said in a statement. “The court rejected every argument Senate President Warren Petersen, Speaker of the House Steve Montenegro, and Treasurer Kimberly Yee put forward. I am proud to have stood up to defend these sacred and important lands.”
Biden created the monument in response to advocacy from the Native American communities whose ancestral homelands are located in and near the Grand Canyon and who still rely on the canyon for natural and cultural resources that are significant and sacred to their communities.
In the unsigned memorandum, Judges Consuelo Callahan, John Owens and Michelle Friedland wrote that the Arizona Legislature couldn’t base its arguments for dismantling the monument on its “fears of hypothetical future harm.”
Callahan was appointed to the Ninth Circuit by President George W. Bush, while Owens and Friedland were appointed by President Barack Obama.
“It’s sad to see the Ninth Circuit kicked the can down the road,” Petersen said in a statement to the Arizona Mirror.
Petersen said he was disappointed that the court decided the challenge “came too soon” and failed to address the legislature’s claim that Biden lacked the authority to create the monument in the first place.
“Arizona families should not have to wait years while our land and economic opportunities remain locked up,” he said. “We will continue fighting to protect Arizona’s economy, jobs, and state sovereignty from this expansive federal land lock-up, including through any available avenues at the federal level. We are actively working with the Trump administration to undo this illegal land grab.”
In the challenge, the Arizona Legislature argued that the Antiquities Act of 1906, which Biden used to designate the monument, didn’t actually give him the power to do so.
Instead of addressing that claim, the courts ruled that none of the entities that brought the challenge could establish a concrete injury upon which they could base their case.
“Their alleged loss of future tax revenue depends on uranium prices being sufficiently high in 2032 (or whenever the pre-existing protections expire) such that third-party companies would choose to begin mining,” the appellate judges wrote. “But it is speculative whether the right economic conditions and incentives for uranium mining will exist so far into the future.”
The courts agreed that claims from the government entities that the creation of the monument was losing them tax revenue on geothermal and mineral leasing were also speculative.
“Plaintiffs fail to allege that any entity has ever sought to engage in ‘mineral or geothermal leasing,’ or that the monument land even contains those resources,” the judges wrote.
The Ninth Circuit found Colorado City’s argument that the creation of the monument endangered its future water supply equally unconvincing. Colorado City claimed that because its water was supplied from an aquifer beneath the monument, the federal government might decide to restrict access to that water in the future.
The judges wrote that Biden’s proclamation doesn’t alter existing water rights and “there is otherwise no reason to speculate that the federal government will ‘reduce Colorado City’s water supply,’ as Colorado City fears.”
The Ninth Circuit also disagreed with the Arizona Legislature’s claim that the creation of the monument strips it of its power to sell, lease and set royalty rates for state land surrounded by the monument. The judges wrote that the legislature could “continue to manage and dispose of state land as it sees fit.”
The court similarly shot down the Arizona Legislature’s claim that the monument designation harmed the state by forcing it to channel time and money to “passing laws, holding hearings, and publicly commenting” on issues caused by the monument.
“A plaintiff may not ‘manufacture’ an injury by ‘simply choosing to spend money,’” the Ninth Circuit wrote.
The judges wrote that the legislature had failed to show that it would have suffered any harm if it hadn’t passed laws, held hearings or made public comments relating to the monument.
The judges also dismissed the legislature’s claim that it, and the other plaintiffs, might lose money in the future due to increases in energy prices caused by the ban on uranium mining within the monument.
“Future energy prices depend on many unknown variables and the ‘unfettered choices’ of innumerable third parties,” the judges wrote. “Any future economic harm from higher energy prices caused by the Proclamation is accordingly far too speculative to support standing.”
The tribal nations with ancestral lands within the monument include the Havasupai Tribe, Hopi Tribe, Hualapai Tribe, Kaibab Band of Paiute Indians, Las Vegas Paiute Tribe, Moapa Band of Paiutes, Paiute Indian Tribe of Utah, Navajo Nation, San Juan Southern Paiute Tribe, Yavapai-Apache Nation, Pueblo of Zuni, and the Colorado River Indian Tribes.
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2 26 massive grab on public land eg chilean mine canoe area parkrose permacult
hcr boundary waters
DUCK 2 26
The Wilderness Society
New map illustrates public lands reach of Trump's "energy dominance ...
Feb 24, 2025A new map and data from The Wilderness Society illustrate the potential reach of executive and secretarial orders issued to fulfill President Trump's fossil fuel-centric "energy dominance" vision.
Los Angeles Times
How the Trump administration sold out public lands in 2025
Dec 25, 2025Almost a year into the Trump presidency, it's clear his administration has sided with the corporations seeking to mine and drill our nation's public lands.
westernpriorities.org
New map illustrates Trump's destructive "energy dominance" plan for ...
Feb 25, 2025The Wilderness Society produced a new map to illustrate the potential reach of executive and secretarial orders signed by President Donald Trump and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum in pursuit of their shared fossil fuel-centric "energy dominance" vision for America's public lands. "As we speak, the Trump administration's Department of the Interior is deciding which of our treasured ...
Center for American Progress
A Historically Bad Year for Public Lands Under President Trump
Dec 11, 2025The Trump administration's attacks on parks and public lands broke records in 2025, but they also met intense public opposition.
New York Times
Why Is Trump Dumping East Wing Rubble in a Public Park?
2 days agoThe East Potomac Golf Links is a municipal course that has been a fixture in Washington for decades. President Trump is turning it into something else.
UPI
https://www.upi.com › Top_News › US › 2025 › 10 › 15 › public-land-alaska-texas-oil-drilling-mining › 8411760534258
Most public land already open to energy production; Trump wants ... - UPI
Oct 15, 2025The Trump administration has vowed to open up public land to usher in an age of American energy dominance but in the West there is little frontier left.
Western Environmental Law Center
https://westernlaw.org › trump-escalates-war-on-nature-with-attack-on-public-lands-rule
Trump escalates war on nature with attack on Public Lands Rule
Sep 10, 2025The rescinding of this common-sense rule shows that the Trump Administration is dead set on prioritizing energy development and extractive industries over all other uses on our public lands, rather than seeking to uphold balanced land-management practices." - Alec Underwood, conservation director of the Wyoming Outdoor Council Contact:
CNN
https://www.cnn.com › 2025 › 09 › 30 › climate › coal-power-trump-public-lands
Trump is handing out public land and millions of dollars to ... - CNN
Sep 30, 2025While the Trump administration wages war against clean energy, it is now vowing to lease millions of acres of public lands at a discount and spend hundreds of millions of dollars to prop up the ...
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CFACT co-sponsors 'Land and Liberty' gathering in Texas - National Today
National Today
The 'Land and Liberty Conference' held on February 13-14 in Fort Worth, Texas brought together around 150 property rights activists from across ...
CFACT co-sponsors 'Land and Liberty' gathering in Texas
Around 150 property rights leaders convened in Fort Worth to discuss strategies and listen to speakers like former Trump Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins.
Published on Feb. 16, 2026
Got story updates?Submit your updates here. ›
The 'Land and Liberty Conference' held on February 13-14 in Fort Worth, Texas brought together around 150 property rights activists from across the country. The event, co-sponsored by CFACT, featured panels, workshops, and Texas hospitality including barbecue and a rodeo. Speakers included former Trump Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, Congressman Harriett Hageman, and Texas Agriculture Secretary Sid Miller.
Why it matters
The conference highlighted the growing movement of property rights advocates who are pushing back against what they see as an overreach of environmental regulations and a 'far-Left political agenda that is decidedly anti-human and anti-freedom.' The gathering aimed to reclaim the mantle of 'wise stewardship' of natural resources.
The details
The two-day conference covered topics such as energy security, financial exploitation of natural resources, reopening federal lands, and defending landowner rights. CFACT, a prominent co-sponsor, hosted a panel featuring its president Craig Rucker and communications director Marc Morano, as well as representatives from the Heartland Institute.
- The 'Land and Liberty Conference' took place on February 13-14, 2026 in Fort Worth, Texas.
- This was the third time in recent years the event has been held.
The players
CFACT
The Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) is a nonprofit organization that promotes free market environmentalism and opposes what it sees as excessive environmental regulation.
Craig Rucker
The president of CFACT.
Marc Morano
The director of communications for CFACT.
Brooke Rollins
The former U.S. Secretary of Agriculture under President Trump.
Harriett Hageman
A U.S. Congressman.
Sid Miller
The Texas Secretary of Agriculture.
Got photos?Submit your photos here. ›
What they’re saying
“The Green movement has undergone a transition, one that moved from wise conservation and stewardship of the land, a position held by everyone a 100 years ago, to one that now promotes a far-Left political agenda that is decidedly anti-human and anti-freedom. We need to reclaim the mantle of 'wise stewardship' and save the environmental movement from itself.”
— Craig Rucker, President, CFACT (CFACT.org)
“I can feel the momentum building since our first gathering in Lincoln, Nebraska. President Trump's influence is clearly energizing the movement. I can't wait for next year!”
— Marc Morano, Director of Communications, CFACT (CFACT.org)
What’s next
The organizers plan to host the 'Land and Liberty Conference' again next year, building on the momentum from this year's event.
The takeaway
The 'Land and Liberty Conference' highlights the growing influence of property rights advocates who are pushing back against what they view as excessive environmental regulations and a political agenda that is 'anti-human and anti-freedom.' The conference aimed to reclaim the mantle of 'wise stewardship' of natural resources.
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an 6 25
Benji Backer, author of The Conservative Environmentalist, slammed Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) on social media, accusing him of “secretly trying to sell” America’s public land for development, and called Lee's proposal made a “loser issue.”
A land sale plan introduced by Lee as part of President Donald Trump's “One Big Beautiful Bill" has sparked widespread concerns, The Hill reported Wednesday.
This provision in the current Republican budget proposal could put more than two million acres of public land across 11 western states on the auction block. But it has drawn backlash from environmental groups, hunters, regional leaders, and even some conservatives, the report noted. Even Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-Mont.) has railed against the idea, promising he would be a "no forever" on selling public land.
READ MORE:Trump's opponents are overlooking the worst part of Trump’s megabill — here’s why
This proposal from Lee, who chairs the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, is a longstanding push among many Western conservatives to transfer federally managed land to state or private hands.
Lee argues the measure would promote domestic energy production, generate new income, and ease housing shortages. States in the crosshairs of this proposal include Utah, Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Washington, and Wyoming.
In a video released by his office, the Utah Republican stressed that national parks, monuments, and designated wilderness areas wouldn’t be included in the sales. Instead, the focus would be on “isolated parcels” suitable for development or infrastructure projects.
“Washington has proven time and again it can’t manage this land. This bill puts it in better hands,” Lee said last Thursday, in comments highlighted by The Hill.
READ MORE:'What is going on?' Trump appears to confuse the Revolutionary War with the Civil War
Despite his defense of the plan, Lee has faced opposition even within his party. The report noted that Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-Mont.) led an effort to strip the land sales clause from the House version of the bill. Calling himself a “hard no” on the issue, Zinke succeeded in having Montana excluded from the scope of the legislation, per the report.
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an 6 25
What privatization looks like: Yosemite hotel plagued by safety and killer virus threats
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AN 6 25
President Donald Trump’s push to slash federal spending could have devastating consequences for America’s national parks, with proposed budget cuts threatening to gut the Park Service and dismantle protections for the country’s most treasured landscapes, the New York Times reported Sunday.
In 2023, the latest year with available data, an estimated 325 million people visited national parks, monuments, and historic sites, spending around $26.4 billion in nearby communities. That number grew even higher the following year, with park visits reaching an all-time record of nearly 332 million, per the article by Ted Kerasote, a nature and wildlife writer.
