This will end in civil war. My ancestors, who actually fought for this country in the 17th, 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, were ardent conservationists. They became Republicans right after the Ripon Convention. Five generations of them had college degrees, and three generations had graduate degrees. They would have shot nearly all of today's "Republicans," along with their Koch and ALEC sponsors.
1
The sub-human species that some call our president cares not a whit about National Parks or about protecting wilderness preserves. He views them as places where, if their protections are removed or lowered, he can make MONEY. Where he can build hotels or casinos or golf courses for the his buddies, the filthy rich. trump and his family and hangers-on must go - hopefully to prison but that is not likely to happen. Maybe send them into exile, as the French once exiled Napoleon, perhaps to some snake-infested desert island where he can live with reptiles like himself. (The reptiles, if they have half a brain, would not take him in.)
16
Thank you for acknowledging the reality on the ground here in Utah. Our vile senators and gerrymander-beneficiary congresspeople intend to sell our legacy lands to extractive industries, despite public opposition. These lands belong to the people of the United States. Support Patagonia, support the 5 tribes, as they gear up for this vital battle on behalf of our priceless common heritage.
22
Long after Monica Lewinsky is forgotten, Bill Clinton will be remembered for the creation of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.
Long after Obamacare is forgotten, President Obama will be remembered for the creation of the Bears Ears National Monument.
Long after his monumental lies are forgotten, President Trump will be remembered for failing to destroy these American Monuments.
That is if we, including all the city dwellers who may never set foot in either monument, fight this sacrilege. The Times incorrectly portrays those who oppose the neutering of these Monuments "dismissively" as environmentalists and Native Americans. In fact, the opposition includes hunters, the tourist industry, and millions of Americans for whom the beauty and affordability of these places provide food for their souls, places to decompress, a spiritual and religious opportunity to perceive of one's life in the context of the natural.
Trump is afraid of the outdoors, as he is afraid of anything he can't control. He is weak, not just in character but in courage, simply a wimp across the board. The Moki Dugway to him is incomprehensible. And though a toady of the N.R.A., I have no doubt he is afraid of hunting and hunters. To save these Monuments, it is necessary to show the courage that Trump lacks, to fight on every front - not just lawsuits and online comments - and, with the likes of him and Zinke, to make it personal.
Long live Edward Abbey and Everett Ruess.
Hayduke Lives !
16
I am heartened by this editorial and the many passionate and thoughtful responses. But I also believe that Trump himself probably has little to do with all this mayhem and distraction. We should focus on the ones who are actually directly enforcing these foolish edicts, in this case, Zinke and Pruitt. They have a lot to answer for, and apparently a lot to hide as well. Pruitt in particular has not only requested round-the-clock beefed-up personal protection, he also wasted tax payers' money by spending $24,570 on a soundproof communications booth. To hide what?
Zinke on the other hand is in cahoots not only with mining companies but also with ranchers who are bothered by wild mustangs. Tens of thousands of mustangs are being held in pens and about to be sold to slaughter houses in Mexico and Canada. This is unconscionable. And the roundups (with helicopters) continue. This even though humane methods for population control exist and have been used successfully.
https://americanwildhorsecampaign.org/media/statement-response-nda-annou...
What is happening to this country, to all of us, including its creatures, would be called if it happened anywhere else in the world, the dirty work of despots.
9
All this does is return the land to state ownership. If the states want to maintain them as monuments they are free to do so. The federal government doesn't need to be in the real estate business.
2
So in the end this isn't about making AMERICA great at all, it's about ending federal protections so that each Governor can now destroy America's wildlife as he wants, or rather, as his wealthy donors tell him to do ... ?
15
I had arrived at the conclusion that like a dog tending to itself "because it can", Trump had no further intelligence or purpose than those dogs. Now it is clear as the declared Alpha in the pack he has lobbyist to tend to his every itch for some tit for tat mutual grooming.
3
What about Diamonds!?! The single largest corporate marketing scam in history! Every American woman, regardless of their social or political class, has been programmed to want one! And it's not even a rare stone! If De Beers released all their inventory- a $20,000 diamond would be worth a measly $20 bucks! Americans have no idea the extent of environmental and political devastation De Beers has brought to the lessor developed countries of world. American's desire for the ultimate gift has wrought havoc, famine, pestilence and war for millions of people! What Trump is doing now in our backyard is nothing we don't rightfully deserve.
So while we yell, scream, protest, drum circle for the purity and sanctity of our public lands- keep well in mind that our American consumerism and consumption has wrecked the lives for millions of people because of our selfish desire for a rock that is no more valuable than the coal it came from.
Hypocrites! You are all a bunch of double standard Hypocrites!
2
If you read this article, you should have understood that destroying American public lands is what the GOP has been trying to do for quite some time now, so no, it's not only abroad, it's here too.
And how does denouncing this and trying to fight it somehow turn people into hypocrites? What makes you believe that those who want to protect the American environment somehow would support the destruction of the environment elsewhere ... ?
Any concrete arguments or evidence?
9
Greed and obsessed with power the GOP under the backward looking leadership of money mad Trump seems to know the value of a buck but seems to have no sense of the value of nature and our obligation to preserve it for future. Under this Trump administration it seems they would strip mine in the Grand Canyon and drill for oil in the middle of Central Park to enrich the fossil fuel barons their paymasters.
3
This hurts. And I think it is meant to. This president does not only want to push an agenda - He wants to injure and cause misery to those who have not supported him. My only comfort is that the legacy of Trump will only be destruction. He has not built anything. He is mediocre. Just the thing he does not want to be.
7
I don’t want tourism to this area. It is full of artifacts that will be plundered. Thanks liberals.
2
This man likes to break things.
He has not done one constructive thing in the entire year. Think of it: eliminate public lands, desperately attempt to destroy health care, public education, environmental protections, Puerto Rico, North Korea, climate accords, relations with Great Britain. Indeed, he is bent on destroying our faith in all our institutions. He has done nothing on infrastructure, but he is about to harvest huge tax breaks for himself and his rich friends and family. Whatever he doesn’t break he wants to steal.
He does not work for America. He works against it. It feels like the president has become a public enemy.
11
Reading today's editorial and main headlines, you'd almost become desperate.
The looting of America's public lands, no enforcement of crucial EPA rules, an Alabama Senate candidate with no decency or sense of morality but nevertheless supported by nobody but the president himself and the leadership of his party, while bipartisan programs ensuring that children get basic healthcare are being abandoned.
In the meanwhile, America lost its world leadership (now taken over by Macron), the majority in Congress supports a tax reform bill that creates a gigantic debt all while containing essentially things that nobody but a handful of the wealthiest "globalists" want, AND destroying the healthcare of 13 million Americans (after having promised to insure MORE, not less Americans) all while increasing premiums by an additional 20% (after having promised to lower them).
No, this is clearly not making America greater.
This is the EXACT opposite, a race to the bottom, orchestrated meticulously by one of this nation's two major political parties.
Please Alabama, use your constitutional power to vote, as citizens, to STOP this downward spiral!
11
It is safe to say — in fact, a lead pipe cinch — that Trump came into office knowing nothing about conservation or environmental protections, especially in the breathtaking yet fragile lands of Utah and Alaska. A responsible public official would want to hear from both sides and diverse points of view before beginning the process of policy-making. Wouldn’t that be what most citizens would want of their leaders?
Yet as fas anyone knows, Trump and his minions stiff-armed environmentalists, including experts in and out of government, and listened exclusively to energy executives and the state and local officials in the pockets of oil and gas interests. Also excluded, it goes without saying, were native Americans.
WYSIWYG . . . A man of no experience, knowledge, understanding or sympathy with our national heritage and with no interest in America’s unparalleled beauty makes, or allows his stooges to make, decisions favorable to only those who paid their way to get into his ear.
Trump isn’t even making a nominal effort to represent all Americans. There is nothing in this disgraceful man but all-encompassing venality.
11
As a resident of southeast Utah, I have been involved in trying to protect our public domain for over two decades.
Over the years, I have noticed the discussion on the "conservative" side of the aisle has gone from "how much land should we really protect" to "how much can we pillage".
This can apply not just to public lands, but to all the resources of our nation and our continent...there is a very clear agenda to take it all while they can.
8
I currently live in Italy, a place of incredible natural, cultural and historical beauty. Here, everyone knows just how fragile and precious ancient things are. They also try to preserve the natural areas as well (and there are many)! There's a consciousness here similar to the consciousness of anyone who has been to the natural wonders in the U.S. and people want to protect them. I know this in my heart and soul because I grew up in Utah and I know well its natural beauty. It can be argued that the national parks in UT are some of the most strikingly beautiful places on earth.
But alas, it's incredibly difficult for me to watch from afar as the exploiters, profiteers and developers lick their greedy chops over lands that should rightly be protected and forbidden from development. What's even more tragic is a lack of passionate outcry or push-back by a huge number of Americans. If there is anything worth fighting for (not only for you but for your children's children's children), it is the protection of the U.S. National parks.
How things have changed since my youth when Americans were proud of the country not because of the number of billionaires it produced, nor did they care so much about the size of everyone's wallet. Unfortunately, today everything is being reduced to it's lowest common economic denominator, and this is truly sad.
"The idea of wilderness needs no defense, it only needs defenders."
Edward Abbey
9
The good thing is that most Americans enjoy using our federal public lands and support protecting them. What needs to happen now is that they speak up LOUDLY to their congressional representatives and sentors, telling them to oppose the administration’s proposals, as well as the enabling legislation that is being introduced in Congress to validate and codify the administration’s actions.
6
It's been absolutely brutal watching him do these things. Even when he's not doing it out in the open, I know he's doing it, and I'm living with that every day.
Wondering if the filtered water I'm giving my baby has lead in it anyway, thinking about opening the windows and then deciding against it because I'm anxious about the air quality...
I saw a picture of a dead reef and a starving polar bear and couldn't bring myself to go back online for the rest of the day. That was probably a good thing.
These lands belong to us and he's stealing them. He's wrecking our future and he'll never have to deal with it in his tacky, gold-plated, overrated properties.
14
TODDLER NATION
All you need to know is this. If you love something that does not contain Trump as its cause, Trump will hate it, and then try to destroy it. He needs to put himself at the center of every event; otherwise it is an enemy that must be destroyed. So he destroys national monuments, not because he hates national monuments but because anyone who reveres them is not revering him. There is no ideology here other than narcissism. His actions are not the master strategies of four-dimensional chess, but the tantrums of a 70-year-old toddler knocking all the blocks down when he doesn’t get his way. Everyone who continues to support Donald Trump is enabling a toddler, and is approving for the country what it would not approve in their own homes.
And, most assuredly, all the nation’s blocks are being knocked down.
9
I wonder where the art of the deal part comes from. All I see is a giveaway at every turn. Be it Jerusalem, public land, environment, gone and for nothing with nothing asked in return. Strangle, especially for a president who sees everything as transactional. Unless the deals reside elsewhere....
5
I read somewhere, sorry, no link, that uranium miners cajoled Trump into shrinking those monuments.
6
In a seven repeated an nausea, crass developers destroy nature, for immediate profit and then name their developments, after the nature they destroyed. Donald Trump is at the core of his being a crass developer.
2
Zinke rode a Trojan Horse to the Dept. of the Interior. For the sake of a few rich cronies seeking yet another form of welfare, Zimke and Trump want to keep lands open for development even though there is no demand for coal or additional sources of oil. These are rapidly becoming energy sources of the past. In reversing so many of President Obamas legacies, Trump has accomplished nothing, absolutely nothing. He is an empty suit and a traitor to all Americans. The steady income to counties where the Bears Ears and Escalante Staircase are located continues to be from tourism. The west is scattered with ghost towns of boom and bust mining and oil extraction. Been to Williston ND lately? It's the modern version of a ghost town after oil prices fell. I doubt that is the kind of job creation most Americans seek.
Bears Ears has been looted for artifacts by white locals in Blanding UT for decades. A simple search will reveal an FBI sting as recent as 2009. Wonder how the locals religion views this. Hypocrisy abounds.
No, these Monument reductions are more about our child-president than anything else.... The sooner he is removed from office, the better. America cannot take much more of this mentally ill incompetent .
8
This country and especially the natural sources and the environment of this country may never recover from the greed and lies of Trump and his sycophants.
Pruitt is hard a work making our air dirty and our water more and more polluted. And giving chemical companies fee rein to sell and spew whatever human-killing toxins they can make money with. All while destroying the ability of EPA to stop any of this damage.