Theresa Pierno, president of the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA), an advocacy organization, cautioned last monththat the park system "would be completely decimated" if the proposed cuts go into effect.
READ MORE:Outrage grows over a single paragraph buried deep in Republicans' 'Big Beautiful Bill'
"Even before he took office, the Park Service was running lean, on a slim operating budget of about $3 billion. But since January, an estimated 13 percent of its staff has departed through pressured buyouts, early retirements and deferred resignations," the Times piece noted.
According to the NPCA, the Trump administration’s proposed $900 million cut to the Park Service’s operating budget could force the closure of more than 80 percent of the 433 parks, monuments, historic sites, and other areas under its care.
Such a drastic move would mark the unraveling of a system that for over 100 years has safeguarded the nation’s most iconic natural and cultural treasures. Long seen as a global example of public land preservation, the national parks represent a legacy of conservation and shared heritage that could be severely compromised, Kerasote argued.
"Mr. Trump has proposed hacking the Park Service’s operating budget by roughly 30 percent, which would be catastrophic, and transferring less visited national parks and other Park Service locations to states and tribal governments," he said.
READ MORE:'What could possibly go wrong?': Trump rollback of banking rules is creating shockwaves
The writer said Trump "seems bent on eroding one of the country’s greatest achievements, a national park system open to all."
He continued: "As the Western writer Wallace Stegner once put it, the national parks are 'absolutely American' and 'the best idea we ever had.'
Will the millions of Americans who cherish their parks allow Mr. Trump to destroy them?"
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an 3 25
'Catastrophic': Experts warn DOGE cuts could mean national parks end up in private hands
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an 2 25
A top Arizona Republican is hoping the Trump administration will do what a federal court wouldn’t: overturn a national monument protecting lands around the Grand Canyon so that mining companies can extract uranium and other valuable minerals from the land.
Arizona Senate President Warren Petersen sent a letter to the U.S. Department of the Interior on Feb. 7 requesting a meeting with Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum to discuss ending the “government overreach” of the national monument and ban on uranium mining in the area.
At issue is the Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni – Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument, which President Joe Biden created in 2023. Petersen and Ben Toma, who was at the time the speaker of the state House of Representatives, sued to have the designation revoked.
The GOP’s lawsuit argued that Biden did not have the power to create the monument, which spans 917,618 acres the federal government already managed. They also claimed it harms both the state and local communities by permanently barring uranium mining — limiting the state’s potential future revenue — and complicating land development.
On Jan. 27, Judge Stephen McNamee ruled that the Arizona Legislature and the other plaintiffs did not have standing to sue and dismissed the case.
The Grand Canyon is the ancestral homeland of multiple tribal nations across the Southwest, and tribes still rely on the canyon for natural and cultural resources that are significant and sacred to their communities.
The monument protects thousands of historical and scientific objects, sacred sites, vital water sources and the ancestral homelands of many Indigenous communities.
The monument’s name comes from the Indigenous names the Havasupai and Hopi gave to the area. In the Havasupai language, Baaj Nwaavjo means “where Indigenous peoples roam,” while I’tah Kukveni means “our ancestral footprints” in the Hopi language.
The monument restricts new mining within the area, but any mining rights in place before the designation have not been impacted.
Petersen called the Biden administration’s designation of Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni a “land grab,” and said keeping it in place contributes to high energy costs and the United States’ reliance on foreign powers.
“Ending the federal government’s hold of this piece of land falls in line with the Trump Administration’s goals of energy independence, job creation, and lower costs for Americans,” he said in a written statement.
Petersen said that government scientists believe that there is more than 300 million pounds of uranium is buried near the Grand Canyon.
“The energy that could be produced from this mineral is astronomical,” he said.
“I look forward to working with Secretary Burgum on this matter of importance for Arizona and the entire nation,” he added.
Arizona Mirror is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arizona Mirror maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jim Small for questions: info@azmirror.com.
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2 24
We’re excited to announce a few victories in the water justice movement that have been years in the making. Last year Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland issued an order to phase out single-use plastics, like bottled water, in national parks by 2032. This will mean a significant reduction in plastic waste littering some of the wildest places in the U.S. More recently, Governor Maura Healey issued an order that ensures the state of Massachusetts will no longer purchase single-use plastic bottles. And finally, the California State Water Board ordered the owner of Arrowhead brand bottled water (formerly owned by Nestlé) to drastically reduce its extraction of water from the San Bernardino National Forest. Read more about these movement victories on our blog.
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oil leases
https://www.alternet.org/spectacular-failure-of-climate-leadership/
https://republicanags.com/2021/06/15/republican-ags-prevail-in-lawsuit-against-biden/
JUNE 2021
A federal court today granted a coalition of 13 Republican AGs, led by Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry, a major win against the Biden Administration’s attempts to disrupt the American energy industry. The court’s preliminary injunction will prevent the federal government from implementing the Biden ban on oil and gas lease sales on federal lands. The court’s action reinforces Constitutional limitations, will preserve thousands of jobs, and prevent energy costs from soaring.
“This is a victory not only for the rule of law, but also for the thousands of workers who produce affordable energy for Americans,” said Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry. “We appreciate that federal courts have once again recognizedPresident Biden is completely outside his authority in his attempt to shut down oil and gas leases on federal lands.”
“Today’s injunction shows the power of our nation’s Republican attorneys general and their ability to halt harmful actions being handed down by the Biden Administration,” saidRAGA Chairman South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson. “This is a victory for Americans who have seen gas prices double since President Biden took office, and the Biden Administration should take note before they try to implement policies through the back door.”
TRIBAL BUFF AND PARK MAINT $ ARTIF BOOST GOP lcv score?
2020 Scorecard Vote
Great American Outdoors Act
House Roll Call Vote 155
Issue: Lands/Forests
Representative Joe Cunningham (D-SC) sponsored the Great American Outdoors Act (GAOA), which provides full and permanent funding of $900 million annually for the Land and Water Conservation Fund as well as funding to address the deferred maintenance backlog in our national parks and other public lands.
By investing in our public lands and waters, GAOA will protect our nation’s natural heritage and invaluable landscapes, enhance access to the outdoors and green spaces for communities nationwide, and provide much-needed repairs to deteriorating infrastructure in our national parks. On July 22, the House approved H.R. 1957, the vehicle for GAOA, by avote of 310-107(House roll call vote 155). YES IS THE PRO-ENVIRONMENT VOTE. The Senate approved H.R. 1957 on June 17, and the president BIDEN signed this legislation into law on August 4.
https://www.doi.gov/lwcf
Where does the money come from?
The primary source of revenue for the LWCF is from Federal oil and gas leases on the Outer Continental Shelf. The LWCF is based on a simple concept: take revenues from the depletion of resources – offshore oil and gas – and use them to conserve other resources: parks, wildlife refuges, forests, open spaces, trails and wildlife habitat.
Where does the money go?
Money from the LWCF goes to a variety of programs that support a nationwide legacy of high-quality recreation and conservation areas. Some of the funds are invested by agencies to protect Federal lands for public outdoor recreation use and enjoyment – including National Parks, National Forests, National Recreation Areas and National Wildlife Refuges and Conservation Areas. Agencies also partner with landowners to support voluntary conservation activities on private lands. Some of the funds are distributed directly to States and local communities through grant programs. Tribes can work with States through the grant programs to secure LWCF funding for recreation and conservation projects. These grants can be used for a range of projects from establishing baseball fields and community green spaces; to providing public access to rivers, lakes and other water resources; to protecting historic and cultural sites; and conserving natural landscapes.
battlefields but also End Sp?
https://theconversation.com/biden-restores-protection-for-national-monuments-trump-shrank-5-essential-reads-169573
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https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/24/14-states-sue-biden-administration-over-oil-and-gas-leasing-moratorium.html
no lnx
POLITICS
14 GOP state attorneys general sue Biden administration over oil and gas leasing moratorium
PUBLISHED WED, MAR 24 20211:56 PM EDTUPDATED WED, MAR 24 20212
Emma Newburger
@EMMA_NEWBURGER
KEY POINTS
Fourteen states including Louisiana and Wyoming filed suit on Wednesday against President Joe Biden’s moratorium on new oil and natural gas leases on public lands and waters.
Biden’s order on Jan. 27 to pause new leasing was part of a series of executive actions to address climate change and curb planet-warming carbon emissions.
The president also directed the secretary of the Interior Department to begin a thorough review of existing permits for fossil fuel development.
Jeff Landry, Louisiana attorney general, speaks during a news conference outside the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., on Monday, Sept. 9, 2019.
Jeff Landry, Louisiana attorney general, speaks during a news conference outside the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., on Monday, Sept. 9, 2019.
Andrew Harrer | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Fourteen states filed suit on Wednesday against President Joe Biden’s moratorium on new oil and natural gas leases on public lands and waters.
A coalition of 13 states, led by Louisiana, filed one lawsuit on Wednesday. Wyoming filed a separate lawsuit. The states in Louisiana’s suit are Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah and West Virginia. All 14 states have Republican attorneys general.
“This moratorium might make for a nice headline about fighting climate change, but the real consequences of the action are far from certain and far from uniformly environmentally friendly,” the Wyoming lawsuit said.
Biden’s order on Jan. 27 to pause new leasing was part of a series of executive actions to address climate change and transition the economy away from fossil fuel production and toward clean energy.
In a statement Wednesday, Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry called Biden’s order an “aggressive, reckless abuse of Presidential power.”
CNBC Politics
Read more of CNBC’s politics coverage:
[California Gov. Gavin Newsom is facing a recall — here’s what to know and why he’ll likely win
Biden and Merkel to discuss Afghanistan, cybersecurity and Nord Stream pipeline this week
Police arrest 4 on various weapons and drug charges at Denver hotel near Coors Field
Biden also directed the secretary of the Interior Department to begin a thorough review of existing permits for fossil fuel development and ordered the federal government to conserve 30% of public lands and water by 2030.]
The suits also come as the Biden administration prepares to unveil its proposal for overhauling the nation’s infrastructure, which is expected to include an ambitious set of climate-related proposals.
The Louisiana lawsuit argued that the president’s executive order would hurt communities dependent on oil and gas drilling and drive up energy prices. The lawsuit also requested the Bureau of Land Management be allowed to restart quarterly oil and gas lease sales.
The Interior Department declined to comment on the lawsuits.
The oil and gas leasing moratorium would not end fossil fuel extraction since the industry still holds undeveloped leases.
Drilling on federal lands contributes to roughly a quarter of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions and generates billions of dollars in revenue.
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https://www.alternet.org/2021/07/pipeline-plans/
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an 721
'Triumph for environmental justice': Oil companies scrap pipeline plans amid grassroots pressure
Julia Conley and Common Dreams July 04, 2021
Community activists in Memphis, Tennessee and northwest Mississippi celebrated a grassroots victory on Saturday after two oil companies canceled plans to build a pipeline that would have run through wetlands and several low-income, majority-Black neighborhoods.
Valero and Plains All American Pipeline had long planned to construct the Byhalia Connection pipeline, which would have been 49 miles long and linked two pipelines that transport crude oil to refineries on the Gulf of Mexico.
The two companies announced they were canceling the project "due to lower U.S. oil production resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic," but opponents of the pipeline noted that the announcement followed grassroots organizing by climate action advocates, homeowners, and elected officials at the local and federal levels.
"This is a win for the entire community of Memphis, Tennessee, but especially those in the Black community who fought it courageously," Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, co-chair of the Poor People's Campaign, tweeted.