And Zinke is a complete sell-out to the pillagers of public lands (mostly energy companies) for whatever money making scam they can come up with to exploit our public lands for their profit. He is well on the way to being the absolute worst Secretary of Interior ever. And he had the gall to compare himself to Teddy Roosevelt. Zinke should be ashamed of himself!
For an example of how low Zinke and his stooges at the Department of Interior will go see:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/uranium-firm-urge...
6
This president is the most horrible man that could inhabit the office. He has no shame, no morals, no compassion.
Despoiling our environment will be just another one of his atrocious "accomplishments". I tremble at the thought of anything more he could possibly do to destroy this beautiful (so far) country that we live in.
He needs to go.
5
Wrong headline, Times. It should read The Looting of America.
Public lands? We don't need no stinking public lands, we need money, lots of money for our betters, the kleptocrats.
5
I guess the editors forgot that Obama approved fracking on public lands, and that he bragged about it:
"Over the last three years, I've directed my administration to open up millions of acres for gas and oil exploration across 23 different states...We've added enough new oil and gas pipeline to encircle the Earth, and then some. . . . In fact, the problem . . . is that we're actually producing so much oil and gas . . . that we don't have enough pipeline..."
Both parties are oily, although, to be sure, the Republicans are more oily. Do you feel good supporting the political party that will bring on climate Armageddon somewhat later than the other party?
https://environmental-action.org/blog/nearly-650000-comments-call-obama-...
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/obama-and-climate-change-the-r...
2
This, while you published a "normalizing" profile of the person behind this atrocity just yesterday. One cannot normalize anything this grotesque. Stop trying.
3
Draining the swamp?
2
Trump's attack on the natural resources in Western lands is horrible. I have hiked more than one thousand miles in Grand Canoyn and other western public lands and exress my absolute ejection of Mr Trump's attitude and actions. This is not new story wherein the Canyon was to have multiple hydo electric dams even to the point where today the prospect drilled from level leave an ugly dump of drillings. When a propoent for the dams said that it will be easier to see the rim of the canyon if the dams are built. Someone sugested tht if the Cistine Chaple was flooded, the ceiling woud be easier to see, this caused outrage against thye dams and they were abandoned. It seems that wherver there are priceless regions, some moron will try to make money off of it and ruin the region forever.
3
Hey Teddy Roosevelt. How do you like your Republican Party now?
1
Actually, he left the Republican Party and ran for President as a third party candidate resulting in the racist Wilson to be elected.
1
For definitive maps of changes and resources, http://www.hcn.org/articles/monuments-what-national-monument-protections-do, from High Country News. How foolish to trade ten years of gold for a million years of salmon.
4
Notably, Mr. Zinke met with uranium mining interests before ceding 85% of Bear's Ears and Grand Staircase to uranium mining. The tired old dreams of avarice cannot drive the innovation which a sustainable future demands. Is nothing finally sacred but short-term profit?
5
Companies and individuals who hope to profit off the destruction of public lands spin their greed by saying that invading and using up the resources on these national treasures will benefit all Americans.
And if the lies come out of the right mouth the people, out of hope, defiance or ignorance, chose to go along with them or even believe them.
2
I don't believe that trump has any philosophy regarding the environment beyond the idea of money, money, money.
It looks to me that trump sold the office to the highest bidder and as long as they don't link him to any scandals he doesn't care what they do.
The fishery in Bristol Bay is only a tiny fragment of issue since salmon do not spend much of their time there, except when young and when returning from the sea. The whole ecosystem of streams, rivers, watershed, and mountains are needed to keep that fishery healthy. Breaking a single link in the chain of the environment there will destroy the fishery for much longer than the life of one giant mine.
And with climate change salmon might never recover even if the watershed received remediation following the mine's closure. Protecting the fishery requires keeping the whole watershed safe.
One thing is certain and that's trump is likely to teach anybody who's paying attention that one hundred years of conservation can be undone in a two years by a callous individual, one that lacks even a rudimentary understanding of where his own food comes from. Unfortunately most aren't paying attention.
I agree with your assessment about Cheney, and I'd add that the companies and people who expected to thrive under Nixon have achieved a revenge of sorts for losing a few dollars when Nixon was forced out. These people have no cares past their own selves and they should never have been allowed to get back into the ring.
4
The Utah congressional delegation has always claimed that locals are now and always have been against Bears Ears and Grand Staircase Escalante National Monuments. This is most definitely NOT true. I live literally (in the true sense of the word) adjacent to the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument (GSENM). My voice has never been heard by our representatives and I am not alone. A large portion of my community supports the monument.
Since the creation of GSENM in 1996 all the economic indicators for the communities near the monument have gotten significantly better. Real per capita income, jobs, everything.
Chris Stewart's proposed and dangerous bill 4558 codifies the reduction and partition of GSENM while directing Interior to sell off some of the GSENM. He claims this is about creating a new national park, but the proposed "park" is a sham.
7
Excellent comparison of Zinke and Roosevelt--thank you for these numbers re land conserved/de-conserved, which point out the irony and travesty of his Teddy-like ride in to work that first day on the job.
These reductions, along with cuts to National Park budgets, the Senate moving to open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling, the president's "economic growth is all that matters" mantra, and the rollback of environmental protections by EPA mis-Director Pruitt, amount to the biggest assault on nature--and the humans who relish it and ultimately depend on it--in memory.
Find somewhere to scream about it--
btw, nice graphic, NYTimes...
7
,,,those of us living in the middle of the vast holding of public lands, the looting is from NGO environmental consortiums with the backing from deep pocketed companies such as REI and Patagonia. It is time for the misuse of land designations such as wilderness and monuments be returned to the original intent. Once again seeing the slick manipulation of the english language to mis inform the uninformed. In the real world of public lands, we are losing access daily. Closures and more restrictions are occurring at a phenomenal pace. No where do you find a public land project working to further historical access and use, they are all imposing more restrictions. There are restrictions and regulations that fill volumes,,trust me nothing is going to be destroyed.
1
Folks, these are not "federal lands, owned by "distant bureaucrats in D.C." These are American lands which belong to a veteran in Virginia, a school child in Minnesota, a young mom in Georgia, a handicapped boy in California and MILLIONS of us. Don't buy into the lie that the extraction companies are not trying to steal our joint, national heritage. Or we will become like Europe, with their private forests and club owned trout streams requiring membership fees to access. I don't want the U.S. to have wide open spaces behind a "KEEP OUT" sign.
7
I can see it now Jay.
"Keep out ! Trump Land,
Memberships available, starting at only $200,000"
1
In my opinion, this retraction is not all doom and gloom for the environment. The BLM and NFS are very good managers of public lands. Re-classifying these lands as National Monuments does not mean that strip mining and oil harvest will encompass and destroy the ecosystems. As a recreationist, not just a hiker, I see these land grabs as a way to shut out certain sustainable but less popular activities ( mountain bikes, boats, jeeps and motorcycles ). There have been some National Monuments where recreation was allowed to continue but for the most part, the land becomes similar to wilderness in its restrictions. I agree with the president, I think that this is over kill.
1
Give some examples, please. I can’t think of a single one, where a national monument was managed at the same level as a Wilderness area.
2
It might be OK if all Americans enjoyed those “royalties” and profits from our resources. Instead, only very few get that treasure. We could completely shore up Medicare and Social Security. Imagine miners and workers actually having a dignified life after they were too injured from work. But no. We are literally being robbed.
1
There are two ways this is seen by the two Americas. In Red State America, these were government lands locked up from public use. For me, these were public lands protected from commercial use. They see freedom from government control. I see protection removed from an asset I once owned. I don’t see a reconciliation.
2
Utah is a net exporter of tourism. Meaning: more travelers come to Utah every year than residents traveling away. As a matter of fact, Utah tourism supports more jobs than the entire US coal industry. Not every job pays $40 an hour but there are many businesses and professionals that rely on our public lands to make a living. Patagonia's reaction should give you a pretty clear signal.
The outdoor industry moved their twice-annual trade show out of Salt Lake City in response to Bishop's and Zinke's attacks on federal monuments. My friend got paid $40 an hour plus over time to do event set up at Outdoor Retailer. There goes his pay check this January. Thanks Trump. Way to help the middle class thrive in Utah. Not to mention Utahans like our public lands.
5
"each of which is a treasure trove of magnificent landscapes and priceless Native American artifacts."
Not to mention immense quantities of dinosaur and other fossils. But since we know Republicans have no interest in preserving the future for their descendants, it's no surprise the past has no value to them either (except for "when there was slavery," the last time America was great, according to Roy Moore).
2
If the people of Utah don't want to see their state's monuments and National Parks dessicated they should pay attention to who they are voting for. There will be no tourism in Utah or any other state that ruins the monuments and parks and lots of job loss as a result.
3
This administration is not only looting public lands, but with the tax bill is looting the public treasury. It has cheapened public discourse and tried to destroy the value of truth and honor. The country now sees the Republican Party for what it is. It cheapens everything it touches.
3
Most of any coal that's mined will be sold overseas since America's power plants either have or will convert to cheaper natural gas. Any oil in Alaska will not come on line for ten years, is not needed now and will not be needed when it's available. The ranchers complaining about grazing lands are a minuscule portion of the American public and pay a dirt cheap price to ruin public lands if they pay anything at all - and we don't need the beef. This environmental destruction serves two purposes: to shovel a bit more cash into the coffers of those already rich and to poke liberals in the eye to please the right wing base of the GOP.
3
Earth is drowning in fossilized oil. The Alaskas' senator idea of royalties is cheap unthoughtful and shortsighted. Cheap natural gas provides a major source of energy in the NY Metro Area. Renewal energy is the new level economy as well as nuclear energy. US has vast supply of uranium and plutonium to harness these elements for useful energy. Not for warheads. New Jersey sees the opportunity. Clean without carbon foot print. In contrast, fossilized energy produces green house effects. US has the safe technology. This excellent piece shows the little brain of Donald if at all.
1
Anyone who believed for a second that Ryan Zinke was anything more than a James Watt with a dash of faux machismo could use an extra face-splash of carbon-warmed Montana river water.
Two points: The Obama administration could have declared the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge a national monument, but did not. The same administration could have listed the sage grouse under the Endangered Species Act, but did not. Republicans rely on Democratic mealy-mouthedness and policy tentativeness more than just a little bit.
1
It's a good thing the robots will inherit the earth. There won't be anything left for us carbon-based units.
2
"This land was made for you and me"
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1yuc4BI5NWU
Not for DJT or the Koch brothers.
I am not sure how orrin hatch will face his constituents or even his friends and family this holiday.
Each member of the GOP house is in their last term in Congress- they just don't know it yet.
2
"This land was made for you and me"
Our National Anthem.
1
I know the Bear's Ears area well. I have backpacked for weeks/months in the region, throughout it labyrythine canyons.
It is very special.
While my opinion of the Trump administration couldn't be much lower, the hysteria regarding the Bear's Ears monument is to some degree misplaced.
In my 20's I wanted 'greater protections' for what I viewed to be 'endangered' resources. Now in my 60's I realize that the greatest dangers posed to these areas is the conservation movement itself. Why? Because management brings publicity and bureaucracy. Publicity is bad because it increases the visitation load to unsustainable levels -- witness the overwhelming increase in visitation to Zion National Park. People are loving it to death, and magazines, tourism bureaus, and the outdoor recreation industry is doing everything in their power to INCREASE visitation, not care for the areas. I cringed and cried when I saw a photo of Moon House in the recent NY Times piece. Stopping the publicization of these areas is the best way to protect them.
And then there is bureaucracy. As I kid I used to believe the National Park Service was there to manage the recreation opportunites in Parks. I now view that as silly hyperbole. Parks are bureaucratic affairs where most people are simply managing their careers while attempting to minimize their management hassles. Management of Bear's Ears as a National Monument will, ironically, degrade the resource far more quickly than leaving it as it is.
2
Great editorial. It's about time that major media headlines focus on disaster being wreaked by Ryan Zinke on conservation, Trump's lackey is accomplishing a great deal--all of it bad. I have documented 59 reasons why he is the worst Secretary of Interior ever--he makes James Watt look like a conservationist! See http://www.wildlifepolitics.org/blog
3
Perhaps it’s because America has got too short of a history, that Americans can’t think in terms of history. It’s simple in Trump’s case: if you keep on doing terrible things, you’ll live on forever in history in infamy. This, I believe, is the worst thing that happens to a human being. Think about it: people deplore you even when you’re dead. And Trump, already one foot in his tomb, is racing to win himself this privilege.
1
Easy fix here: so Trump's behavior is illegal? Then Trump's unconstitutional actions will be treated as such by Congress, the orders will be revoked, and we can all go back to romanticizing the frontier. The law will win over party interests. We'll hold off from driving another species into extinction. Nobody needs to cancel their vacation.