Community members in Memphis neighborhoods including White Chapel, Westwood, and Boxtown objected to the pipeline project, which would have run over the Memphis Sand Aquifer—leading to fears that an oil spill would pollute the drinking water of about one million people.
Local organizations Protect Our Aquifer and Memphis Community Against the Pipeline (MCAP) led rallies and garnered the support of former Vice President Al Gore and Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.), while the Memphis City Council weighed an ordinance to make it harder for the companies to begin construction.
MCAP leader Justin J. Pearson organized canvassers and lobbied the city council, and called Friday's announcement "an extraordinary testament to what Memphis and Shelby County can do when citizens build power toward justice."
A representative of the two oil companies sparked local outrage when they said South Memphis, where the Boxtown community was established in the 1860s by people who had been enslaved, had been identified as "the point of least resistance."
"We've shown them that we aren't the path of least resistance," said Pearson. "We are the path of resilience."
Lawyers for the two companies began legal proceedings against local landowners who refused to make deals with project officials; they planned to invoke eminent domain against the property owners.Last week, the Supreme Court ruled in a separate case in New Jersey that a company could use eminent domain to build a natural gas pipeline on state land.
"Their playbooks are the same everywhere," Pearson said on Twitter on Friday. "Find the poor. Appease the rich and politically powerful. Misinform the community. Make local leaders afraid to stop them. Exploit the poor. Reap billions in profits from the deaths of the poor and marginalized."
The Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC), which helped landowners fight the two companies in the legal battle, called Friday's announcement "a triumph for environmental justice."
"We are so inspired by the people of Boxtown, Westwood, and White Chapel, and the work of our amazing partners MCAP and Protect Our Aquifer, for showing what is possible when a community stands together," said Amanda Garcia, director of the SELC's Tennessee office.
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===
presumably in the pipeline not pure spite? does he profit after rev dr?
https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/department-of-interior/
comm dreams
The Trump administration was accused of firing a "vindictive, illegal parting shot" following Interior Secretary Bernhardt's Friday executive order sabotaging funding of a key conservation program.
At issue is theLand and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF). Established in 1964, it has been hailed as the nation's most important conservation program. The Great American Outdoors Act (GAOA), bipartisan legislation President Donald Trump signed into lawin August, was to permanently and fully fund the LWCF.
More specifically, as USA Today previously noted, the GAOA was set to "dedicate billions in revenue paid to the federal government from oil and gas exploration fees through the Land and Water Conservation Fund to cover a mounting backlog of park projects now approaching $12 billion."
That allocation drew cheers from "so many Americans who cherish our wide open spaces" and who believed the LWCF, "which has been an effective and popular program for decades, would no longer be underfunded," Steve Blackledge, senior director of Environment America's Conservation Program, said in statement Friday
"But now," Blackledge continue, "Secretary Bernhardt is creating a solution to a problem that doesn't exist."
With the secretarial order, the administration has added "a litany of new arbitrary provisions," explained (pdf) environmental advocacy group The Mountain Pact. Those include: allowing state veto of federal public land protection projects; eliminating funding for Bureau of Land Management land acquisition; and restricting future LWCF funds from helping to create new units of public land.
The order sparked a flurry of criticism.
Blackledge, in his statement, called for plan to be rescinded and touted the LWCF for having "helped conserve national treasures like Joshua Tree National Park, the Appalachian Trail, and the Great Smokeys."
"The administration's proposal is unneeded, unwanted, and unacceptable," he added.
Phil Francis, chair of the Coalition to Protect America's National Parks, rebuked the proposal as "an unconscionable violation of Congress' intent," because "Congress was clear and explicit about what it wanted from the Department of the Interior—specifically calling for 40% of LWCF funds to go to federal land protection that can be used to help parks begin to meet their land acquisition needs."
Years of under-funding of the National Park Service, said Francis, produced "an over $5 billion backlog in land acquisition."
"Our parks protect critical watersheds, viewsheds, and ecosystems. If these lands not acquired soon," he warned, "the opportunities could be lost forever."
According to Randi Spivak, public lands director at the Center for Biological Diversity, taking action to reverse this latest (pdf) conservation attack from the Interior Secretary—a former oil and gas lobbyist—must be a priority for the incoming administration.
"Bernhardt is shamelessly imposing his extremist anti-public lands policy in a blatant end-run around Congress," Spivak said in a statement, adding that the "order severely restricts conservation funding, violates bipartisan agreements, and undermines this wildly popular program."
"It's a vindictive, illegal parting shot from a corrupt administration that only approved this bill to give political cover to two Senate Republicans whose re-elections were in jeopardy," she said, referring toCory Gardner of Colorado and Steve Daines of Montana.
"President-elect Biden should overturn this order as soon as possible," Spivak added.
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https://www.ecowatch.com/national-forest-trump-logging-tongass-2645476974.html
A federal judge in Alaska ruled late Wednesday against a Trump administration plan to open 1.8 million acres of America's largest national forest to logging.
The Forest Service plan targeted part of the Tongass National Forest on Prince of Wales Island. It would have been the largest sale of national forest timber in 30 years, Earthjustice pointed out, permitting 164 miles of new roads and clearing an area of forest three times the size of Manhattan, more than half of it old growth. But U.S. District Court Judge Sharon Gleason ruled that the plan violated the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) because the agency did not take all of its potential impacts into account, The Hill reported.
"The magnificent, ancient forests of the Tongass just got a reprieve from the chain saws," Randi Spivak, public lands director at the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), said in the Earthjustice press release. "We're thrilled the court agreed that the Trump administration broke the law when it approved cutting thousands of acres of old-growth trees. It's critical to protect our remaining old-growth forests to have any chance of stopping the extinction crisis and slowing climate change."
CBD was one of eight conservation groups that challenged the plan with representation from Earthjustice, according to fellow plaintiff the National Audubon Society. The groups, also including Southeast Alaska Conservation Council, Alaska Rainforest Defenders, Defenders of Wildlife, Sierra Club, Alaska Wilderness League and the Natural Resources Defense Council, argued that it violated NEPA, which allows people to weigh in on major infrastructure projects that will impact their community. Prince of Wales Island is an important location for subsistence hunting and fishing, but the Forest Service did not say in its plans where logging would take place, which meant it was impossible for the local community to meaningfully respond to the plans.
Judge Gleason agreedwith this assessment of the project, arguing that the service did not state where logging and road building would occur, according to Courthouse News Service.
"By not developing actual site-specific information, the Forest Service limited its ability to make informed decisions regarding impacts to subsistence uses and presented local communities with vague, hypothetical, and over-inclusive representations of the project's effects over a 15-year period," Gleason wrote.
Gleason also ruled that the plan violated the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, which requires federal agencies to determine how projects on public lands will impact those who use the lands for subsistence, according to The Audubon Society.
The ruling comes as the Trump administration is proposing changes to NEPA that would drastically weaken the landmark environmental law by, among other things, limiting the length of the review process, exempting certain projects from any review and allowing federal agencies to ignore a project's climate impacts.
Alaska Wilderness League conservation director Kristen Miller said that Wednesday's ruling showed the importance of NEPA.
"The Prince of Wales project would've been the largest logging project that we have seen anywhere in our national forests in decades, and it would have destroyed thousands of acres of irreplaceable old-growth forest in the Tongass National Forest," Miller said in the Earthjustice release. "Today's ruling is a win for Southeast Alaska's billion-dollar fishing and tourism industries, and a reminder as the Trump administration tries to significantly weaken the National Environmental Policy Act of the critical role NEPA plays in allowing the public to meaningfully weigh in on issues impacting their public lands."
The ultimate fate of the Forest Service project is not yet known, as Judge Gleason did not yet decide on a legal remedy for the plaintiffs' suit. The service did not respond to requests for comment from either Courthouse News Service or The Hill.
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BUFFER
https://www.ecowatch.com/trump-national-monuments-2645060606.html
The Trump administration finalized plans Thursday to open public lands in Utah to the fossil fuel industry.
The move completes a process begun in 2017 when the administration announced the largest rollback of land protection in U,S. history: It shrank Utah's Bears Ears National Monument by 85 percent and its Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument by nearly half. Now, the Interior Department is releasing a land-use blueprint that would allow oil, gas and coal companies to lease land for drilling and mining on around 861,974 acres that were once part of Grand Staircase-Escalante, The New York Times reported.
"These plans are atrocious, and entirely predictable," Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) Senior Director for Lands Sharon Buccino said in a statement emailed to EcoWatch. "They are the latest in a series of insults to these magnificent lands by the Trump administration that began when Trump illegally dismantled Bears Ears and Grand Staircase at the behest of corporate interests two years ago."
...
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1/20 NEPA rollback pipelines on public land, roads etc
https://yyy.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jan/10/us-national-parks-dismantling-under-way
This land is your land
National parks
The great dismantling of America's national parks is under way
his waking nightmare, the Trump administration has filled the parks department with anti-public land sycophants
We’re expanding our public lands project this year. Read more here.
About this content
Jonathan B Jarvis and Destry Jarvis
Fri 10 Jan 2020 06.00 ESTLast modified on Fri 10 Jan 2020 14.45 EST
Under this administration, nothing is sacred as we watch the nation’s crown jewels being recut for the rings of robber barons.
For more than 100 years, professional management of our national parks has been respected under both Democratic and Republican administrations. Yes, they have different priorities, the Democrats often expanding the system and the Republicans historically focused on building facilities in the parks for expanding visitation. But the career public servants of the National Park Service (NPS), charged with stewarding America’s most important places, such as the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone and the Statue of Liberty, were left to do their jobs.
America's public lands are in danger – and in 2020 we'll report from the frontlines
Read more
Even in the dark days of interior secretaries James Watt and Gail Norton, both former attorneys with the anti-environmental Mountain States Legal Foundation, the National Park Service (NPS) was generally left untouched, perhaps because they recognized that some institutions have too much public support or their mission too patriotic to be tossed under the proverbial bus.
This time is different and we should know, as Jon, one of this story’s authors, worked for the last 10 interior secretaries as a career NPS manager, and ultimately led the agency under Barack Obama, and Destry, Jon’s brother and co-author, has worked with the past 12 NPS directors as a conservation advocate. The change began within 24 hours of the inauguration when Donald Trump complained that the NPS was reporting smaller crowds on the National Mall than Obama had drawn. Perhaps this is when the NPS wound up on the list of transgressors. Soon the interior secretary, Ryan Zinke, attempted to double the entrance fees, rescinded climate policies and moved seasoned senior national park superintendents around to force their retirements.
[Plan clears way for mining and drilling on land stripped from Utah monument
Read more]
After Zinke’s abrupt resignation, secretary David Bernhardt populated too much of the department’s political leadership with unconfirmed, anti-public land sycophants, and announced a reorganization to install his own lieutenants to oversee super regions, realigning NPS from seven regions to twelve in the name of greater efficiency.
Next came the proclamation that career staff in Washington would be sent to the field to be closer to the people they serve, but in reality, to be out of the way and no longer an impediment to his agenda.
Then came the decisions to leave the parks open to impacts during the unfortunate government shutdown, illegally misuse entrance fees, open park trails to e-bikes, suppress climate science, kill wolf pups and bear cubs in their dens to enhance “sport hunting”, privatize campgrounds, and issue muzzle memos to park managers. With a waiver of environmental laws, bulldozers are plowing ancient cacti in national parks along the southern border in order to build a wall. Senior career park managers are likely to be replaced with unqualified political hacks.
These are not random actions. This is a systematic dismantling of a beloved institution, like pulling blocks from a Jenga tower, until it collapses. You ask, why on earth would someone want to do that to the popular National Park Service, the subject of one of Ken Burns’ acclaimed documentaries and often called “America’s best idea”?