Oh wait, we're in the upside down. I hope you enjoy your coal, Utah! Better snatch up some stocks, the price is dirt cheap.
1
Thanks to Patagonia and all retailers and environmentalists who are fighting like hell to preserve OUR public lands. PatagonIa, joined by other conscientious companies and people, are suing The Con Don to stop this travesty. Patagonia also put this on their internet home page:
THE PRESIDENT JUST STOLE YOUR LAND.
Holiday celebrating must be cut short this year to save OUR United States of America because everything the majority of us cherish about it is under attack.
The International Mafia Top 1% Global Financial Elite Robber Baron/Radical religion Good Old Boys' Cabal knows nothing but exploit and destroy through hate-anger-fear-LIES,LIES,LIES and WAR.
WE THE PEOPLE around the world must stop them NOW before they can start WW3. No "business as usual" until the danger is past.
6
I don't think Trump's modifications to GSENM stand much of a chance in court (based on a previous 2004 challenge).
But if his actions do lead to new attempts at mining in the area, I hope Zinke is there when the first bulldozers arrive. He dodged all of the locals on his so-called "listening tour", including the Escalante-Boulder Chamber of Commerce, which unanimously opposed boundary modifications.
The local community is very united and enjoys broad support nationally for maintaining the original Monument status. With the declining value of coal, its also hard to imagine investing in new mines that didn't make sense before the Monuments were established.
The most likely outcome is to confirm the authority of the Antiquities Act, to limit subsequent reviews to legitimate legal issues and to exclude political donor driven challenges by corrupt Administration officials like Trump and Ryan "Whitefish Energy Scam" Zinke.
9
I work in the outdoor industry and, of course, we are very much against the shrinking of Bear's Ears and the sell off of public lands.
The outdoor industry is a multi billion dollar industry that is growing every year. Our industry can and has revitalize economically distressed areas adjacent to our public lands. And ultimately will be much more of an economic boom then extractive industries which are on their way out. Besides the moral argument for maintaining our public lands there is an economic one.
Furthermore, for those of you who don't know, the Outdoor Retailers Show, based in Salt Lake City, UT moved to Colorado due to the fact that the political establishment of Utah supported the shrinking of Bears Ears. This show brought in multiple millions of dollars in revenue to Utah. The last OR show in Utah was last summer and 4000 show participants marched on the capital building in SLC in protest.
Right now our government is 100% owned by extractive industries. We must all get out and vote, donate money, and do what it takes to change the direction.
23
This is the rise of the robber barons again. They will try to steal every last dime in the country and turn it into a parking lot. Why do we have to keep fighting this battle?
23
These are dark days in America. Name something that Trump and company aren’t attempting to destroy. You can’t do it.
18
Is it any wonder that we did not elect him?
Appointed! against the majority of our people, Just as Gorsuch was appointed, against the majority of our people. The Majority who voted for Obama to fill that Supreme Court seat.
Make No Mistake.
Evil is Afoot
1
Just wondering how the Green Party folks who voted for Jill Stein feel now?
Must feel good knowing their votes helped this all along and it will get worse.
18
Lisa Murkowski is looking to replenish the Alaskan Permanent Fund which is a fund paying each and every Alaskan whether they work or do nothing, watch TV or get drunk, or take drugs. It's like welfare so that we can be gouged for gasoline while Alaskans milk the rest of America. I thought Alaskan was part of America, but I guess they are special.
10
I hope I live long enough to see a republican member of congress standing down town in Miami, knee deep in Atlantic Ocean, explaining to his kids how he doesn't know what happened...he's not a scientist!
13
So glad to see this editorial and comments, this is where the most important focus should be, not whether Al Franken's hand groped a waist too tightly.
Lawsuits, please. Block these actions of these horrible opposers of nature and the best of what makes living on planet Earth a joy.
17
How do we fix this?
3
It is astonishing that president TR, a republican, was able to set aside hundreds of millions of acres of land as a public resource over 100 years ago. The 20th century saw some huge leaps towards a more progressive and equitable society: women's suffrage, social security, civil rights act, EPA just to name a few, but our public land policies are always an enormous struggle. Is it because the average John and Jane American no longer get their hands dirty in a garden or sit around a desert campfire on occasion? Have we completely lost touch with so much of the things that are integral to our humanity that we can no longer appreciate tiny parcels of undeveloped land? Protecting what is left of our wild spaces should not be a 50/50 argument in this country. It should be as clear as allowing women to vote or allowing minority children to attend a public school.
11
And by the way, this is war. Sometimes it is not discernible when we have moved to war...but it is war. Make no mistake.
No protests, just effective strategy and tactics, please, REI et al.
14
Is it time yet for the AMERICAN VOTER to stand up for their environment? djt, rz, are not putting the welfare of OUR lands ahead of the corporations of America and Canada. By allowing mining in Bristol Bay they are putting the whole Alaskan fisheries economy and lifestyle at the whims of the corporate world. BUT, remember voters, these elected officials have no qualms about the destruction of OUR environment...as they can go to the private reserves of their corporate donors, while we the public are left with destroyed public lands.
8
Some land is so beautiful or teeming with wildlife that it should be left alone for the public to enjoy just because it exists. Every resource does not need to be exploited and the land spoiled by companies that make billions and the public which owns the land gets nothing in return thanks to ridiculous mining regulations and a mere pittance in royalties. royalties.
10
This land is not teeming with wildlife
Shamrock: Maybe not, but it IS beautiful.
Interesting read on some of these comments. If people from various locations across our nation knew the truth and facts about how our public lands are being mismanaged to the point they are devastatingly unhealthy and not useful to anyone. They are ripe for disaster as we see these large scale fires while our rural communities, schools, government and businesses who depend and rely on our natural resources flounder to survive. I believe that people often forget where paper products, our food sources, our water, how we heat our homes, minerals etc etc come from. We are all dependent and rely on natural resources to one degree or another and to classify others as "looters" with comparison to criminal behavior is wrong. I would suggest to the majority of you who don't realize that your toilet paper that was so readily available to you comes from wood fiber and possibly from our public lands. Look around you and see what items you use daily are metal which those minerals were extracted from the ground. Next time you see or hear of a massive wildfire in the western USA, think of what watershed to what community is being cremated. We all at some point or another are consumers to a bigger degree than what we think. The next time you buy a house, furniture or some other commodity, take a minute to see if it is made of wood and realize that you are consuming something that may of been extracted off of public lands and someone is literally making a buck off of it.
3
Reply to Glen Palmer Eastern Oregon:
For those less familiar with modern forestry practice, there is a wide range from sustainable to plundering. I have seen some of the best examples of sustainable selective harvest in the dry eastern Oregon National Forests, which reduce forest fuel loads that drive devastating fires and maintain the resource for the future.
But I have also seen the plundering of coastal forests, leading to landslides, stream destruction and loss of valuable forestry resources through environmental damage.
Its about responsible Federal, state and local stewardship, which tends to weaken during GOP Administrations.
7
I won't pretend to be a pundit on public land use. The consistent lionization of the radicals that sit atop the mountain of privilege to deny the mass of US citizens a better, more fulfilling life by using our immense natural gifts and championing fringe destructive policies must someday penetrate even their Olympian retreats.
Windmills that kill wildlife in defense of wildlife, Sun power farms that roast and destroy animals in support of animals. Illegal immigration to bolster profits, secure votes, subjugate citizens, depress wages and promote squalor.
The idea of "Bread and Circuses" is sadly still a staple, (Pun intended) but no more valid than when invented.
2
You've been consuming propaganda, I see. Windmills and solar farms do not kill nearly as much wildlife as fossil mines, especially coal, even if you leave out climate change. And global warming/climate change is a threat to 90% of life on the planet. Domestic cats kill a whole lot more birds.
Poisoning watersheds is fine with you?
Time to wake up and get out more.
3
Reminds me of the 1950s-60s when energy companies were trying to build dams everywhere for hydroelectric energy. The Sierra Club succeeded in preventing dams in the Grand Canyon (yes they wanted to flood the Grand Canyon) and Dinosaur National Monument, but failed to protect Glen Canyon, which was flooded to create Lake Powell. With this and Global Warming it looks like it's time for a new major environmental movement.
11
Uh ... are you being silly? Hydroelectric is the ultimate "green" power.
If they climate wackos were serious, they would DEMAND that we
dam every foot of the Grand Canyon to generate more electricity.
"The arguments in both cases were the same: America needs the energy buried beneath these lands — oil in the case of the refuge, coal in Utah. And both arguments were equally spurious: Coal is in free fall as an energy source, feared as a major cause of climate change and run off the market by cheaper natural gas. Oil, meanwhile, is in such plentiful supply that America’s net imports are at their lowest since 1970."
There is greed and then there is GOP greed which masquerades as helping the giant oil and coal companies find gainful employment for their slave laborers. The white man took the land under dispute from the native Americans and it should be still their land, in the case of the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase monuments in Utah. This is sacred land. One can only hope, as the article points out, that Congress only have the right to change or abolish monuments. Mr Trump and his cabinet are destroying America.
18
I suggest a wind farm off the coast of Cape Cod within sight of land. That will help reduce the use of fossil fuels and protect our environment. Better yet, off the coast of Hawaii also.
6
Wind Farms off Martha's Vineyard were proposed. They were stopped cold in their tracks by environmentalists and Cape Cod luminaries. Walter Cronkite and others argued that Wind Farms would interfere with sail boats and offshore views. Hence, NO WIND FARMS IN MY BACKYARD.
6
Don't forget the Kennedy's opposing this too.
Especially Ted and Bobby Jr.
Electricity here (Eversource) has the highest rates on Cape Cod than anywhere in the 48 states. And Eversource intends on raising rates again very soon.
AG Healy has been fighting them but of course they'll win out.
2
A question I have. Does anyone know the answer.
What is to stop the next administration from just re-establishing the original boundaries?
Isn't this move by Trump the start of a chaotic situation where one administration after another keeps changing things? How could people, or even businesses, invest anywhere when all they might get would be a brief change combined with a lot of court fights?
9
Very good question.
Dan: That’s one argument in favor of the point that the Antiquities Act doesn’t give the president the power to rescind a designation made by a predecessor, that only Congress has that power. Thye didn’t intend to create a see-saw.
“But none of these annoying facts can erode Mr. Trump’s belief that...” Please stop imputing “beliefs” into the things Trump does or says. There is scant evidence that he actually holds ANY meaningful beliefs. What he holds is contempt - for everyone. The rest is just for show as he takes what he wants without fear of punishment or shame.
20
I seriously doubt Trump had a real thought out agenda. He is a money grubber, and climate denier. And then there was that added bonus of being able to overturn yet another accomplishment by Obama. The man's greed and ego know no bounds. He is not the President. He is the oligarch of a bubble in which are encamped 32% of America who are relieved to be able to freely exhibit and exercise their darker sides.
17
Of all the Trumpian desecrations, the rape of the parks, refuges, and monuments is the one that makes me cry. The narcissism, misogyny, racism, disarticulation of the State Department, and the progressive isolation of the United States from its global friends infuriates. But the theft of my irreplaceable America the Beautiful is too tragic for words.
27
Everything has been fine there for over 150 years until One who walks with BIg Mouth stepped into the situation.With a penchant for hatred of normal everyday working Americans who work the land . The ones who pay with their blood sweat and tears for all the social programs that support people who have never worked and immigrants from the entire outside world who come here to exist on the back of the US taxpayer. If the former ,thank God, administrator left well enough alone ,the land tracts in question would undoubtedly been protected as they have going on two centuries by states and tribal councils which can very well control their own future.
5
'They paved paradise and put up a parking lot'-Joni Mitchell-Big Yellow Taxi
Leave these last jewels alone ye defilers of nature. This is our land.Leave it alone. Our fathers and mothers fought to preserve it. These vast wonders of nature are our real wealth and now they want to come and have at it. For all who are brave, the line in the sand is Escalante Grand Staircase and Bears Ears. We’ve safeguarded these lands for generations and by gum we'll fight to keep the lands pristine in this generation too.
14
Give back the Bay Area..!
1
Trump brags about not needing to read, anything. Brags about him being the only person who matters, never needing advice because he's so smart. I doubt he's ever set foot on public land in his life. So, without there being a golf course or a McDonald's on it, public lands to him are a complete mystery, and basically an empty building plot to be used to make money, out in the West somewhere. Plus, it instils in him the misplaced White Eye notion of First Peoples ownership that he cannot wrap his puny, Swiss-cheese head around. The mans cares for nothing that cannot make him money.
18
Stunningly obvious. What is wrong with the american public?
1
As John Muir wrote : "Any fool can destroy trees. They cannot run away; and if they could, they would still be destroyed - chased and hunted down as long as fun or a dollar could be got out of their bark hides, branching horns, or magnificent bole backbones."
What we have in Putrumpkin and Co., including his enablers (who would vote for Oren Hatch as Dog Catcher?) is the best democracy money can buy.
18
Just like his worthless sons hunt magnificent animals like cheetahs and giraffes and lions for no reason other than for sport.
8
Donald Trump's personal disconnect from the natural world is part of his particular brand of psychopathy.
First, as an extreme germ-phobe, he finds the non-urban and non-manicured world scary, dirty, and dangerous. (Did you see the revelation from Lewandowsky's book that Trump Force One had to be stocked with a huge amount of small Oreo packages because Trump won't eat out of an open one?)
When was the last time Donald had dirt on his hands?
Second, the natural world reveals to Donald just how tiny and insignificant he and his perceived success really are. This is deeply disturbing to him.
Men like Donald, who can't make life, do not contribute to life, only destroy life, are dangerous because they are scared and ignorant.
16
This is the most disgusting and putrid of all of the legacies of this Administration, and I include the very real threat to our democracy itself in that conclusion. Mr. Trump's only exposure to nature appears to be on the golf course. He appears to have no environmental ethic or conscience at all. Wild spaces and living things, which to me are truly the most wondrous things of life, have no importance to this President and large numbers of the Republican Party. I have profound sadness every day for the selfishness and greed which has become the mantra of our republic. We seem to have become so small, so petty, and so selfish. This administration makes no effort to lead this country and build consensus. It is all about destroying the beautiful things that others have built.
16
Those rascally rabbits and deer aren't paying any rent!
8
The looting was committed during the last eight years by the socialists who infected our federal agencies and usurped the state's ownership of lands belonging to their citizens.
1
The lands in question have NEVER been owned by the states. They were national public lands from Day One, when the nation acquired them. The Western states agreed to give up all claims to national public lands at statehood, with the provision that some lands were transferred to the state at the time for supporting public schools.
Please broaden your mind and let some actual facts in.
11
Hurray for you. You stand up for the rich and powerful. They don’t need your help. Don’t expect an invitation to Mara Lago anytime soon.
3
Remove and replace.
5
If the people of Utah and Alaska don’t step up, don’t complain when your states turn into cesspools.
12
Alaska is a petrostate, with a small, captured population. Residents of other states will need to step up if they want to ensure preservation of their public lands in Alaska.
5
I smell the vile Steve Bannon behind these atrocities. Teddy Roosevelt is turning in his grave.
14
Trump claims to be a big fan of TR, but Roosevelt would have despised a lazy, power hungry, ignorant dictator wannabe like 45.
8
As far as the Utah monuments go, the whisperer is Sen. Orrin Hatch.
Anyone who voted for Trump should be ashamed.
Destroying OUR (not the oil and coal company's) public lands.
Withdrawing from the Paris accords on climate change - we are the only nation on earth to not belong. And of course reversing course on any and all efforts to increase renewable energy, such as solar and wind.
Raising taxes on the middle class and poor while giving giant tax breaks to the rich - and oh by the way, increasing the deficit by $1.5 trillion (count those zeros).
His appointees at the EPA are routinely reversing bans on toxic chemicals and enacting changes that are making our water and air more polluted. All of which increase the hospital visits for our children, and shorten everyone's lifespan. But increase corporate profits.
What were you thinking?
Last week Republican leadership announced they will introduce legislation to cut Medicare and Social Security - which our elderly rely on.
We simply must get out and vote against any and all Republicans in order to save our country and democracy!
19
Bears Ears belongs to the nation, not the state of Utah. Ranchers and oil companies should have no voice in this. Preserving this site, so important to so many Native Americans, is more important than oil reserves or fat cows.
Trump doesn’t care about the fact that future generations won’t see Bears Ears in its natural state, he wants to wipe the name of Obama from the face of the Earth. In 45’s world, hate trumps all other considerations.
14
Let us hope that conservationists and others can keep this decision tied up in court until after the 2018 elections when We the People ought to give control of Congress to the Democrats.
Send Trump home in 2020 so that we can preserve our natural heritage for future generations.
And please, Orrin Hatch retire.
Hatch disgraced himself when he advised President Obama to nominate Merrick Garland then refused to consent to his own advice by helping craven political hack Mitch McConnell steal the SCOTUS seat. His shameful emotional outburst about his own poor beginning was a pathetic display in light of his support for the horrible Senate tax cut bill which is nothing but a give-away to the rich. The poor boy has been completely bought by big money donors.
We the People have to vote against these sell-outs.
We get the government we deserve.
15
The land belongs to the humans. We must harvest the natural resources, the booty if you will. This is called progress. This is how civilizations are created. If we sat there just staring at trees for millennia we would still be living in tents.
1
Except there is no really meaningful “booty” here. A few people wi get temporarily rich, and nature is destroyed forever, in the name of undoing anything Obama or Clinton related.
10
But humans didn't "stare at trees for millennia." We've logged, mined, drilled, built cities and subdivisions, etc., on almost the entire natural world, leaving intact and functioning only pieces of that world. The pieces that are left after bulldozing the vast majority of this critical part of our national and human heritage is what we're fighting over now.
3
Did you hear Donald say that the federal designation denied access to the public? What they mean by "the public" is private enterprise. Operating the country for profit seems to be a feature of this administration.
The only way for bad people to lose is for good people to vote.
12
I shudder to think of all the damage Trump et al will do to this country. Do his GOP enablers seriously think Putin will share his wealth with them?
8
Thank you for calling out Orrin Hatch in this fiasco. Another power player in turning back progress on public lands: Snide and dyspeptic Utah GOP Congressman Rob Bishop, chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee. It has been his life's work to reverse any land preservation work by Democrats and he perpetuates the myth among those who work in Utah's withering coal industry they'll have a future once these precious lands are open to drilling and exploitation.
Coal is dying. Everyone knows it, but our congressional delegation runs from this reality. Instead of embracing legislation supporting alternative energy sources and coal worker re-education, our Utah Republicans (to a person) promote ignorance and the bygone go-go days of cheap extractive energy. They refuse to accept the growing evidence that tourism and recreation are paying off and building the economies of the small, rural towns bordering these monuments.
As noted in the editorial, the lawsuits against this ploy are flowing in and we who spend time in these beautiful lands in Utah will not easily fold. As Patagonia has brilliantly branded it: "The president stole your land." Thank you for an excellent piece of opinion and for sifting out the sanity we so badly need right now.
12
All drilling companies be it for natural gas, oil, coal , industrial metals or logging companies, that 'harvest' in the areas of the present wild lives should be publicly shamed, and boycotted. all of their finished pRoducts should be listed in every in public spaces so the citizens can make a choice of what they buy and from who they buy it from. It is 'our land', not the set of privateers and pirates that sit in the halls of congress and the Presidency. WE THE PEOPLE , should not have our national inheritance destroyed for marginal profit (mc=mr) when it comes to our future
7
Those, like Sen. Orin Hatch and Lisa Murkowski, along with many others, might be looking to enrich themselves financially by investing in oil and gas companies. Their motivation for leasing federal lands may be much more about enriching themselves than for any other reason. Shameful.
8
These bureaucrats have a soul. It's clear. And it only cost 30 pieces of silver from their lobbyists.
6
To the editorial board.
I agree with everything you have said in this article. However, words come cheap.
So I beg of you, plead with you to look in the mirror and recognize your own culpability in this matter.
These demands upon the environment which entail the wholesale slaughter of species after species, the vacuuming up of the ocean floor, the perception of forest as nothing more than timber for floor-boarding, mystical grounds as simply mother loads of metallic ores to enrich the pockets of the connected all stem from the one subject you refuse to address for fear of being politically incorrect.
That item is POPULATION. So long as the worlds population continues to surge, so long as our government, our people and you don’t question our own surging population and its impact then the ongoing onslaught on Earth and all the living things it contains will only get worse.
That is why I question your besmirching those opposed to further immigration for this very reason as bigots and racists. Perhaps they are simply brave enough to speak inconvenient truths.
Our population has passed 300 million and is hurtling to 400 million. The worlds population has passed 7 billion and is heading to 9 billion.
The earth cannot support that many people. What you dread is therefore inevitable. The people I despise who take advantage of the situation to profit are barren inside. But you who claim otherwise are in many ways worse for not speaking up about the root cause.
8
Republicans have turned into a revolting form of homo sapiens whose distinguishing characteristics are unqenchable greed, unfetter dishonesty and the complete inability to engage in long-term term thinking. The question is how much irrepairable damage will they cause before they are removed?
6
Where was the outrage from Americans while we benefited from the looting and pillaging of lesser developed countries? Oil, gas, minerals and precious stones; America's multi-national business left some pretty deep scars across the globe. We couldn't have cared less because it was never in "our backyard"... Well the vultures have come home to roost and deservedly so. Dig it all up! The time to cry was 40 years ago!
Zinke and his ilk, which include Hatch and Lee, reflect Westerners who have inherited the myths that have sustained a more than century old battle against the federal government. Add fringe Morman beliefs--think Cliven Bundy-- to that mix, along with the general economic distress of rural America, and you might gain some insight into the small pocket of provincial southeastern Utahns who cannot adapt to the end of their cow/resource extraction lives. Please donate to either Dine Bikeyah, the tribal organization whose Indian voices demand we hear the need to protect indigenous ancestral sites, or to the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA). Both organizations will fight for the majority of Utahns and everyone else who want to see the Trump administration lose in court.
9
This is the worst effect of a Trump presidency.
Unjust tax laws can be overturned, and I believe they will. Lack of healthcare will be disastrous for some, but I am hopeful that we will do better in the future. Decisions favoring "religious freedom" over civil rights are also doomed to fail eventually.
Once natural wonders are destroyed, however, they are gone forever.
Back in November, I joked, miserably, that Trump wouldn't stop until there was a Trump Casino in the middle of the Grand Canyon. I thought I was exaggerating. I hope I was.
6
Once again, We are not given the land by our forefathers we are borrowing it from our children. I’m not religious but I know what sin is.
8
Some us less charitable conservationists are anticipating opportunity to send viral a video of a hungry polar bear foraging in the trash of an Alaskan public official; but that aside, shame on the movement to invade the last remaining wild lands by those New York real estate moguls who likely cannot distinguish a bear from a coyote.
2
This is the newest level of Disaster Capitalism. Unwilling to just sit back and wait for a natural disaster, they have installed an ongoing, self propelled human shaped disaster into your Presidency. Everyday it wakes up, picks something new to break, and sits back to allow the robber baron mob to pick the bones clean.
Putin Inc. needs for your country to be transformed into something more like Russia is now, pure criminal oligarchy. Something it understands, understands it, and can make deals with. That requires your kleptocrat class to just get a little more obscenely wealthy. Just enough to be completely and permanently above the rule of law and democratic control.
What you are currently witnessing is how that new oligarchy will be financed to get there.
3
The radical verses of Woody Guthrie’s song “This is your land” are best interpreted as a protest against the vast income inequalities that existed in the United States, and against the sufferings of millions during the Great Depression. Apparently it is time to bring back his song with the “radical verses.”
4
And where are the Democrats in all of this? Where is the outrage against THIS raping of the land? So much easier to generate outrage against the petty misdeeds of one of their own, for the sake of ideological purity. This is the danger of becoming so obsessed with one instance of a societal wrong that the fifty others happening at the same time, and of much greater consequence, go completely unnoticed and unopposed. There are no time-outs in the world. We do not have the luxury of purifying the male population and then getting to work on these crises exploding all around us.
4
I don't understand the motivation behind the daily destruction, chaos and mayhem Trump inflicts on this country.
I can only conclude he actually hates this country and is in complete agreement with his pal Putin that this country needs to be damaged beyond recognition.
6
He hates everything that has the name Obama or Clinton attached to it
2
How many times do we have to fight the same fights? Once commercialized, these pristine lands are gone forever, open pit mines, oil spills and destruction remain. Do we really think we are entitled to all of it? Really? Only our concerns? This administration should be ashamed. In their "get rid of regulations" mantra, bears with cubs can now be shot in their dens, and wolves hunted from airplanes. This isn't "freedom" it's slaughter.
Presidents can create monuments, not revoke them. And again it's back to the courts.
90
...which Trump and McConnell are populating with dyslexics who compulsively invert the meaning of plain English.