Because if you want to drill, mine and exploit the public estate for the benefit of the industry, the last thing you want is a popular and respected agency’s voice raising alarms on behalf of conservation and historic preservation.
Because if you want the public to ignore the science of climate change, the last thing you want are trusted park rangers speaking the truth to park visitors.
Because if you want to get the federal government small enough (in the words of Grover Norquist) to “drown it in a bathtub”, the last thing you want is a government agency with high popular appeal that needs to grow rather than shrink.
It is clear that this administration cannot be trusted with the keys to the vault of our most precious places that define us as a nation, such as Mount Rushmore or Yosemite national park.
When this nightmare ends, and we begin to rebuild, we suggest it is time for Congress to consider making the National Park Service an independent institution, more akin to the Smithsonian, and no longer subject to the vicissitudes of a hostile political agenda in a Department of the Interior dominated by extractive industries and anti-public land crusaders.
Brothers Jonathan and Destry Jarvis have spent a combined 87 years in the conservation of parks and public lands. Jonathan was the 18th director of the NPS and served in the agency for 40 years. Destry has spent 47 years as an advocate for national parks working for several non-governmental organizations and in the private sector.
https://yyy.theguardian.com/environment/2019/aug/23/grand-staircase-escalante-national-monument-management-plan-blm-oil-gas-drilling-trump
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Trump administration's relentless push to expand fossil fuel production on federal lands is hitting a new snag: its own refusal to consider the climate impacts of development.
The federal Bureau of Land Management's Utah office in September voluntarily suspended 130 oil and gas leases after advocacy groups sued, arguing that BLM hadn't adequately assessed the greenhouse gas emissions associated with drilling and extraction on those leases as required by law.
The move was unusual because BLM suspended the leases on its own, without waiting for a court to rule.
Some environmental advocates say it could indicate a larger problem for the bureau.
"It is potentially a BLM-wide issue," said Jayni Hein, natural resources director at the Institute for Policy Integrity at NYU School of Law, which has been involved in similar litigation in other states. "It could have the effect of suspending even more leases across the West, and not just for oil and gas, for coal as well."
Officials in Utah had already pulled back several other lease sales earlier this year. In effect, BLM appears to be trying to get ahead of potential court rulings, advocates say.
A series of court rulings have established that BLM must conduct a thorough analysis of the climate impacts of drilling before it allows development in order to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).
In the latest ruling, a federal district court in Washington, D.C., in March ordered the bureau to redo its environmental analysis for a slate of leases in Wyoming to better assess climate impacts. In response, BLM suspended the Wyoming leases, as well as leases in Utah and Colorado that were included in the lawsuit but not directly addressed by the ruling.
The new Utah suspensions cover a different set of leases, including many sold last year. In letters sent in September to energy companies that had bought the leases, BLM said it was suspending them "based on the parallels" between the lawsuit over them and the case that resulted in the March ruling in Washington, D.C.
All told, nearly 1 million acres may now be suspended across the West,said Rebecca Fischer, an attorney with WildEarth Guardians, which filed the lawsuit in the Washington, D.C., circuit, including more than 460,000 acres covered by that lawsuit and some 300,000 acres that Utah's BLM office has suspended since the March ruling.
...
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1119 guk US national parks / Trump team seeks to ‘modernize' parks with wifi and Amazon deliveries
==
see bears ears
818 nrdc
The Trump administration sparked public outrage with its 2017 decision to reduce the size of the Bears Ears National Monument by 85 percent. Now the Bureau of Land Management has released a new plan to eliminate all protections for the remaining 15 percent—more than 80,000 acres of wilderness—from drilling and mining for coal, oil, gas, and other minerals. While we continue to fight the administration in court, you can help by calling on Interior Secretary David Bernhardt to abandon this rushed and reckless management plan.
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https://www.ecowatch.com/forest-service-logging-plan-2638830051.html
Forest Service Wants to Fast-Track Logging Without Environmental Review
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frack yosemite
Bureau of Land Management is holding three public hearings around the state this week over controversial plans to expand oil drilling, including fracking, in Central California. The first hearing is tonight in Bakersfield.
Guest: Gustavo Aguirre, Central California Environmental Justice Network
==
619
Trump administration is holding public hearings THIS WEEK on its plan to allow fracking on the doorstep of Yosemite National Park and other precious lands.(1)
Trump's "drill everywhere" plan is almost impossible to believe. He wants to frack national wildlife refuges and under schools. Yosemite. Kings Canyon. Sequoia National Park. All of it is at risk.(2)
But we can stop it by passing AB 342, California Assemblymember Al Muratsuchi's bill to ban fracking infrastructure on state lands, which would make it impossible for Trump to frack Yosemite. AB 342 just passed the Assembly, and we need to make sure it gets through the Senate and onto Governor Newsom's desk.
Will you chip in $5 to help protect Yosemite and stop Trump’s “drill everywhere” fracking plan?
California has become a leader in green policy, inaugurating one of its most environmentally friendly governors ever and embarking on a path to 100% renewable energy.(3,4)
Now Trump is threatening nearly a million acres in the state with hydraulic fracturing.(5)
The natural-gas drilling process poisons groundwater, destabilizes seismic activity, and consistently causes leaks and explosions at well sites. It increases earthquake activity -- and California has enough of its own. Fracking is so destructive that a seminal study of the process concluded that there is “no evidence that fracking can be practiced in a manner that does not threaten human health.”(6)
The videos you've seen of fire coming out of people’s sink faucets? Fracking.(7) And 11 counties in California would be affected.
We just can't allow this to happen. Right now, the Bureau of Land Management is accepting public comments about the fracking plan, and we need to raise a grassroots movement against it. And we need to pass AB 342, because oil companies need infrastructure on state-owned lands in order to transport fracked gas from federal land, so no infrastructure, no fracking. States like Maryland have had success with the same tactic, and we can do it in California.(8)
Caitlin, along with Analeeza, Annie, Brenna, Diego, Eddie, Lindsay, Mai, Mary, Molly, Raquel, and Scottie (the Courage team)
Footnotes:
1. https://www.kqed.org/news/11748822/public-hearings-on-fracking-in-central-california-begin
2. https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-trump-fracking-oil-gas-california-20190425-story.html?
3. https://grist.org/article/what-would-governor-gavin-newsom-mean-for-californias-green-leadership/
4. https://www.npr.org/2018/09/10/646373423/california-sets-goal-of-100-percent-renewable-electric-power-by-2045
5. https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/the-harms-of-fracking-new-report-details-increased-risks-of-asthma-birth-defects-and-cancer-126996/
6. https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/the-harms-of-fracking-new-report-details-increased-risks-of-asthma-birth-defects-and-cancer-126996/
7.
8. https://act.couragecampaign.org/go/23201?t=21&akid=8146%2E1986283%2EmgQvOW
https://www.alternet.org/2019/04/federal-judge-slaps-down-trumps-giveaway-to-the-coal-industry/
Thank God for Team Trump’s hard-right incompetence, because it’s difficult to imagine how much damage they could do if they weren’t stumblebums. A federal judge has ruled that ex-Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke’s order to lift a moratorium on coal leases on public lands needs to go through the environmental review process required by longstanding federal law, even if Zinke and his replacement(s) really, really didn’t feel like bothering with it....
https://www.alternet.org/2019/04/federal-judge-issues-latest-rebuke-of-trumps-attack-on-public-lands/
no lnx twit
Green groups on Saturday celebrated the latest federal ruling aimed at preventing President Donald Trump from rolling back environmental regulations that were put in place by his predecessor.
Judge Brian Morris issued a ruling late Friday stating that the Interior Department broke federal law when it lifted former President Barack Obama’s moratorium on coal mining in public lands.
Former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, who resigned last December due to multiple ethics scandals, did not order adequate studies of the environmental impact of coal, Morris said. The Trump administration had claimed the plan was “a mere policy shift” in order to avoid having to order such reviews.
Morris refuted this claim, saying Trump had initiated a “major federal action” without taking the necessary precautions required by the National Environmental Policy Act of 1970.
The judge said he would hand down another ruling in the coming months on whether to reinstate Obama’s 2016 moratorium.
“This is a victory for communities whose land, water, and way of life is threatened by new coal mining,” said Jenny Harbine, an attorney with Earthjustice, who argued the case on behalf of the Northern Cheyenne Tribe and several climate action groups. “It’s time we put their health and safety ahead of coal industry interests.”
...
==
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Court Blocks Gold Mining in Yellowstone National Park
Canadian company cannot carry out exploratory drilling for gold mining on land just north of Yellowstone National Park, a Montana district court ruled Monday.
Protecting the public lands around Yellowstone has been a bipartisan effort, as Earthjustice, which argued the case against the Canadian company, pointed out in a press release. Former Interior Sec. Ryan Zinke banned mining on public lands near Yellowstone for 20 years in October 2018, and this was made permanent in March when President Donald Trump signed a massive, bi-partisan public lands bill. But Lucky Minerals Inc. had sought permission to mine on private land in Emigrant Gulch.
"The court's ruling is a critical piece in protecting Yellowstone's Gateway from the menace of gold mining," Greater Yellowstone Coalition (GYC) Executive Director Caroline Byrd said in the press release. "The Trump administration, the Obama administration, Congress, the Forest Service, the Park County Commission, thousands of citizens and more than 420 Montana businesses all agree, Yellowstone is more valuable than gold."
The Greater Yellowstone Coalition joined with the Park County Environmental Council to challenge Lucky Minerals. Park County District Judge Brenda Gilbert ruled in their favor, invalidating the Montana Department of Environmental Quality's (DEQ) permit for the project,The Associated Press reported.
Gilbert had already ruled in May 2018 that the DEQ permit did not consider the drilling's impact on water quality and wildlife, according to GYC and Earthjustice. However, a provision of the Montana Environmental Policy Act prohibits judges from blocking projects because of inadequate environmental analyses, The Associated Press reported.
...
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ref 1
https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/todd-wynn-interior-ethics_us_5b23f523e4b0f9178a9cd1fc
...Ryan Zinke's information from outside organizations comes under the control of a political appointee whose ties to former employers have raised ethics questions.
A top political appointee at the Interior Department repeatedly scheduled meetings with his former employers in an apparent violation of federal ethics rules,HuffPost has learned.
Todd Wynn, director of the agency’s powerful Office of Intergovernmental and External Affairs, worked as the task force director at the American Legislative Exchange Council from 2011 to 2013, overseeing the energy, environment and agriculture division, and organizing three national conferences a year, a copy of his :{résumé:(style="list-style:none;margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;box-sizing:inherit"):}: shows. He then joined the utility trade group Edison Electric Institute, :{paying:(style="list-style:none;margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;box-sizing:inherit"):}: to :{participate:(style="list-style:none;margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;box-sizing:inherit"):}: in the ALEC task force he previously led.
On Oct. 27, he planned a 30-minute video call with :{Jennifer Butler:(style="list-style:none;margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;box-sizing:inherit"):}:, a senior policy adviser at the ALEC-linked State Policy Network, according to calendars released under a Freedom of Information Act request. On Dec. 19, he scheduled another such call with :{Grant Kidwell:(style="list-style:none;margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;box-sizing:inherit"):}:, the ALEC director in charge of his former task force. A spokeswoman for ALEC denied that the meeting occurred.
Two days later, Wynn slotted 30 minutes for a call with :{Rich Lindsey:(style="list-style:none;margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;box-sizing:inherit"):}:, who heads the energy and environment committee at the :{oil-funded:(style="list-style:none;margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;box-sizing:inherit"):}: Council of State Governments ― where, according to his :{CV:(style="list-style:none;margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;box-sizing:inherit"):}: and :{financial disclosures:(style="list-style:none;margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;box-sizing:inherit"):}:, Wynn :{also served:(style="list-style:none;margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;box-sizing:inherit"):}: as a committee member from June 2015 until he joined the Interior Department.