3
I know... Let's make Seattle a wilderness area... I know some American Indian had to have died there at some time in history, maybe even on their way down to Nevada, Oregon, Arizona or Mexico after crossing the Aleutian land bridge...
1
As you know, Seattle isn't wilderness, however there are designated areas in WA that ARE still wilderness, and have been preserved. The tribes here have a great deal of input into land management. Your sarcasm doesn't apply here.
1
Unfortunately, Dick Cheney didn't fail. Cheney and George W. went after the jobs of dedicated career BLM employees very successfully. The Bush administration fundamentally changed the mission of the BLM from conservation to rubber-stamping oil and gas leasing on public lands.
Trump is only continuing the Republican Party undoing of environmental stewardship on public lands.
6
It is incomprehensible Trumps childish need to stomp on everything Obama. Worse than National Monuments are the appointments to the courts who will rule in favor, without proper review or prudence, of Trump/Zinke/Pruitt's decisions. Election 2018 will be an important waypoint in slowing the great unmaking of America.
3
Hopefully this and the many other travesties in recent months will once and for all teach us to choose more wisely on Election Day. The Presidency is far too valuable to throw away your vote on third parties or simply stay home because the Democrat is not 100% to your liking. Republicans and "conservatives" will support the most duplicitous, dangerous and unqualified candidates imaginable just to keep power, while we on the left, including ardent environmentalists, throw our votes and the immense power of the presidency in the garbage because Mrs. Clinton gave some speeches to rich people and hucksters Bannon, Hannity and Trump alleged that she is a criminal. It is imperative that we learn, at every level, to vote for the best candidate that can actually win.
4
The very moniker "conservative" is no longer valid when discussing the proclivities and so-called policies of the GOP since they are conserving nothing but their own power by any means necessary, including cheating (Gorsuch), supporting a candidate who has very credible allegations of sexual predation outstanding against him (Moore), supporting a president under a cloud bursting with all sorts of darkness - sexual predation allegations, conflicts of interests, connections to shady and corrupt players in the Russian landscape, giveaways to billionaires and the one percent. Suggest changing conservative as a political designation to craven, as in Mr. Trump is enabling the cravens in stealing Native American lands ... again.
5
"Now men will go content with what we spoiled." Wilfred Owen's lament about World War One is singularly apt to the destruction Trump and his minions are wreaking on our land.
2
Could I see an article on Ivanka Trump's views on this please? Since this is the man she campaigned for...
1
A David Letterman monologue from the Bush-Cheney era says everything you need to know about policy under Trump and Zinke:
"The president's new cabinet is a model of diversity, represented by four different oil companies."
4
The modern GOP is the biggest terrorist organization this nation has ever faced.
4
Your article should more aptly be titled: "The Rape of America's Public Land."
5
I am a westerner by birth, and so we’re my parents and some of my grandparents. Our public lands are part of our heritage, our culture and our hearts. I’m also one of the few Americans who has had the privilege of spending time in ANWR. These actions by Trump make me so sad I can barely read past the headlines.
8
Alaska doesn't get 50% of the royalties off federal lands. It gets 90%. It's a special deal for Alaska only. Set up when Alaska became a state. But I believe they "count" all of it (100%) as federal revenue for the purpose of the reconciliation bill. When they tried to open ANWR last time (Ted Steven's saddest day), folks pointed out this dbl accounting and asked if Alaska would give up the extra cash. Alaska said no.
5
The arctic shelf offers only one year’s of oil consumption, & will replace & destroy the ecology & wild life that has taken millions of tears to evolve ,all to fill the pockets of the Republican donors.This will be Trump’s & Zinke’s legacy.
6
But wait! There's more!
1.) One can reasonably predict that the upcoming leases will be "awarded" to the usual suspects at very low costs.
2.) The resultant profits will be taxed (if they are taxed at all) at a tax rate 35% to 38% less tax under the GOP/Republican tax law.
Are we GREAT yet?
5
Although I do not think that a lot of the coal miners in West Virginia, Pennsylvania and other places throughout Appalachia read the Times (a lot of coal miners are quite literate and do, but they saw through Trump's empty promises), I would still like to point out what it might mean to them if Trump, Zinke and the rest of the nature destroyers succeed in strip-mining Grand Staircase-Escalante for coal.
We all know what happens when a resource already in surplus, like coal, has its supply suddenly increased -- the price falls sharply. While this might temporarily make coal more price-competitive with natural gas (although its transport costs remain far higher), it will be the final death blow to the far more labor-intensive coal mining industry.
And, regarding the ANWR, we are already producing more crude than we have the capacity to refine.
Trump's policies here are so wrongheaded that it makes me weep, like that normally stoic Native American in the old "Keep America Beautiful" public service announcement. Once we destroy these resources, they will be gone forever, and for what? A few tons of coal, and barrels of oil, we don't even need? Tragic.
7
You need to spend some time OUTSIDE the Beltway friend. Head up to skyline drive but first read the history of how FDR ceased the properties and displaced the rightful owners. And by the way my friend, that "stoic Indian" in the "keep America beautiful" ad was an ITALIAN AMERICAN (IRON EYES CODY). Wipe those tears away. Satire button off.
If the federal government wanted to manage the lands in these states without doing so with primary consideration to the sovereign states within which they lie, it should have kept them as territories.
Outside of critical national security interests, the federal government is wrong to manage vast swaths of a state's territory against their wishes. What we are generally calling "Environmental" concerns here are really only aesthetics.
1
Glad to hear that the lawsuits are rolling in. I can't see how Trump and his syncophants think this will sit well with environmentalists, lovers of the outdoors, millennials, let alone indigenous people who revere the land as not only their physical home, but also their spiritual one.
I truly hope that concerned American citizens will let their voices be heard over the wanton destruction of these priceless national treasures that belong to ALL Americans, not just those of a few republican lawmakers in cahoots with their donors to make a profit. Get out the VOTE in 2018 and let your voices and displeasure be heard!
9
Where is the outrage?
“Chuck & Nancy” are too timid and ineffective to attract cameras. Elizabeth Warren seems to have disappeared. Is there a Democratic leader out there who can do what Republicans do all the Time; demand media attention and create sound bites that will get the attention of the 70% who disapprove of Trump’s imperial Presidency?
No wonder we can’t get Democrats out to vote. No inspirational leadership.
3
Like much eco propaganda, this piece betrays more than a little misanthropism. It’s always annoying to hear the self-appointed, virtue-signaling, greener-than-thou folks hold forth, because the underlying assumption – that “natural” stuff must be preserved – is simply assumed. Leave aside the fact that much of what the ecos assert to be “natural” is, in reality, the product of 20000 years worth of human activity, there is simply no reason to prefer “natural” to manmade.
NYC is beautiful, too, but if we tried to build it today, the ecos would produce entire litters of endangered buffalo. We spend ungodly amounts of money studying the environmental effects of digging holes under the Hudson to run trains. As applicable here, the ecos lose their collective minds because the feds respect the wishes of Utah residents. (If you’re correct, that the locals wish to set aside millions of acres, for no apparent reason other than “because”, they can and will. There is no reason to dictate from DC.)
Indeed, is it not deeply problematic that authors of this editorial live in the most densely populated place in the country and would never even consider living in UT, yet purport to dictate to the people who do?
You offer no evidence that we would be somehow diminished, as a nation or a species, if we made reasonable use of some of hundreds of millions of acres walled off, simply “because”. We should.
1
Ryan Zinke, Trump's Interior secretary who "rode a horse to work on his first day on the job,in plain imitation of Teddy Roosevelt" as you mentioned in this article, is the most destructive Secretary of Interior department that this country has ever employed.
With his mindset of crippling the environment to reward the miners and exploiters of our country's sacred Indian land, Mr Zinke is on his way to trash our country's environment friendly legislation signed into law by President Bill Clinton and President Obama. Almost overnight literally.
And his boss Mr.Trump, who apparently became the president by openly colluding with his Russian friends as can be evidenced by the special counsel Mr. Mueller already charging 4 of his campaign staffers with more charges to come for his son-in-law Jared Kushner and his son Donald Trump Jr, stole almost 2 million acres of Native American land in Utah with the approval of a crooked Republican Senator from Utah, Mr. Orin Hatch just to please the coal mining and oil drilling companies only because they contributed heavily to his campaign funds.
The Native American tribes, who lived in this land for more than 10,000 years compared to Trump's bootlegging and hotelier grandfather whose hotels were rife with prostitutes and alcohol, has rightfully filed several lawsuits along with environmental groups and by" Patagonia,the outdoors company" as written by you and will win in the end against the most evil and vile president ever, called Trump.
5
The evil that would spew forth from the Trump administration was clear well before he was inaugurated. Terrifyingly, much worse is on the way. I weep for our country and the planet.
3
Many of the environmental rules being rolled back by these anti-American Republicans will disproportionately affect Trump Nation. As they get sick, their children become even dumber than their parents, perhaps they'll notice that they and the nation have been had. Probably not. The evangelicals among them believe that if they suffer here on earth, they will get to heaven on the fast track.
7
Looting??? It seems that the NYT only thinks of "public" lands as being under the control of the federal government. States have plenty of parks and can manage "public" lands in many ways better than the federal government. Totally ignorant, Obama over stepped his authority and Trump just fixed it. As with many illegal actions of the Obama administration.
3
What part of "public" don't you understand? They belong to all of us.
And many lands need protection not only for all of us to enjoy now and into the future, but for the diverse ecosystems they support. The entire planet cannot just be one giant city surrounded by mini-malls and parking lots and open pit mines and manicured golf courses. Destroy nature and we destroy ourselves.
9
And who exactly is going to pay for maintenance amd upkeep when these states like UT and WY, who continues to have a similar battle cry, realize how expensive it is and that they are broke? So, the next move will be to sell off large chunks to private, wealthy folks and yet again the public looses. Dear GOP, your soul is burning I can smell it from here!
2
What authority did obama overstep? He, like any president, has the explicit authority to establish national parks. But trump’s followers are so blinded by their obama hate, that everything he did was “illegal”
2
Everything this administration does can (and will be) undone. 2018 2020. Bye bye Trump. Bye Bye Republican majority in Senate, House and Statehouses. Trump is completely toxic. He could be his superfund sight except that he cancelled all superfund sights.
2
From James Watt (Reagan's bigoted hack) to the present, it's worth noting that Trump is no anomaly.
How does a Republican look in the mirror? Is there a reflection?
6
Let's see how these Senators feel when tourism drops in their states.
6
Cheney failed? What about the Haliburton loophole? Talk about your retrograde environmental policy...
4
It is doubtful fracking and strip mining permits will be issued for all recreational lands to include Florida and New Jersey golf courses.
3
Theodore Roosevelt:
"Here is your country. Cherish these natural wonders. Do not let selfish men and greedy interests skin your country of its beauty, it's riches, or its romance."
16
The fight against the rape of our national treasures must be vigorous, relentless and continued until rationality is served. Otherwise they will keep coming back for more. It will be the American appeasement.
We have had our Silent Spring. It is time for our American Spring. To quote another contributor here: "Citizens arise!"
4
Hello? If you increase those that use resources (us)--then you will need more resources. And those that develop, process and sale natural resources--are not just Republicans.
Please tell me the environmental proposals/damage wrought by Mister's Trump and Pruitt can be halted, challenged and rolled back.
These people cannot leave the national stage soon enough.
5
All I can think of when I read this are the Green Party voters and Jill Stein. Votes have consequences.
2
The disgrace continues while the outrages pile up.
2
Trump's idea of the great out of doors is a round of golf driving a cart along over watered and artificially fertilized greens. He knows nothing else. As he himself would say, sad.
7
Why don't the American people, collectively exercising the power of eminent domain, seize all of Trump's golf courses located in the U.S., and set aside just enough real estate so he can construct some beautiful, amazing, fabulous miniature golf courses(9 holes)thereon. Let the remainder simply revert to whatever state nature intends. MAGA.
2
The Republican Party is giving their red state voters what they deserve.
3
So, we are exchanging a swamp for a sewer. Nice. Some day every Trump supporter should look through the annals of America leading up to the time Teddy Roosevelt fathered the environmental policies that have protected our lands and our people. Air, water all fouled by industrial pollution, so a few could grow rich, while the rest gagged. Smog enveloped our cities. Trash washed in our streams. Disgusting right? Like these clowns in DC. The headline should have read "The Looting of America". Period.
7
A few comments:
Zinke, you are no Teddy Roosevelt
The gold mine mentioned would leave a huge whole in the ground the size of Seattle
Multinationals would benefit from further raping our land
Lastly, keep the pressure up and keep suing and suing and suing.
Shop Patagonia!!
3
"Shop Patagonia"
I did, I am wearing a new Patagonia Down Sweater hoody . Though I bought it before this editorial.
I own a NanoPuff pullover too, both for backcountry skiing.
1
This is all part of Bannon's destruction of all that most Americans hold sacred. He strikes one blow after another until we are staggering in disbelief. I believe that much of the destruction of US institutions and government agencies can be repaired once these destroyers are out of office. But the destruction of ANWR, the American monuments, the environment and wildlife may not be so easily repaired.
3
It's a ship of fools with the mad captain... shouting - Row faster! While the thinking half watches in horror, the other are pushing the great country over the abyss. Guess by 2050 when China has firmly cemented global leadership, people will be pondering how the US followed the UK as the empire collapsed!
4
Anything this administration puts out, any statement, any declared intention turns out a lie. For financial gain, for gain of power, for cruelty.
And Republicans are malevolent collaborators, at best.
Exhibit A: the Bears Natl Monument
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/uranium-firm-urge...
3
Thrashing the environment, and stealing public land and monuments and wildlife from everybody is a clear abuse of power. Trump is an awfully destructive beast, a rotten real estate thug, unable to grasp the injustice and cruelty inflicted. His enablers are complicit, of course, myopic to the majesty of conservation measures the country, thus far, has been so proud of. No decency left? Just crass commercialism? Aren't we ashamed by allowing this disgrace to go forward? Money grabbers 'a la Orrin Hatch or Lisa Murkowski or Donald Trump' are hypocrites in trying to cheat on us...by selling natural treasures to capitalist savage exploiters.
4
It has required the most virulently sadistic government in the nation's history to produce journalism which will not only follow the money at last, but name names and anatomize lies in the enactment of its own public trust. Is this the severance from servility we see in the Harvey Weinstein-exploded dam? It reads as if it is. Let there be no turning back.
3
This feels very much like the destruction of the ancient Buddhist statues by the Taliban in Afghanistan.
13
The only folks deserving of any comments here are the Native American Peoples who live there. I wonder if any one of them will read this article?
Native Americans on these lands don't need to read this article, they're already living on them.
2
Trump's order to shrink these monuments would not have been achieved without the connivance of the state's congressional delegation. These so called leaders reflect the attitude of the prevailing culture that they have a God given right to do as they please with the public lands. They evince an attitude that they are apart from the Union rather than part of the Union. The concept of being stewards of some of the most spectacular vistas in the entire world eludes them. They are shameless in their ignorance of the Native Tribes beliefs in the sacred nature of these lands. They are, in a word STUPID
3
Trump and his greedy millionaire administration are ruining our country for generations to come. Every American should feel sick about this and do something before it is too late!
6
Just undoing the harm Obama inflicted upon our country.
@Shamrock
So, trying to preserve the pristine wilderness of our natural environment for future generations, is what you consider to be Obama's "harm"???
Enough said.
2
Something along these lines should be required reading - including education on how to understand the very real and daunting facts therein. We are on track to make our planet ever less hospitable, with plenty of real-time evidence pouring in each year. Climate is weather over space (the whole globe and its atmosphere) and time (trends measured and observed over decades). This is not your parents' weather, even now, it's changed already.
"Global Warming's Terrifying New Math" http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/global-warmings-terrifying-new...
A brief video here covers the basics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBpmzjql4yU
The future of human civilization, that's all about it. But who cares, looters and kleptocrats are laughing all the way to the bank. Screw their low-level employees (don't believe me, check out how the Walmart billionaires suggest their workers get government assistance to supplement their non-living wages).
An expanding population with expanding appetites on a finite planet: what could go wrong? Plenty, it turns out.
We need to work together to solve problems, not kill messengers and blame victims. Socializing risk and privatizing profit won't work much longer; it already has many millions of victims. If you call yourself religious, don't be a hypocrite: exclusion and violence are not the answer.
4
Clarification: This is all about not extracting more fossil fuels which are bad for humanity's present future and hurt the least fortunate the most.
2
Progressives say that only the most fit among us with leisure time and camping equipment are the ONLY people who should ever see the great expanses that we pay to protect and maintain. Meanwhile, Trump's voters - the successful group - actually think everyday people should get to see these amazing places.
Progressives yearn for a single man leading the country helped by thousands of powerful bureaucrats named by the cultural elite. The fact that such arrangements ALWAYS end with a Stalin or a Hitler unning things doesn't bother them in the least.
Let's build roads and all the thing s that make travel possible with motels, fuel stations, and restaurants. And we'll need the wealthy there also, because there needs to be a resident population to keep a neighborly eye on things.
2
This argument makes no sense. Environmentalists and park supporters want our public land protected for ALL of us not exploited by the few. Trump supporters and bleeding heart liberals and everybody in between are welcome to visit protected public lands. ALL of us benefit from clean air and functioning ecosystems--and the jobs that come with them.
1
Okay. So, even though a literal handful of very likely bought Republican politicians wants to mine and dig for oil on pristine lands; the American public, including the people of Utah, and that in turn encompasses the ordinary folk who so deeply concern you, opposes opening the lands to industry, and Trump and the expoiters and extruder and lobbyists he put in charge of protecting our environment, are morally incapable of appreciating or protecting the majesty of endangered elephants (Trump tried to lift import bans on elephants for rich trophy hunters, the rich people you don't like--- the public wouldn't let him; his repulsive son proudly poses with the tail of an elephant he killed) or of our public lands, all of the above is just great for the common man, who opposes it. Can't wait to see the common man scramble for camping sites by the oil rigs and strip mines.
1
If anyone yearns for a single man leading everyone, it’s trump and his supporters.
And republicans have no interests in opening up the land to the “common man”, they want to open it to mining companies.
If they did, they could propose money to build roads and public accommodations in those parks, instead that propose cutting the funding for those kind of things
1
In the case of both monuments in question. The lands were Federal lands before Clinton and Obama made them "monuments". The new category significantly reduces what the land can be used for. No camping, biking, hunting/fishing and ranchers can't graze their cattle like they have for over 100 years. The change still results in all the land removed from the "monument classification" is STILL FEDERAL LAND. As I understand it there is a couple thousand years supply of coal in the United States so no one has their eye on a critical supply of coal.
The designation of National Monument status does not mean no camping, hiking, ranching, hunting, etc., there.
This is exactly the misinformation the trump administration and th Utah congressional delegation is spouting. The management plan includes each one of those things you listed as not being allowed. Grazing is still allowed, in the case of Grand Staircase 97% of the Monument is open to grazing. Hunting, fishing, camping and harvesting timber are all allowed.
1
There's enough fossil fuel to burn to turn the Earth into Venus.
How how is returning Obama’s land grab to the state “looting”?
1
The American people bought Alaska from Russia. It is a large beautiful treasure. Remember the massive destructive Exon oil spill near Valdez? We all should have a say in protecting national treasures, which should not be owned by profiteering Republican campaign bribers .
1
Just in case you hadn't noticed, Obama's "land grab" wasn't to enrich himself, or his fossil fuel cronies -- it was to guarantee Americans had a country to be proud of for generations to come.
BIG difference.
2
The state doesnt own it--we all do
1
Where would a good place be to mine gold and coal? Drill for oil? Build a dam? Nowhere? How about copper, lithium, nickel, cobalt, you know the stuff of all those electric transport vehicles and solar engergy storage facilities manufactures need ?
We should all be more like California. They are fortyeight in the nation for in infrastructure spending. Money won’t be spent on bad things like roads and flood and fire control. No they are investing in high speed rail. I’ll assume the stuff building the California dream won’t be mined there either.
I’m embarrassed living in Texas, we lead California in renewable energy and will have high speed rail before them but we don’t have a pristine philosophy.
1
Your facts on renewable energy are not correct. California uses considerably more than Texas, and when you add in electric vehicles, it’s way ahead.
Our rapaciousness isn't limited to state borders. We're responsible for much of the air pollution in China, for example. At some point we must ask ourselves how much is enough. A twelve hundred square feet....or three thousand? How many hydrocarbons and minerals should it take to transport a 200-lb man? Could it possibly be that at least some of the time he could transport himself or share a ride with a few dozen other people? That we could, just maybe, let our knowledge of climate and resources guide not just our personal desires, but the built environment and even capitalism itself?
SC
Not what the nytimes, cbs and mother jones say. So called red states lead so called blue states in renewable energy to. California spends the most in government subsides if that's what you mean.
Rest assured that when the lawsuits reach the SCOTUS, Sagebrush Rebel Neil Gorsuch will lead the charge to support the rape of these fragile western lands. Like mother, like son.
6
Firstly, half the coal companies are going bankrupt - Peabody, Arch and Alpha (largest, second and fourth) have declared bankruptcy. "This bad bad bad man Obama, in the same of some climate change, have destroyed the coal industry by allowing fracking". Now coal industry is in a free fall. Yes Utah is available for coal industry but who is going to invest. Plus on the top of that they have to buy bonds for cleanup if they go under. [Self bonding is being phased out]
Secondly, the Oil prices are around $55/bbl. When ANWR hue and cry first happened, the price of oil was over $100/bbl. Now it does not make sense. Furthermore, if the oil prices were to rise then US shale oil and Russian Tundra would become profitable. That is why ANWR bids failed and total applications is only 80K acres @ $15 average per acre.
Republicans should blame Free Market Capitalism for this failure.
4
The elected officials in Utah do not agree with you.Obama overreached again and that had to be corrected.The native people and locals will continue to preserve the land.They know how to do it better than Washington insiders.
2
The native people and locals are fighting to keel these lands protected as monuments. They're the ones who worked so hard to get them designated as monuments.
Yeah right. Let the developers have at it. What could go wrong.
Really? You call this a "correction?" How do locals do it better.....selling it to the highest bidder?
Patagonia & REI, the environmental clothing companies are seriously considering sponsoring legal proceedings against Donald Trump to prevent him from reducing the size of our country's land that is protected within our country's National Parks and honors ancient and Native American's cultural heritage. I encourage Americans to stand with these organizations and do everything we can to support them in their effort to stop this madness and our current President's irresponsible decisions. As an individual, I can't afford to sue Mr. Trump. Patagonia & REI can. I encourage concerned individuals everywhere to contact Patagonia & REI and let them know you support them and will work to support them in this effort. And for all the naysayers... no one at either organization asked me to or encouraged me to write this. We The People need to embrace wise business leaders who are responsible Americans want to help us fight back against Trumps pillaging of our natural resources and cultural heritage.
150
They will fail, it will cost money to do so, but Obama's action was clearly an over reach of federal power, the state can do as they think best with these lands.
Are Patagonia and REI being altruistic or do they believe it will increase their bottom line? You can at least credit Hobby Lobby and Chick-fil-A for forgoing profits by being closed on Sunday because of religious beliefs.
Yes. Buy Patagonia. Join REI.
Even if it is true, as one of the previous commentators purport, that making huge tracts available for development at Bears Ears is 'just' a matter of principle, and that it is unlikely that there will be much actual development, the principle still matter tremendously. We owe to ourselves and to coming generations to preserve this earth that we have been given. Future generations will probably judge Trump more harshly than virtually all other presidents before him. And just for our selfish desire to grab us much as we can as quickly as possible...
4
This seems an appropriate time for what should be America's national anthem, a song of nobility, a song of a people with respect for our country as a collective enterprise, a song of a people who understand that Grand Staircase-Escalante is about our spiritual place on this planet, not just economics.
This Land Is Your Land
by Woody Guthrie
This land is your land, this land is my land
From California to the New York island;
From the redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and me.
As I was walking that ribbon of highway,
I saw above me that endless skyway:
I saw below me that golden valley:
This land was made for you and me.
I've roamed and rambled and I followed my footsteps
To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts;
And all around me a voice was sounding:
This land was made for you and me.
When the sun came shining, and I was strolling,
And the wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling,
As the fog was lifting a voice was chanting:
This land was made for you and me.
As I went walking I saw a sign there
And on the sign it said "No Trespassing."
But on the other side it didn't say nothing,
That side was made for you and me.
In the shadow of the steeple I saw my people,
By the relief office I seen my people;
As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking
Is this land made for you and me?
Nobody living can ever stop me,
As I go walking that freedom highway;
Nobody living can ever make me turn back
This land was made for you and me.
12
LOL: But Woody or Arlo, don't you dare set foot inside the Bear's Ears National Memorial. But it is a lovely song based on fiction.
The scary thing is that when the lawsuits come to their final decision it will be made by this Supreme Court. And we all know what he outcome will be, another law that dates from Teddy Roosevelt's time gone, and that will open up all federal lands to corporate looting.