It’s unclear what might have been discussed during the calls, and indeed, HuffPost could not confirm whether they definitely took place as scheduled ― but the calendars of agency officials are generally reliable. The Interior Department and the three political operatives did not respond to HuffPost’s requests for comment on Friday.
Wynn’s meetings with ALEC and its affiliate did not violate the ethics pledge because his formal employment at the organization ended more than two years before he joined the agency, Interior Department spokeswoman Faith Vander Voort argued Monday via email. She said Wynn was not employed by the Council of State Governments.
Vander Voort did not respond to questions about Wynn’s continued work with ALEC through the Edison Electric Institute, his role at the Council of State Governments, or provide examples of other agency appointees with similar arrangements.
[pix looks like a proud boy]
CASCADE POLICY INSTITUTETodd Wynn appears in a video posted on YouTube by the conservative Cascade Policy Institute, one of his former employers.
But on Oct. 16, Wynn :{signed:(style="list-style:none;margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;box-sizing:inherit"):}: President Donald Trump’s :{ethics pledge:(style="list-style:none;margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;box-sizing:inherit"):}: prohibiting political appointees in the executive branch from participating “in any particular matter involving specific parties that is directly and substantially related to [one’s] former employer or former clients.” Barred interactions include “any meeting or other communication relating to the performance of one’s official duties with a former employer or former client, unless the communication applies to a particular matter of general applicability and participation in the meeting or other event is open to all interested parties.”
The scheduled calls :{also appear to violate:(style="list-style:none;margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;box-sizing:inherit"):}: the “government-wide regulatory standards of conduct” that “bar [Wynn] from meeting personally with any former client or employer he served in the year prior to the meeting,” Walter Shaub, the former head of the Office of Government Ethics, said in an email.
Apparentconflicts of interestare not new at the Interior Department. In March, :{HuffPost reported:(style="list-style:none;margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;box-sizing:inherit"):}: that Lori Mashburn, the agency’s White House liaison, attended two private events hosted by her former employer, the conservative Heritage Foundation. Her attendance violated the same ethics pledge Wynn signed. In May, newly released calendars showed David Bernhardt, the Interior Department’s deputy secretary, met with a trio of lobbyists for MGM Resorts International, the casino-resort giant that his longtime former employer also represents.
Wynn has been a rising star in the influential network of fossil fuel-funded think tanks that push policies and produce pseudoscientific research to muddle the debate on climate change. He maintained those ties since taking over in a :{critical position:(style="list-style:none;margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;box-sizing:inherit"):}: that controls the flow of information at the Interior Department, serving as a gatekeeper between Secretary Ryan Zinke and outside organizations.
In November, Wynn attended an energy conference hosted by the Heartland Institute,a former tobacco industry defender turned aggressive climate change denial outfit. Later that month he met with Reaching America, a group that :{advocates:(style="list-style:none;margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;box-sizing:inherit"):}: for increasing fossil fuel extraction as a means of reducing racial inequality. Throughout that month, he held four separate meetings with the Property and Environment Research Center, a Montana-based “free market” group :{associated:(style="list-style:none;margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;box-sizing:inherit"):}: with the State Policy Network.
===
ref2
Interior Department advisory group relied on a top energy industry lobbyist to help draft a list of potential regulatory rollbacks, documents obtained by HuffPost show.
At least one suggestion ― reducing the role that local environmental concerns play in leasing federal lands for oil and gas development ― quickly became a reality.
The Onshore Work Group, charged with recommending how Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke ought to regulate federal lands available for fossil fuel development, already has deep ties to the energy industry. Its chair is Kathleen Sgamma, the president of the oil and gas industry group Western Energy Alliance and a vocal proponent of tearing down many Obama-era environmental protections.
But metadata from the working group’s first draft of recommendations further link the Interior Department with the industry it is tasked with regulating. According to the metadata, Tripp Parks, the Western Energy Alliance’s head of government affairs, was the initial author of the document.
The working group belongs to a growing cadre of industry-friendly advisory bodies Zinke has set up to guide his agenda. In November, he assembled a wildlife conservation advisory group dominated by people with links to trophy hunting. Most members of a public lands advisory group have connections to the outdoor recreation industry.
“It’s a huge concern,” said John DeCicco, a University of Michigan research professor who has worked for the environmental advocacy group Environmental Defense Fund. Under previous administrations, DeCicco said, committees like these were usually composed of scientific experts. “What it really represents is that certain powerful interests, moneyed interests, they have the ear of policymakers who are running roughshod over due process and running roughshod over important checks and balances that are supposed to be there.”
Theworking group was set up under the umbrella of the Royalty Policy Committee, a group tasked with recommending the royalty rates the federal government should charge for drilling. Many of the committee’s members hail from the oil and gas sector or have significant ties to it. Whereas the same committee had a narrow, technical focus under previous administrations, under Zinke, it has been making sweeping proposals to roll back regulations on federal lands. The committee members who set up the working group have proposed measures like charging bargain-basement royalties for deepwater drilling operations and have described their mandate as “looking at steps to be taken to make DOI a better business partner to its investors.”
Some of those steps appear to have been come directly from the Western Energy Alliance. A document obtained under the Freedom of Information Act reveals that Parks created the draft recommendations one day before Sgamma circulated them to committee members overseeing the working group.
“It’s a very clear instance of regulatory capture,” said Pat Gallagher, the Sierra Club’s legal director. Of the recommendations, he said, “There is no other object than to get drill bits in the ground as quickly as possible.”
At best, Gallagher said, industry representatives are creating an echo chamber inside the Interior Department. Several of Parks’ recommendations mirror a report the department released in October on “energy burdens.” Sgamma told HuffPost that Parks’ name appears in the document’s metadata because she asked him to pull out relevant sections of the report. This was “the full extent of my staff’s involvement,” she wrote in an email. What it really represents is that certain powerful interests, moneyed interests, they have the ear of policy makers who are running roughshod over due process.
John DeCicco, University of Michigan research professor
The recommendations included items that had been on Western Energy Alliance’s wish list for years, like a proposal to abandon the practice of re-evaluating long-term leases instead of automatically renewing them, which allowed federal regulators to plan around major changes to the landscape, such as new suburban developments.
Sgamma circulated the draft ― which she described as focusing on “increasing the competitiveness of federal lands” ― on Jan. 9, inviting her fellow group members to make changes. Some of Parks’ initial recommendations were cut from later drafts, but the agency has already taken action on one recommendation that survived: The Interior Department quietly ceased the Obama-era practice of planning local drilling sites according to local environmental concerns on Jan. 31. The industry had long argued that the practice created a redundant roadblock to new drilling projects.
“We’re very pleased,” Sgamma said at the time.
A handful of the most influential oil and gas developers in the country fund the Western Energy Alliance. Although it does not currently publicize the names of its members, the alliance has included Devon Energy, Halliburton, Anadarko Petroleum and Pioneer Natural Resources. Its political action committee donated $5,000 to Zinke’s campaigns while he served as Montana’s lone congressman.
The Western Energy Alliance fiercely opposed the Obama administration’s efforts to regulate the oil and gas industry,sometimes to the point of adopting a siege mentality. It invited Rick Berman, known for his ruthless, corporate-backed PR campaigns against environmentalists, to address its members in 2014. At the event, Berman framed the struggle against environmental groups as “an endless war.”
The draft recommendations are not the only example of the Western Energy Alliance having an outsized voice in the Trump administration. Parks, who is not registered as a lobbyist, previously presented an Interior advisory group with 15 recommendations for scrapping protections for the greater sage-grouse, which the industry felt impeded new energy projects; the advisory group adopted 13 of them.
The Interior Department did not respond to HuffPost’s questions about Parks’ role in drafting the recommendations. Sgamma has defended her role in making policy recommendations to the Interior Department by noting she has subject matter expertise. “I’m not an alternate member of the Royalty Policy Committee because of my sparkling personality,” she told HuffPost.
Sgamma added that the Interior Department had considered scrapping several of the Western Energy Alliance’s least favorite regulations even before the formation of her working group.
But the alliance’s relationship with the Trump administration also stretches back many months.
Entries in Zinke’s calendar show he met with representatives of the alliance in April 2017. A brief prepared for the secretary reminded him of a Trump administration order that for every new regulation created, agencies must place two old regulations on the chopping block.
The brief recommended that Zinke ask the alliance lobbyists which regulations he should scrap. But it wasn’t a matter of urgency: The agency has already rolled back more than two regulations for every new rule, the brief made clear, with the result that it had “built [up] a credit.”
==
https://www.ecowatch.com/fracking-california-public-lands-2594203156.html
The Trump administration took the first steps on Wednesday towards opening up 1.6 million acres of public land in California to fracking and oil drilling, The Sacramento Bee reported.
In a notice of intent published on the Federal Register Wednesday, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) said it would prepare an environmental impact statement on the use of fracking on 400,000 acres of public land and 1.2 million acres of mineral estate overseen by BLM in California counties including Fresno, San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara, The Hill reported.
Concerned citizens have 30 days from Wednesday to comment on the proposal.
The move would lift a five-year moratorium on leasing federal land in California to oil companies, The Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) said in a statement.
It also comes less than a week after the Trump administration proposed revoking California's waiver to set its own vehicle emissions standards under the Clean Air Act and just days after Trump blamed the state's environmental policies for the record-breaking wildfires it is currently battling.
"It's a coordinated attack on California by the Trump administration," CBD senior attorney Clare Lakewood told The Hill.
No federal lands in the state have been leased to oil companies since 2013, when a federal judge found that the BLM had leased land in Monterey County without fully considering the environmental impact of fracking.
Environmentalists are concerned that fracking can increase the risk of earthquakes and contaminate groundwater, The Sacramento Bee reported.
The later risk is increased in California, a 2015 report from the California Council on Science and Technology found, because fracking in the state happens in areas with shallow depths close to groundwater and uses an especially high amount of toxic chemicals, The CBD reported.
Residents of San Luis Obispo are even considering a ballot measure this November that would ban new fracking operations and oil wells in parts of the county that are unincorporated, though it would have no impact on what happens on federal land, The Sacramento Bee reported.
One of the key movers behind that initiative, Charles Varni of the Coalition to Protect San Luis Obispo County, told The Sacramento Bee that he was angered by the BLM's decision.
"We don't want to see any expansion of oil and gas extraction in San Luis Obispo County," he said. "We want to protect our groundwater resources for higher uses."
Earthjustice attorney Greg Loarie said that, while he was glad that the BLM was investigating the impacts of fracking, he thought such an investigation was a little beside the point.
"[A]nalyzing the impacts of fracking is like analyzing the impacts of smoking cigarettes: there's really no question that more fracking would be terrible for California," he said in the CBD statement.
RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB
- Newly Elected President of Mexico to Ban Fracking ›
- Second Controversial Fracked Gas Pipeline Runs Into Legal Trouble ›
- Trump officials open door to fracking in California ›
==
==
Zinke Increases Hunting and Fishing Areas in 30 Wildlife Refuges
Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke is expanding or opening hunting in 30 National Wildlife Refuges, the Department of the Interior (DOI) announced Friday.
The move will open more than 251,000 acres and raise the total number of places where hunting is permitted to 377 and where fishing is permitted to 312. The expansion will be in effect in time for the 2018-2019 hunting season.