81
Utah has already lost significant tourism and outdoor industry business to Colorado. I would like to think my state would fight tooth and nail to prevent shrinking any national monument in our borders. Coloradans understand that this STATE was created from federal lands owned by all Americans, so the 30% or so of land within the state borders that is federal land was NEVER the property of Colorado or its residents (excluding Native Americans). Many residents of Utah and Alaska and members of their Congressional delegations seem to have skipped their American history lessons.
116
Or more appropriately they would use their state power to do whatever they think is in their best interests. Very Simple!!!
Maybe those states should just form their own country then. The whole point of having United States is that there is some interaction between them
Simple except you ignore the fact that federal lands in Utah are owned by ALL Americans! That's the whole point.
This like many signature actions of the Obama presidency was done by executive fiat without the approval or support of congress. So it should come as no surprise that the new president feels comfortable rolling them back. In this case Obama created these monuments in the waning days of his presidency without getting support from the locals. The federal government controls huge parts of the west, 84% in Nevada and this is a sore spot in these states.
2
Executive fiat...oh you mean Trumps presidency over the past year.
Spend time in these places and you will understand that they are worth preserving forever.
All presidents can establish national monuments without congress, and most have. Why do only the Obama ones bother you so much?
More confirmation, on top of the deeply unpopular proposed tax cut, that the GOP has ceased to be a national party, advocating policy with a view to national interests, to become a party of looters and pillagers of the commons -- public land, public treasury -- in mercenary service to their corporate and wealthy patrons.
7
It has been truly heartbreaking to see this administration's repealing of so many protections for our precious natural resources. The appointment of Scott Pruitt was a mean-spirited act of defiance just after Trump met with Al Gore. But GOP has always had a disdain for protection of lands and natural resources, as if those regulations were an impediment to manifest destiny. Even Teddy Roosevelt was demonized by the mining, timber and railroad barons within his own Republican party when he proposed setting aside public lands in creating the National Park system. I just hope that the damage done by the Trump team is not irreversible. The one force that could rally to stop this destruction, but won't, is the evangelical set, following the Pope's lead in declaring protection of the earth a philosophy of respect for their God's creation. Too bad it wasn't the 11th commandment.
10
You need to educate yourself on the history of Bear's Ears as well as the history of the West's public lands. Bear's Ears was not an overnight decision. The tribes have been working on this for several years, previously with other stakeholders. As to size? These were and still are public lands. Making it a monument would give these lands further protections from the looting of treasures that goes on day by day there. Also, the most valuable parcels were not protected. Cedar Mesa and Grand Gulch are a BLM Wilderness Study Area. You cannot walk a mile without running into a ruin, some with very large pictographs and petroglyphs. This pristine area, was not included in the reduced Monument. Obama actually reduced the requested size of the Monument. All the area the tribes requested is full of American history, our history along with tribal history, dating back thousands upon thousands of years. If the Antiquities Act enshrines our heritage sites, then there is no better model for the Act than Bear's Ears.
11
Mr Trump only believes in one thing, making money, either for himself or his friends. The only future generations he cares about, and I'm not sure he cares about them, are named Trump. Past administrations have seen the benefits of conservation and clean air and water. He only needs to look to Asia for examples of the results to his policies, or look to this countries history of air and water pollution during the 60s and 70s. Does the Love Canal, burning rivers, and deaths due to foul air ring any bells?
3
It is at least arguable that the President DOES have the authority to adjust National Monuments in size and scope. It is a question which will ultimately be before SCOTUS. The Antiquities Act is barely two paragraphs which, if read, raises questions regarding whether the Federal Government can lock up millions of acres with a stroke of the pen. The Government, special interest groups et. al. have a rapacious appetite for land, at present over 50% of the US is owned and controlled by Federal, State and Local Governments. A quick search of pending National Monuments reveals millions more acres of land are on the Governments plate.
Over 80% of Utah is owned by the Federal Government and the Ute Tribe and others who pressed for Bear's Ears is hardly land poor. The Tribes own and control over 4Million Acres which contain substantial areas set aside for MINING and Resource harvesting.
Some will respond with "THIS LAND IS YOUR LAND, THIS LAND IS MY LAND" and "If the government owns it we all own it". That's nonsense, much federal land is designated wilderness with absolute restriction on any humans treading it.
1
Established fact that the states cannot afford to maintain these lands. Pressure to turn to development would be enormous.
And how to respond to the last paragraph but with derision. But it's Sunday and I dare not.
2
The land is still owned by the Federal Government which can restrict development. And States and Localities limit or restrict development of property through zoning ordinances. Finally, much of the land here and other proposed National Monuments is physically not developable. Now, deride away I'm used to it.
His immigrant grandfather Frederick was involved with the Yukon and Klondike gold rush, speculating and operating mining town amenities. Tower heights grew after Donald's invention of air rights in Manhattan while building of the Trump Tower and his take over of the Pan Am building both creating shadows in the Park. Public Land and or zoning mean nothing. His golf courses are met with resistance both in Scotland and in Ferry Point, Bronx where NYC built and subsidized it, yet people cant afford to go and has declining revenues. He costs more than he earns. Does he want to build another boondoggle?
3
The Trump administration is like a bad dream that won't end. I have honestly never felt so distanced and upset about my government before.
3
"Polls have shown considerable support among Utah’s citizens for the monuments — one of which, the Grand Staircase, has large though not easily marketable coal deposits; neither of which has much oil and gas..."
Right. So why do environmentalists and editorial writers immediately screech about oil drilling and coal mining? If there is scant reason to think it is going to happen, why does everyone lead with the risk that it's going to happen?
If it was a big risk, it would have happened before Obama drew the boundaries so expansively.
Here's how this should play out, in my opinion: make the case that this area or that area should be included. Don't reflexively defend the entire block of acreage as though its boundaries were drawn with some sort of inviolate precision.
5
And work through the state, they are in charge now.
This argument was already debated, reviewed, and resulted in the monuments. Why must we do so again?
1
Well, Kurfco, living in California, you might not appreciate that the ecology of a desert doesn't come in "this area or that area" blocs. It's not like political subdivisions; it's not like congressional districts. Gerrymandering national monuments doesn't work.
I've hiked through and camped in both Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante, and I can't say how you could divide them into "areas." These are ecological and cultural regions, somewhat like the ecologies dominated by fire that cause indiscriminate human settlements so much grief in California. They are large monuments because the ecologies are large, and human use of them predates the American predatory republic by 15,000 to 30,000 years.
We have not earned the right to exploit these areas, but I as a Utahn have seen how the state government will subsidize the coal and oil and gas exploration because they believe there is more revenue in that than in tourism, because they do not hike and camp throughout Utah's natural landscape. They will push in any way they can to destroy the countryside.
Here I will add comment number 11. Yes, I'm used to how few people read such stories. Republicans can count on it. So, having made my first comment on drilling on ANWR over 30 years ago, and knowing the day would come when relentless greed would win, I now say GO FOR IT! We simply can't deny that we will scrap this entire planet for every last dime it might offer. Let us do it quickly and then fall into our beckoning graves so the planet can begin the millions of years it will need to recover.
1
Wait a minute. These are National refuges. Utah and Alaska are looking to scoop up any lease income/rents/taxes they generate. That assume that resources are economically viable to mine or drill for. But, National means just that. All Americans should share in any revenues they generate. So, common sense tells me that any income that flows should be prorated among all 50 states based on population. Why not?
2
Russian oligarchs made multiple fortunes when formerly Soviet resources were privatized. I'm sure we will see the same here, along with dismantling of much of the National Monument system. Will National Parks be next?
2
The purpose of designated federal land is to preservation and protecting popular access. The overwhelming majority who visit federal lands in Utah go to one or more of the four prominent national parks -- Bryce Canyon, Zion, Arches, and Canyonlands. Times Journeys visit two of these parks. Dollars to donuts, they have never sponsored a trip to Bears Ears. But the four national parks are big sellers, and for good reason. They are magnificent.
Bears Ears is worth conserving. But it isn't a major tourist attraction. So it doesn't serve the second purpose of federal designation -- it doesn't attract large numbers of visitors. And, working against it, is the need for a four wheel drive vehicle with high clearance to get to most of the attractions. Also, it is hard to get to and there aren't enough services for a large visitor population. Finally, whatever development is proposed is mostly on the outskirts.
Bears Ears, on the whole, is too remote and too undeveloped even for mining companies. It would be nice if we could preserve everything, but we can't. And Bears Ears will basically remain what it is despite development. Too much of the opposition is uninformed. What is likely to happen at Bears Ears would be acceptable to many if they knew the vast stretches of land that will remain pristine and they understood the difference between Bears Ears and Bryce Canyon.
1
You have more faith than I. Once a precedent is set exploitation is inevitable whether it be this generation or the next.
National parks, monuments, refuges and forests protect not only natural beauty, wildlife and vegetation but air and water quality and historic and cultural resources. They provide recreational opportunities, which in Utah and Colorado generate significant revenue. It's not just locals or even Americans who are drawn to these national treasures but many travelers from abroad--Japanese, French and Germans, to name a few, are frequently encountered on trails and in nearby towns. Two prominent Republicans were responsible for several of our early national parks: Yellowstone (Teddy Roosevelt) and Grand Tetons (John D Rockefeller Jr). Who took the conserve out of Republican conservatism?
99
You might consider looking a bit further into what you said. Our forests here in Eastern Oregon are not healthy nor have they been for many years. The hands off approach is setting our forests up for extremely large fires that cannot be fought without massive resources and tons of money. Perhaps we remove some of the materials and utilize it and reduce the fuel loads so when there is a fire, we can manage and control the size of the fire....Air quality here in Eastern Oregon for the past decade has been horrible during the times we have fires. Not sure where you get your info but our national forests are not healthy and are being mismanaged. You speak of people being drawn to these national treasures when in all reality, forest plans are calling for closures to the point no one is allowed access into our public lands.
We recently spent seven weeks camping and hiking in Bears Ears.
It needs the protection of being a National Monument. There are tens of thousands of remains of original cultures in this area.
The argument seems to be, from our discussions with people there, that the "Federal Government" did an overreach, and that the land there belongs first and foremost to "the people." It is impossible to get some folks to open their minds to the idea that the "Federal Government" is not an office building in Washington, DC, but rather is the other 330 million of us who have joint ownership of this land.
It is a land grab pure and simple.
We also heard the argument that people have been ranching in the area for many years. Once again we see the effects of some peoples' inability to adapt. Whose profession has not required substantial adaptation and change in the past 20 years? But they are too insecure to think they can adapt.
This type of action makes me want to ban, not allow, ranching on all public lands. It accounts for about 3% of cattle raised each year, so would not be missed. Ranchers also do not pay what ranchers in other parts of the country pay for non irrigated land, and the fees they pay do not even cover the administrative costs. In essence, we subsidize their advocacy to do things like try to eliminate the Bears Ears protections.
This land belongs to ALL Americans, and to our children and grandchildren. Not just to the people who live close to it.
2
Fossil fuels underground are like stock that continues to grow in value -- we can cash out now, or save it (and protect the environment) - and the benefit is that we will (if we choose) be wiser in the collection and the use/combustion of the fossil fuel.
Old growth forests are like fossil fuels. They nourish the atmosphere - you know, the stuff we breathe. And they are awesome. As we destroy these, we lose something that we can't replace in 300 years, even in 500 years. It's not just "trees', it's an environment - like a coral reef. You can't count the cost - what is lost is of more (long term investment) value than the quick strike "gold" and leave.
We need to preserve mother earth, use the bounty appropriately, not rape it for quick benefits for the few who don't really need any more - it's just that they want more than the person in front of them. That's no way to live, no joy. For those that desire "just a little bit more" - there will never be enough and it will all be dust and ashes for you. You will never be safe because, like Midas, you may have gold, but it will be like dust and ashes.
1
Trump has no sense of anything beyond the present tense. No past. No future. He's incapable of understanding that there is a future, that there are consequences to what he does based on hi whims, so why would he save anything for it? He's always lived in the moment and then gone to court if he can't get what he wants. This is just more of the same.
86
Because he is entitled, and has never had to suffer consequences.
Because he has no empathy.
Because he demonstrates a pathological grandiose self and expects others to see what he sees in the mirror.
How sad the reasonable citizens have to deal with him until 2020, as his adoring party members collude with his self assessment
If it has to be an economic argument, why not leave something in the ground for the grandkids? They will need it; and chances are that there will by then technological advances which will allow minimally disruptive extraction. And even better: maybe they will have the means and the foresight to leave it in the ground for their grandkids.