"American sportsmen and women contribute over a billion dollars a year to fund conservation. Without hunters and anglers, we wouldn't be able to conserve wildlife and habitat; and, without access to our public lands like National Wildlife Refuges, many hunters would have nowhere to go," Zinke said, explaining his decision.
Federal law mandates that hunting and fishing can only take place in wildlife refuges if it does not conflict with conservation, The Hill pointed out.
Refuges to be opened to certain types of hunting and fishing for the first time include Florida's Lake Woodruff National Wildlife Refuge to turkey hunting, Illinois' Hackmatack National Wildlife Refuge to migratory bird and game hunting, Maine and New Hampshire's Umbagog National Wildlife Refuge to turkey hunting, Michigan's Shiawassee National Wildlife Refuge to additional migratory bird, small game and furbearer hunting, Minnesota's Glacial Ridge National Wildlife Refuge to some gamebird and small mammal hunting, Montana's Swan River National Wildlife Refuge to big game hunting, New Jersey's Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge to wild turkey and squirrel hunting, New Mexico's Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge to Eurasian-collared dove and Gambel's quail hunting, North Dakota's J. Clark Salyer National Wildlife Refuge and Lostwood National Wildlife Refuge to moose hunting, Ohio's Cedar Point National Wildlife Refuge to white-tailed deer hunting, Ohio's Ottawa National Wildlife Refuge to certain gamebird, small mammal and furbearer hunting, Pennsylvania's John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge at Tinicum to white-tailed deer hunting and Wisconsin 's Trempealeau National Wildlife Refuge to certain gamebird, small mammal and furbearer hunting.
Responses in Montana to hunting expansions at the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge and the Swan River National Wildlife refuge show the range of conservationist views on the issue.
When the expansion was first proposed in May, Backcountry Hunters & Anglers Conservation Director John Gale praised Zinke's efforts.
"Certainly refuges are a special place that provide refuge for fish and wildlife, that's what [their] purpose is," Gale said. "So there has to be a balance of use across the refuge spaces, and we're glad Secretary Zinke is working with refuge managers all across the system to make sure we're achieving that important balance, while expanding opportunities at the same time," Gale told Montana Public Radio.
But Friends of the Wild Swan member Arlene Montgomery said the expanded hunting access was not needed in a state that had plenty of it already.
"Our refuge system should be a refuge for wildlife, and I don't know that we should be having hunting on the refuges," Montgomery told Montana Public Radio. "The Department of Interior needs to also recognize that there are other uses for these lands besides just hunting and fishing."
Zinke has been criticized in the past for favoring hunting and fishing over protecting wildlife.
He promoted a proposal to allow hunting tactics described as "cruel" by conservation groups in national parks in Alaska, such as shooting bear and wolf cubs in their dens.
In August, various green groups sued the DOI over its International Wildlife Conservation Council, claiming the group broke federal law by including so many members that benefited or advocated trophy hunting, CNN reported.
Also in August, the DOI's Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) justified a reversal of a neonicotinoid ban in National Wildlife Refuges partly by arguing the use of the bee-harming pesticides was necessary to grow more grain favored by waterfowl prized by hunters.
However, it is also true that granting hunting and fishing permits and charging equipment fees have been a major part of how the U.S. pays for conservation, and a decline in both activities is proving challenging to wildlife agencies, NPR reported in March.
A FWS study found that the percentage of Americans who hunt has fallen by half in 50 years.
"Conservationists need to be looking at what is the next step to keep our conservation programs and places strong and healthy," Wisconsin Nature Conservancy Director Mary Jean Huston told NPR. "Things need to evolve."
Some ideas include new sales taxes or finding ways to monetize more currently popular outdoor activities like wildlife viewing.
Hunting and fishing advocates favored Zinke for Interior Secretary among potential front-runners because of his commitment to increasing their access to public lands, but some have also come to criticize him for recommending shrinking national monuments for fossil fuel extraction, CNN reported in 2017.
"We can have all the access we want to a concrete parking lot, but that access doesn't mean anything if that fish and wildlife habitat isn't there," Backcountry Hunters & Anglers President Land Tawney told CNN....
==
https://www.ecowatch.com/fracking-california-public-lands-2594203156.html
Trump Moves to Open 1.6 Million Acres of California Public Lands to Fracking
The Trump administration took the first steps on Wednesday towards opening up 1.6 million acres of public land in California to fracking and oil drilling, The Sacramento Bee reported.
In a notice of intent published on the Federal Register Wednesday, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) said it would prepare an environmental impact statement on the use of fracking on 400,000 acres of public land and 1.2 million acres of mineral estate overseen by BLM in California counties including Fresno, San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara, :{T:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}::{he Hill reported:(style="background-color:#ffffff;"):}:.
Concerned citizens have 30 days from Wednesday to comment on the proposal.
The move would lift a five-year moratorium on leasing federal land in California to oil companies, The Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) said in a statement.
It also comes less than a week after the Trump administration proposed revoking California's waiver to set its own vehicle emissions standards under the Clean Air Act and just days after Trump blamed the state's environmental policies for the record-breaking wildfires it is currently battling.
"It's a coordinated attack on California by the Trump administration," CBD senior attorney Clare Lakewood told The Hill.
No federal lands in the state have been leased to oil companies since 2013, when a federal judge found that the BLM had leased land in Monterey County without fully considering the environmental impact of fracking.
Environmentalists are concerned that fracking can increase the risk of earthquakes and contaminate groundwater, The Sacramento Bee reported.
The later risk is increased in California, a 2015 report from the California Council on Science and Technology found, because fracking in the state happens in areas with shallow depths close to groundwater and uses an especially high amount of toxic chemicals, The CBD reported.
Residents of San Luis Obispo are even considering a ballot measure this November that would ban new fracking operations and oil wells in parts of the county that are unincorporated, though it would have no impact on what happens on federal land, The Sacramento Bee reported.
One of the key movers behind that initiative, Charles Varni of the Coalition to Protect San Luis Obispo County, told The Sacramento Bee that he was angered by the BLM's decision.
"We don't want to see any expansion of oil and gas extraction in San Luis Obispo County," he said. "We want to protect our groundwater resources for higher uses."
Earthjustice attorney Greg Loarie said that, while he was glad that the BLM was investigating the impacts of fracking, he thought such an investigation was a little beside the point.
"[A]nalyzing the impacts of fracking is like analyzing the impacts of smoking cigarettes: there's really no question that more fracking would be terrible for California," he said in the CBD statement.
==
==
our hizzy 2x one day
Trump Moves to Open 1.6 Million Acres of California Public Lands to Fracking
The Trump administration took the first steps on Wednesday towards opening up 1.6 million acres of public land in California to fracking and oil drilling, The Sacramento Bee reported.
In a notice of intent published on the Federal Register Wednesday, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) said it would prepare an environmental impact statement on the use of fracking on 400,000 acres of public land and 1.2 million acres of mineral estate overseen by BLM in California counties including Fresno, San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara, The Hill reported.
Concerned citizens have 30 days from Wednesday to comment on the proposal.
The move would lift a five-year moratorium on leasing federal land in California to oil companies, The Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) said in a statement.
It also comes less than a week after the Trump administration proposed revoking California's waiver to set its own vehicle emissions standards under the Clean Air Act and just days after Trump blamed the state's environmental policies for the record-breaking wildfires it is currently battling.
"It's a coordinated attack on California by the Trump administration," CBD senior attorney Clare Lakewood told The Hill.
No federal lands in the state have been leased to oil companies since 2013, when a federal judge found that the BLM had leased land in Monterey County without fully considering the environmental impact of fracking.
Environmentalists are concerned that fracking can increase the risk of earthquakes and contaminate groundwater, The Sacramento Bee reported.
The later risk is increased in California, a 2015 report from the California Council on Science and Technology found, because fracking in the state happens in areas with shallow depths close to groundwater and uses an especially high amount of toxic chemicals, The CBD reported.
Residents of San Luis Obispo are even considering a ballot measure this November that would ban new fracking operations and oil wells in parts of the county that are unincorporated, though it would have no impact on what happens on federal land,The Sacramento Bee reported.
One of the key movers behind that initiative, Charles Varni of the Coalition to Protect San Luis Obispo County, told The Sacramento Bee that he was angered by the BLM's decision.
"We don't want to see any expansion of oil and gas extraction in San Luis Obispo County," he said. "We want to protect our groundwater resources for higher uses."
Earthjustice attorney Greg Loarie said that, while he was glad that the BLM was investigating the impacts of fracking, he thought such an investigation was a little beside the point.
"[A]nalyzing the impacts of fracking is like analyzing the impacts of smoking cigarettes: there's really no question that more fracking would be terrible for California," he said in the CBD statement.
RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB
- Newly Elected President of Mexico to Ban Fracking ›
- Second Controversial Fracked Gas Pipeline Runs Into Legal Trouble ›
- Trump officials open door to fracking in California ›
==
https://www.ecowatch.com/mountain-valley-pipeline-construction-halted-2593256634.html
FERC Halts Work on Mountain Valley Pipeline
On Friday, the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) ordered work stopped on the controversial Mountain Valley Pipeline that would carry fracked natural gas along a 303-mile route from West Virginia to Virginia, Reuters reported.
The order is the consequence of a legal victory for pipeline opponents July 27, in which three federal appeals judges revoked two permits for the pipeline to cross the Jefferson National Forest, ruling that the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management had not properly reviewed the project before issuing the permits, The Washington Post reported. The judges ordered the agencies to redo the permits.
"Should the agencies authorize alternative routes, (Mountain Valley) may need to revise substantial portions of the project route across non-federal lands, possibly requiring further authorizations and environmental review," FERC said in explaining its decision to halt construction, Reuters reported.
TheSierra Club, one of the environmental groups that brought the suit against the pipeline, applauded the FERC's decision....
april 2015
April 13, 2015
Last week, Claire Moser of the Public Lands Project at the Center for American Progress highlighted the rolethat Richard Berman’s public relations firm, Berman and Co., is playing in a campaign to sell off America’s national forests and public lands. Berman and Co. is notorious for using nonprofit front groups to wage deceptive campaigns on behalf of corporate clients. One of Berman’s employees, Will Coggin, has been spamming newspapers with op-eds arguing that publicland management should be moved from the federal government to the states, who are more likely to sell the land for energy development.
Each of Coggin’s nearly identical columns — published under the guise of Berman’s Environmental Policy Alliance project — accuses several sportsmen’s groups who oppose shifting control of public lands of being “green decoys” because they have received some funding from environmentally engaged foundations. “A quick look at their ‘dark money’ financial backers makes their true motive clear: To lock away land from being utilized for economic growth and jobs,” writes Coggin.
It takes a lot of gall for a Berman operative to attack other organizations over “dark money,” especially as part of an attack campaign that appears to have gotten its seed money from a foundation described as “the dark-money ATM of the conservative movement” by Mother Jones. In 2013, Donors Trust, a donor-advised fund “dedicated to promoting a free society,” gave $57,250 to Berman’s Center for Consumer Freedom “for hunting organization opposition research.” That same year, the Center for Consumer Freedom reported spending $71,132 on research into “various environmental activist groups and their activities.” The “Green Decoys” project debuted in January 2014.
Since launching, Coggin has published at least 29 op-eds and letters-to-the editor attacking groups such as Trout Unlimited, the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, and Backcountry Hunters & Anglers, including three more since Moser’s story. None of them mention that Coggin works for Berman and Co., instead listing him as an analyst at either the Center for Consumer Freedom or the Environmental Policy Alliance. Only three mention that the Environmental Policy Alliance’s parent organization, the Center for Organizational Research and Education, “is supported by a variety of businesses and foundations, including those in the hospitality, agriculture and energy industries.”
One publication, the Sierra Sun, posted an editor’s note after running a letter last August, writing that Coggin had “misidentified himself as a senior research analyst for the Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit Environmental Policy Alliance” and is “is actually employed by Berman and Co.” The note closed with an apology to readers: “the Sierra Sun regrets publishing this misinformation.”
Coggin’s refusal to admit his own agenda while casting aspersions on others is not the only deceptive aspect of his and Berman’s public lands campaign. In a Washington Examiner op-ed last October about Trout Unlimited’s opposition to the U.S. Bureau of Land Management issuing oil and gas leases in Nevada, Coggin cited research by University of Wyoming professor Timothy Considine claiming that up to 208,000 jobs would be created if all of the oil and gas projects on federal lands in seven Western states were approved.
Unmentioned by Coggin? Professor Considine’s report was funded by another one of Berman’s front groups, the Employment Policies Institute,and “prepared under a consulting agreement with the Interstate Policy Alliance.” On his curriculum vitae, Professor Considine also lists himself as a consultant for the Interstate Policy Alliance on “energy development on federal lands.” The Interstate Policy Alliance is a project of the Employment Policies Institute that works with the think tanks in the conservative State Policy Network to “support and promote state-based research” from a free market perspective. The Guardian recently documented how the Interstate Policy Alliance is funding research critical of the Environmental Protection Agency’s power plant rules.
Coggin isn’t the only Berman employee to cite Professor Considine’s research while arguing for opening up public lands to development without acknowledging their ties. In June 2014, Anastasia Swearingen, a Berman employee, published op-eds in the *Las Vegas Review-Journal* and the *Salt Lake Tribune* that cited Professor Considine’s research as proof that “radical environmentalists have prevented Western states from reaping enormous economic benefits.”Like theSierra Sun, the Salt Lake Tribune came to regret describing the op-ed as having been written by a representative of the Environmental Policy Alliance.
The column now carries an editor’s note as well: “This commentary originally described the author as a senior research analyst for the Environmental Policy Alliance. In fact, Anastasia Swearingen works for the public relations firm Berman and Co., which manages the Environmental Policy Alliance and represents clients in the energy industry.”
Related Tags: Corporate, Disclosure, Financial, Governance & Legislation, Lobbying, Organizations, Transparency
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That led Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), managing the bill on the floor in the absence of Armed Services Chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.), to object to Corker's attempt to offer the amendment and remedy the blue-slip problem yesterday.
Corker, in an impassioned floor speech, said he was disappointed that members of his own party were refusing to vote on the bill because it would "upset the president."
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"I can't believe it!" he said. "I would bet that 95 percent of people on this side of the aisle support, intellectually, this amendment. I would bet that. I would bet more than 95 percent."
Corker said he would allow the process to move forward without his amendment, but the bill has hit a web of other roadblocks.
Republican Sens. Mike Lee of Utah and Rand Paul of Kentucky are holding up the NDAA until they get votes on a pair of amendments related to indefinite detention at military prisons. Other senators, meanwhile, have threatened to hold up the process if Lee and Paul do get their votes, Inhofe said.
Corker estimated yesterday that there are "about 15 people blocking the bill." The situation has put the Senate in a bind and could effectively mean that no amendments get a vote.
"That's a possibility," said Inhofe.
That includes two proposals on critical minerals — elements deemed vital to national security — that have sparked an outcry from environmentalists.
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One, from Heller, would make myriad changes to environmental permitting for mining, including designating a lead federal agency and slapping a 30-month time limit on National Environmental Policy Act reviews.
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The other, from Murkowski and Heller, would require the Interior Department to determine which minerals are "critical" and address permitting delays.
Also included in a bipartisan manager's package of amendments awaiting approval is a proposal by Minnesota Democratic Sens. Tina Smith and Amy Klobuchar to codify a land exchange between PolyMet Mining Corp. and the Forest Service, paving the way for a major copper-nickel mine in Minnesota (E&E Daily, June 12).
https://www.ecowatch.com/nestle-water-california-2582073595.html
U.S. Allows Nestlé to Keep Piping Water From Drought-Ridden Southern California
The U.S. Forest Service offered Nestlé a three-year permit on Wednesday to keep taking millions of gallons of water from the San Bernardino National Forest in California, the Associated Press reported.
The offer has certain restrictions. Nestlé, which sells bottled water under the Arrowhead brand, can continue piping from the Strawberry Creek watershed "when there is water available consistent with the forest's Land Management Plan," according to the AP, citing the Forest Service offer. The watershed is currently rated as "impaired."
==
omg
Agency hires GOP operative to promote maintenance fund
Kellie Lunney, E&E News reporter
Published: Friday, May 4, 2018
A veteran GOP strategist and former aide to Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) has joined the National Park Service as a top adviser.
==
National Parks Added $36 Billion to U.S. Economy Last Year
As the nation observes National Park Week, the Interior Department released a report Wednesday touting that visits to national parks added $35.8 billion to the U.S. economy in 2017—a nearly $1 billion increase from the year prior—and supported 306,000 jobs.
The National Park Service said more than 330 million visitors spent $18.2 billion in the communities near the national parks last year.
==
'Keep It in the Ground' Approach to Fossil Fuels on Public Lands Would Cut Climate Emissions, Study Confirms
By Justin Mikulka
Limiting fossil fuel production on U.S. federal lands would reduce both global oil consumption and overall carbon emissions, according to a new study by the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI), a research organization focused on sustainable development. In the study, SEI researchers specifically examined the policies proposed in the "Keep It in the Ground Act," which would ban new and renewed leases to extract oil, gas, and coal on all federal lands, and was introduced in Congress in 2015, 2016, and again in 2017.
...
==
three bills currently moving through Congress:
- The No New Parks Bill (H.R. 3990): Since 1906, presidents of both parties have used the Antiquities Act to safeguard public lands, waters, and historic sites. But H.R. 3990 would gut the Antiquities Act, ending that tradition and weakening future presidents' abilities to preserve our national heritage.
- The Bears Ears Elimination Act (H.R. 4532): This bill undermines the wishes of tribal communities who have advocated for years to protect the sacred sites and cultural resources of Bears Ears National Monument. H.R. 4532 would not only roll back existing protections for Bears Ears, it would also silence the voices of key tribal leaders and local communities who want this sacred land protected.
- The Grand Staircase Giveaway Act (H.R. 4558): Much like H.R. 4532, this bill would cement the Trump administration's massive cuts to the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument into law. By codifying Trump's attacks on Grand Staircase, H.R. 4558 robs the meaning and the value of the protections over this land.
We need your help to show Congress we will not stand for these attacks
How Rob Bishop Plans to Gut the Antiquities Act | Outside Online
https://www.outsideonline.com/2248866/how-rob-bishop-plans-gut-antiquities-act
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No More Parks? | Sierra Club
https://www.sierraclub.org/lay-of-the-land/2017/10/no-more-parks
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House considers bill to prohibit national monuments that protect ...
https://thinkprogress.org/house-bill-limit-presidential-authority-monuments-b44751ce...
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Testimony of the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition ... - gov.house.docs
docs.house.gov/meetings/II/II10/.../HHRG-115-II10-Wstate-ChapooseS-20180109.pd...
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Redrock Headlines - Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance
https://suwa.org/redrock-headlines/
1.
Stop Rep. Stewart's Grand Staircase Giveaway Bill!
https://suwa.org/stop-rep-stewarts-grand-staircase-giveaway-bill/
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H.R.4558 - 115th Congress (2017-2018): Grand Staircase Escalante ...
https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/4558
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Cosponsors - H.R.4558 - 115th Congress (2017-2018): Grand ...
https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/4558/cosponsors
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| Rep. Bishop, Rob [R-UT-1]* | 12/06/2017 |
|---|---|
| Rep. Love, Mia B. [R-UT-4]* | 12/06/2017 |
| Rep. Curtis, John R. [R-UT-3]* | 12/06/2017 |
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/29122017/wyoming-powder-river-basin-coal-subsidies-climate-change-oil-gas-trump
end of choke hold series, no many links
How Federal Giveaways to Big Coal Leave Ranchers and Taxpayers Out in the Cold
Short cuts, subsidies and tax breaks helped create 7,000 jobs in the Powder River Basin. Damage to water, air and land is part of the price borne by the public, too.
By Neela Banerjee, Robert McClure
DEC 29, 2017
This story was also published on WyoFile.
On the morning after the autumn's first snow, L.J. Turner looked out over a creek near his house that reliably watered his family's livestock for more than 70 years. A third-generation Wyoming rancher, Turner remembered hunting rabbits there amid lush marsh grasses and high cottonwood trees when he was a boy in the 1950s.
Then the nation's three largest coal mines began to dig in downhill from his 10,000-acre ranch. To get to the coal, they blasted through and drained the region's aquifers. The marsh grasses vanished. The creek began to recede and eventually ran dry, as did a well Turner dug to feed a livestock watering trough.
As the mines grew and oil and gas wells came, Turner lost not only his ranch's abundant water, but also 6,000 acres he once leased as grazing land—scraped away to reach the coal. Now his cattle herd is half what it was, calves near the coal mines die at alarming rates, and he has had to spend thousands of dollars drilling deeper and deeper wells, eating into an already reduced income.
"You can't really do a whole lot about this as an individual, and there's not a reason or a lot of benefit to sitting there and beating your head against the wall," said Turner, who sued the state unsuccessfully over the loss of water. "It's just, you have to change."
Over the last 40 years, Turner and some of his neighbors have paid a heavy price for the development of energy resources beneath the sagebrush-studded high plains where he lives in the Powder River Basin, a West Virginia-sized swath straddling Montana and Wyoming. The wave of fossil fuel extraction brought jobs and money. It also depleted aquifers that allowed people to live and ranch here for generations, devoured thousands of rural acres, and worsened air quality.
American taxpayers everywhere have paid heavily, too. The federal government owns most of the coal, oil and gas in the ground here. And it has fostered mining and drilling through a host of subsidies, including tax breaks, cheap leases and low royalties that permit fossil fuel corporations to privatize the benefits while socializing many of the costs. Corporations have been able to lease federal coal at $1 a ton or less, use loopholes to halve official royalty rates, and take risks that could push the costs of land reclamation onto taxpayers.
Direct fossil fuel subsidies by the federal government amount to about $10 billion annually in tax breaks and deductions, according to a conservative estimate by Taxpayers for Common Sense, a watchdog group. Oil and gas companies, for instance, can deduct the bulk of a well's drilling costs in the year they are incurred, as opposed to writing off the capital expenditures over many years as other industries do. That deduction cost taxpayers almost $1.5 billion in fiscal year 2015, and "distorts markets by encouraging more investment in the oil and natural gas industry," according to the Treasury Department.
Tallies of direct subsidies don't include the hundreds of millions of dollars in lost tax revenues from undervalued leases and royalty rates. They also don't account for billions taxpayers shell out to clean up after fossil fuel extraction or the resulting damage to human health and the environment from climate change.
After calculating all the effects, the International Monetary Fund estimated that governments worldwide pay more than $5.3 trillion annually to support the burning of fossil fuels. The United States is the second-most prolific fossil fuel subsidizer, behind China, according to the 2017 study.
"We're a century and a half into coal and oil. These are not fledgling industries," said Dan Bucks, former director of the Montana Department of Revenue and a consultant on tax and conservation issues. "We're subsidizing fuels with enormous environmental costs especially climate change, and it can't be justified when we know we can supply our energy needs by other means.
"The subsidies slow the natural transition to a more competitive and environmentally sound energy future," Bucks added.
Choke Hold
Industry spends considerable amounts to hold on to this taxpayer support, part of a multi-pronged strategy it deploys across courtrooms, legislatures, news media and in Congress to preserve its bottom line. During the 2016 federal election cycle, fossil fuel companies laid out $354 million in campaign donations and lobbying, according to a report by the climate watchdog group Oil Change International. Over the same period, the industry enjoyed $29.4 billion in direct and indirect federal and state subsidies, the group estimated.
Many fossil fuel projects would likely have gone ahead even without the tax and royalty breaks. But reducing the number and forcing companies to pay for the impact on air, water, land and the climate would shrink fossil fuel extraction markedly, analysts said.
If coal mining in the Powder River Basin had gone slower or been less widespread, things could have ended up differently for the Turners.
"There are significant external costs that companies don't pay for, and if they had to pay for them, we would have a lot less coal production" in the Powder River Basin, said Mark Squillace, director of the Natural Resources Law Center at the University of Colorado Law School. "And there's no doubt that if you had less coal development there, you would have less aquifer depletion."
The government has long subsidized industries to foster their growth. Renewable energy gets tax breaks—but their cost to taxpayers to date is smaller than for fossil fuels and they're written to sunset in the future. Fossil fuel supports have lasted for decades, with two oil subsidies about a century old.
In 2009, President Barack Obama pledged to phase out fossil fuel subsidies by 2020, citing a need to keep more fossil fuels in the ground and avoid the worst damage from climate change. The Republican-led Congress took no action on Obama's budget requests to end them. In his last year in office, the Interior Department suspended new federal coal leases in order to overhaul the program so it better reflects environmental costs and boosts revenue.
The Trump administration reversed those efforts, part of the president's deregulatory agenda aimed at maximizing production of coal, oil and natural gas while backing away from climate policy. The tax bill signed by Trump this month preserves the subsidies enjoyed by industry. "We've ended the war on beautiful, clean coal," Trump declared recently.
Free Land in Coal Country but With a Catch
After fighting in World War I, L.J. Turner's father sold the family farm in Missouri and moved a thousand miles to become a rancher in Wyoming. There he got a subsidy of his own. The federal government gave the Turner family land for free under the Homestead Act, passed during the Civil War to encourage westward expansion. When the family was picking acreage, locals advised them, "Be sure you get the big spring there, 'cause it's absolutely foolproof water" for livestock, L.J. Turner said, recalling the stories he was told.
As coal mines grew and oil and gas wells came to the Powder River Basin, L.J. Turner lost his ranch’s abundant water as well as thousands of acres he once leased as grazing land.
But there was a catch: A few years before the Turners arrived, Congress changed the terms of the Homestead Act so that the federal government would retain ownership of minerals beneath the land it was deeding to settlers. It was a move that would come to benefit today's corporations immensely.
Mining federal coal in the Mountain West began in spurts in the 19th century to feed the railroads, but coal leasing accelerated in the 1970s to meet demands of utilities that needed more fuel to support booming manufacturing. The 1973 Arab oil embargo added urgency.
At the time, environmental activists, empowered by the Federal Lands and Management Policy Act of 1976, were pushing for opening more public lands to uses other than resource extraction and for better planning. Even supporters of resource extraction wanted competitive bids and better royalty rates so that taxpayers would be paid a fair price for the fossil fuels they own.
But "the urgency to mine coal ended up winning out," said Bucks, who served on a U.S. Commerce Department commission in the 1970s that studied the consequences of coal mining in Wyoming and Montana. "Land management was complex, the science evolving. That's a long-term endeavor, while the energy need was immediate."
The rush to mine had its biggest impact on the Powder River Basin. In 1977, the Black Thunder mine opened about 20 miles east of the Turners' home. Five years later came the Antelope Mine, now owned by Cloud Peak Energy, about 15 miles to the southeast. Eventually, between those two projects, Peabody Energy built the largest surface coal mine in the world, the North Antelope Rochelle mine.
By 2002, the Powder River Basin had become the country's largest coal-producing region. Today it produces 40 percent of all the coal burned in the United States and accounts for more than 10 percent of the country's annual greenhouse gas emissions.
The coal boom employed 7,000 people in Wyoming at its employment peak in 2011. By 2016, that number had fallen to fewer than 5,700, as demand for coal slowed considerably under competitive pressure from cheaper natural gas and renewable sources and the weight of federal regulations.
Even with the industry in decline, the government continues to support the coal companies in the Powder River Basin and elsewhere by offering short cuts, subsidies and tax breaks at nearly every step of the mining process.
America's Declining Coal Industry
Taxpayer Coal for Sale at $1 a Ton—or Less
Since coal mining took off there 40 years ago, investigations by federal agencies and independent analysts have repeatedly shown that the leasing process shortchanges taxpayers. The first two coal leases sold in 1982 "were legally suspect and publicly criticized for not receiving fair market value," leading to a major Congressional inquiry, Squillace wrote in a 2013 law journal article.
In 1990, the Interior Department under Pres. George H.W. Bush rescinded the Powder River Basin's status as a federal coal-producing region for reasons that remain unclear. The move loosened coal leasing restrictions. Rather than Interior deciding where, when and how much coal should be mined, those decisions fell to industry.
U.S. taxpayers have lost billions of dollars in revenue over decades from undervalued coal lease sales and royalty payments that benefit coal companies. investigations by federal agencies and independent analysts have shown.
One enduring effect of this has been to make noncompetitive lease sales the norm. A corporation will pick a tract of coal to expand an existing mine and petition Interior to lease it. These parcels are too small to be standalone mines that would otherwise invite competitors, Squillace said. So when the coal lease is put up for sale, there's usually only a single bidder, the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported in 2013.
In a survey of 107 leased parcels, 96 of them, or 90 percent, went to a sole bidder, almost always a company seeking to expand an existing mine, the report found.
This lack of competition means rock-bottom rates and sparse returns to taxpayers. Over the years, the federal government has sold leases in the Powder River Basin for about $1.00 per ton of coal or less. The market price of Powder River Basin coal is about $12.00 a ton, according to the Energy Information Administration.
Besides the lack of competition, leases are so cheap because the Interior Department itself sets the initial price for a coal tract at far below market value. The process for calculating a lease's value is confidential, but separate studies by the Interior Department's Inspector General and the GAO determined the process is flawed. It fails to account for growing overseas demand and other market forces, and deprives taxpayers of millions of dollars annually. ...
hard to track trump admin even on charismatic mega, wolves, bison
https://www.alternet.org/animal-rights/trump-administration-has-hatched-cruel-illogical-plan-kill-americas-national-mammal
National Park Service—which has a shameful record of allowing the killing of bison who migrate outside of Yellowstone National Park and onto adjacent federal lands—is now planning to open up a second front against these great and lumbering beasts, the biggest mammals in North America. This time, NPS is impassively pursuing plans to kill hundreds of bison within the boundaries of Grand Canyon National Park. If it happens, NPS will not only be targeting the very symbol of the agency itself and our national mammal (as designated by Congress in 2016), but spilling their blood in or around yet one more jewel of our nation’s most beloved network of federal lands.
In a piece in this weekend’s *Arizona Republic*, Matthew Scully, onetime senior speechwriter for President George W. Bush, deconstructed the flimsy claims that 400 to 600 bison in the 1.2-million-acre park are too numerous for the land and water resources there. Scully closely examined a little-noticed environmental assessment on the project and found it lacking of any science-based rationale for the plan, yet full of platitudes about prospective bison impacts, with the agency complaining about “soil disturbance” and “erosion potential.” “The bison graze, drink water, and pass through streams, inviting further charges of causing ‘the potential for increasing impacts on vegetation’ and ‘potential concerns about changes to local hydrology’,” reports Scully, himself an Arizona resident and author of the book Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy.
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Nearly 100 Climate Action Plans for National Parks Removed From Website
Climate change is a major challenge to America's beloved National Parks—from hotter, drier conditions that can spark intense wildfires that can permanently alter Yosemite's landscapes, to sea level rise triggered by warming temperatures that threaten the Everglades.
In fact, nearly 100 parks have been preparing for and adapting to the damaging effects of climate change for years under the National Park Service's "Climate Friendly Parks Program" (CFP). However, you'll no longer be able to easily find these well-documented efforts to reduce emissions and move to more sustainable operations—that's because their work has been completely scrubbed from the Climate Friendly Parks Program website, a watchdog group has found.
Nearly 100 documents describing national parks' climate action plans have been removed from the website, according to a new report from the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative (EDGI), which has been closely tracking the Trump administration's removal of climate change information from federal websites.
The page now states: "These documents are temporarily unavailable for download while we work to make them compliant with newly revised 2018 federal accessibility standards."
The researchers found:
"On December 7, 2017, all links to national park climate action plans were removed from a list of 97 member parks on the the CFP website. As described in our Website Access Assessment Report, 92 of the links led to park climate action plan documents, two led to corresponding webpages about park 'sustainability' efforts, which are still live, and the remaining three listed parks have not had corresponding links since October 7, 2015. By December 20, all 92 of the corresponding linked documents had been removed from their respective URLs and were no longer hosted on the CFP website."
Check out the comparisons below:...
https://www.ecowatch.com/trump-environmental-policy-changes-2518440716.html
2. The Failure: Scrubbing Climate Change Data
https://www.ecowatch.com/public-lands-fracking-2516878619.html
Trump, Zinke to Auction Away 700,000 Acres of Western Public Lands for Fracking
President Trump and Interior Sec. Ryan Zinke are continuing their onslaught against American public lands this holiday month and moving forward with plans to auction off 700,000 acres for fracking, endangering clean air and water, the climate and sacred lands.
"First it's our cherished national monuments, now Trump and Zinke are set to give away even more public lands to the fossil fuel industry," said Becca Fischer, climate guardian for WildEarth Guardians. "Rather than giving back this holiday season, this administration is proving that it will stop at nothing to put our public lands in the hands of dirty energy executives and sell off our rights to clean energy and a healthy environment."
In total in 2017, the U.S. Department of the Interior's Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has auctioned and is proposing to auction off more than a million acres of public lands for fracking in Colorado, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming. Of that 1 million, the BLM will sell 700,000 acres in the December sales.
● On Dec. 7, the BLM sold 22,000 acres in northwestern Colorado and 2,100 acres in southeastern New Mexico.
● On Dec. 12, 99,000 acres in Montana, 388,000 acres in Nevada and 94,000 acres in Utah are slated to be auctioned off for fracking.
● On Dec. 14, 72,000 acres in Wyoming are slated to be auctioned off.
The pace of public lands giveaways is set to increase in 2018. The BLM's lease sales for the first half of the yearalready total almost 1 million acres.
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http://www.alternet.org/environment/trump-administration-proposes-repeal-fracking-protections
Three days before oral arguments are scheduled in the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals on Bureau of Land Management safety measures to regulate fracking operations on public lands, the U.S. Department of Interior is moving ahead with its plan to rescind the 2015 rule.
The rule, which was the product of nearly five years of agency work, expert input, public comments and hearings, never went into effect after it was challenged immediately by oil and gas industry trade associations. After a district court judge set aside the rule in 2016, BLM and citizen groups appealed to the 10th Circuit in late 2016.
The Trump administration, however, reversed course in March 2017 and announced that it would propose repealing the rule. On Monday, the administration formalized that reversal with a proposal to be published Tuesday for public notice and comment.
“This is another cynical move by the Trump administration that sacrifices our public lands and public safety as a favor to the oil and gas industry,” said Michael Freeman, the attorney for Earthjustice who is representing environmental groups who support the safety rules in the legal action.
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https://www.stopcorporateabuse.org/sites/default/files/resources/insidejobcai.pdf
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