1
Every park and monument is the product of a huge taxpayer-funded effort to study the proposed areas, consult the public and native people, and decide on the best use of the land. An administration's willingness to overturn these elaborate and expensive decisions is a free-for-all by tyrants who gloat in their power to destroy what others have built, for the protected area laws are, in themselves, monuments to the will of the American people and the wisdom of past legislators and presidents. The damage doesn't stop with killing wildlife and disrupting fragile ecosystems. Our whole Continent is experiencing monster storms in the gulf, monster droughts and fires in California and other states, monster forest death in British Columbia, along with rising sea levels due to climate change. Climate scientists say that remaining fossil fuels must stay in the ground or future life on this planet is highly questionable. These lootings of the monuments of America's better nature were openly intended by the appointment of persons who were opposed to the very values they were given to protect. Grab the money and run seems to be the motto.
2
I agree with pretty much everything in this article. I also agree with those who say the only things that count are votes, the ones that will get these Republican creatures out of office. It makes no sense trying to reason with Hatch, or pretty much anyone who voted for Trump, they are perfectly willing to hurl us into a "Blade Runner" economy and environment in the long run if they are able to steal from the public treasure in the sort term.
To be a Republican today is to be...an enemy of the children who will have to live in the new environment, in the new economy with impossible to pay rents and impossible to pay college tuitions, and impossible to breathe air.
Hugh Massengill, Eugene Oregon
1
The still-unanswered question is: "can a future-President DO that?" And I believe that the actual answer, within the Antiquities Act, is "no."
I grant that the thought of protecting =millions= of acres of land "simply by proclamation of a President" seems rather excessive. Perhaps the wording of the Antiquities Act should therefore be re-visited. Perhaps the Congress should have the power to reconsider what a President has done. But, "not another future President."
If a President had such power, the intent of the Antiquities Act would be nullified as every piece of public land protected under the Act became nothing more than a gross political football. If the Congress wishes to give them that power – which I do not recommend – then Congress must be the one to do that, by changing the law.
1
The white settlers of southern Utah claim ownership of public land based on their use and abuse of the resources for the last 150 years. They have removed artifacts, extracted minerals and scarred the terrain with ATV and Jeep trails.
The indigenous people, Navajo, Ute, Hopi and Zuni, have lived and celebrated these lands as sacred for many centuries. The monument designation gave THEIR land the protection it deserves and for once, recognized Native American rights over Manifest Destiny.
We have coal everywhere in Utah, leftover from the ancient seas that covered Utah. Uranium deposits are likewise abundantly available in other parts of Utah, old mines could be reopened. Mining in Bears Ears would be economically impractical and unnecessary.
It is time to honor native people and make a decision that favors their rights. We owe them more than this can repay. But, it’s a start.
5
The only kind words Donald Trump mustered about nature were when he addressed the NRA this year and said that his sons, as hunters, loved "the beautiful outdoors." That's it - generic words, and peculiar in the context of trying to destroy something beautiful in nature.
Trump is in good company with other Republicans, who have viewed the natural world as a financial tool for energy companies to exploit, no matter the detriment. It is the same mentality which compels them to pretend that the economy benefits when our air becomes unbreathable, drinking water becomes undrinkable, and our planet warms up to levels which are unsustainable.
Our natural environment is a critical part of our existence, something to be preserved and fought for, not an entitlement for a group to pillage or desecrate.
1
Is everyone surprised or shocked? The citizens get that for which the citizens vote. Why the big outcry? We asked for it, and we continue to ask for it.
Yes and today we find out that Utah's Hatch, Lee, Stewart and even Gov Gary Herbert (and of course Trump) are in the pockets of the uranium mining corp Energy Fuels Resources that has been lobbying our supposed representatives all along. China has prioritized innovation in clean energy, leaving the U.S. in the dust to pad the pockets of executives in an out-dated industry. This is how governments and societies collapse -- under the weight of greed for the already-privileged.
3
Those like our president who have great wealth, or who pretend to own vast sums of money, are clearly those who worship the almighty dollar. They cannot see the works of a deity when they look upon vast tracts of unexploited land such as the Alaskan tundra, Tongass National Forest or Escalante. They can only see dividends, profit-and-loss spreadsheets and personal gain. Too bad for the rest of us who would like to enjoy these places and preserve them somehow.
1
..."some people think that the natural resources of Utah should be controlled by a small handful of very distant bureaucrats located in Washington.”
Would some people please tell the politicians of Utah, and their constituents, that there is no entitlement program through which the acreage and natural resources found on FEDERAL land are somehow under the control of a state's citizens living next to them.
The federal government acquired ownership of these lands legally in exchange for granting statehood and other arrangements finalized in the 1800s. Like any real estate developer, the federal government is not engaging in a "land grab" when it already owns these properties and can reserve the right to restrict their exploitation.
The land is held in trust for all Americans so perhaps the pols of Utah and other states should get over their own attempts at land grabs.
3
Lisa Murkowski and Mr. Zinke are playing Politics and don't have the foresight to know the effect of such a move, maybe it is greedy for re-election money for Murkowski. Neither one of the two have good intellectual Judgment and Insight in my opinion.
1
Not long after the close of the second world war, a gathering took place in the upper Mojave Desert of the United States; among those in attendance were Dr. Bertrand Russell and Dr. Edmond Jaeger, the dean of American desert naturalists.
Around the campfire one evening, the topic under consideration was Right and Wrong. After listening to the discussion amongst his distinguished colleagues for a fashion, Jaeger turned to Russell, whose white wispy hair and pipe smoke were outlined in the flames, and said, "The environment, since it cannot run away nor defend itself, must be protected. And THAT, sir, is the difference between what is Right and what is Wrong."
Seven decades later and in the face of the greatest natural calamity facing the Earth since we humans arrived on the scene about 200,000 years ago — including the sixth global mass extinction in the planet's history (now underway), that definition of absolute morality has gained orders of magnitude greater currency. It is also further proof, if any were needed, that the GOP are completely morally bankrupt, much less do they have any sense of decency.
To permanently debase unique and truly spectacular public lands for the gain of corporations is a gross obscenity; to do so for the extraction of the very carbonaceous fuels that are the cause of anthropogenic global climate disruption, ocean acidification and widespread pollution is an Infamous Crime Against Nature, future generations — and humanity.
4
Its disturbing to find such a rich, mature society with such a powerful retrograde tendency. I once fooled myself into wishing only authoritarian societies and budding democracies with weak civil societies would allow the desecration of the Earth's bounty for the pursuit of greedy profits. Witness the drive to profit from palm oil and destruction of ancient forests which provide homes and habitat for orangutans and tigers.
Then I realized societies which fail to protect their natural resources against pillage are in the throes of an authoritarian regression.
6
>
Again, America is not a country it's a business.
Just toss this story on the pile of evidence for my proposition.
And it's not DJT's fault. It's the American people who make these choices on the first Tuesday of every Nov.
We have nobody to blame but ourselves and Bernie supporters that did NOT vote for HRC.
6
This article encompasses quite well what is wrong with Liberalism in the USA.
It refers to Teddy Roosevelt in 1906 without acknowledging in what way the world has changed since then. It presents the interests of Native Americans as weighty, which they may be, but only to them, unfortunately. It compares the ethereal value of a wildlife refuge with the dollars-and-cents value of natural resources as if they were on the same level. In Utah, it seeks redress through the courts, where the obvious answer is to use the election cycle to crush those politicians who are behind these “outrages”. It actually faults the Alaskan Congressional delegation for looking out for what its constituents see as their interests, which is supremely odd.
It all seems testimony to the complaint from the other side, that Liberals believe in democracy only if it delivers for them, or that they put plants and animals before people. Etc. Yes, I know that is not actually the message, but re-read the article and see how it opens itself up to that kind of interpretation.
Our national parks and public lands are a national treasure and a legacy for all future generations which should not be handed over to corporations for exploitation and profit. We all lose if this terrible policy is allowed to go through.
1
Next to being elected, my second greatest fear of Donald Trump being president is what he would do to America's vast wealth of public lands.
This is a man who does not know how to share. And who views everything with a potential dollar sign to eventually be put into his pocket.
And his experience as a deeply flawed and indebted Real-Estate developer doesn't exactly fill one with confidence, either.
Also not to be forgotten is his one-minded dedication to undo everthing done by the previous administration -- and Obama left no doubt that he was very much concerned with the environment and the legacy of our National Parks.
With the appointments of Ryan Zinke as Secretary of the Interior, and Scott Pruitt as head of the Environmental Protection Agency, the dye was cast, leaving no doubt as to Trump's trajectory.
And as a result, big business and fossil fuel interests are now in control of our destiny, with a Congress unable or unwilling to do anything to stop the wholesale looting and destruction of one of our most precious gifts.
So the only thing left to do, is see it now, while you can -- then say, Goodbye.
103
Mr. Trump is a great admirer of beauty, which he has spent a great deal of his time and energy trying to acquire, at which point he proceeds to exploit it for his own purposes and profit, be it wives, landscapes, skylines or precious public lands. Like many of his obsessions, it appears to be primarily motivated less by any true belief than some form of perverse and calculated, often fleeting self interest masked as "populism" aka "jobs, fuel" aka money and political survival.
There's nothing inherently wrong with making money or development, the problem comes with the degree of disruption and displacement that goes along with taking what belongs to many for the benefit of the few, yet another form of unequal wealth distribution. It's not a coincidence that Trump and prominent members of his cabinet are not just on a deregulation free for all for the benefit of their political benefactors, but are exploiting their positions, taking advantage of every possible perk at the people's expense.
1
I have no words to express the sadness and impotence I feel about this systematic assault to everything of value from the health of children and people in need to the environment and our land and wildlife. I recalled now those people who during the election said let Trump be elected so that this system goes down the drain. But, as some of us warned, the system is more destructive and stronger than ever led by a party and his President who lost the popular vote. We have abdicated our moral and intellectual leadership in the world, and become a retrograde nation ruled by an entrenched oligarchy that is becoming more destructive and stronger than ever.
2
The GOP has placed a party platform goal of "returning" public lands to "the people". Since public lands are, by definition, owned by the people and generally access is permitted for recreation and in some places below market cost cattle grazing, timber production et al, "returning" is a code word for ensuring it is sold to the highest bidder and the current owners locked out. There are numerous organization fighting against this foolishness and I hope people will join one or two. A boycott of Utah until they change their politicians to environmentally responsible congressmen and senators is high on my list of actions. Sadly many of my fellow skiers won't do that .
2
Maybe this seems off topic. It’s not.
No single person in the United States should be permitted to own assets of more than $50 million. Anything above that is taxed at 100%.
Why?
Some people have insatiable greed. Like our current President. He has billions, but wants more. He wants our federal lands. Our treasury funds set aside for healthcare, education, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, etc.
The result is we worry about, and watch the destruction of, our environment, our health, our children’s and grandchildren’s education and well being.
So let’s cap personal wealth at $50 million. And anything over $1 million a year in income is taxed at 50% or more. And ALL income, from whatever source, is taxed to go toward Social Security and Medicare.
Oh, and since we left England due to the oppression wrought by royalty, let’s reinstate the death/estate tax. The first $5 million is free of tax. $5 million up to $10 million at 33%, and everything above $10 million at 75%.
Let’s not forget that these billionaires would not be so rich if it were not for us little people, running the show from day to day. Accordingly, we deserve / demand some respect and financial security.
2
This, like the tax reform bill, is just the latest "looting of America" by the kleptocrats that are now running the government. Everything in the public sphere is being plundered for private profit. Whether it destroys sacred Native American sites, nature's miraculous and inspiring beauty, and leaves a legacy of environmental degradation and increased global warning, it matters not to the insatiable greed of the Republican-backed oligarchs intent only on increasing their already immense wealth. It's a national and natural disaster that I hope will be overturned in the courts.
145
Karl Marx is currently being vindicated, right here in the USA -- world's Cold Warriors. I'm thinking of going back to reread that book I was assigned in college.
If Marx is right, we're looking at End Time of Capitalism's Excesses, and after a period of some sort of revolution (always ugly), then we'd evolve to the next level, what he called "communalism", meaning we finally figure out that cooperation is a better generator of supply than combat.
Oh geez. I'm totally against exploiting the monuments, but Marx? The "ugly"times are pretty darn bad, with millions dead or on gulags and the rape of the land. Democracy works well when employed to preserve land, see Roosevelt, and Obama's last days. It needs to get much better in managing those lands.
President Trump overreached in Utah. He might have gotten away with changing boundaries on Bears Ears if he had adopted Rob Bishop's compromise map and left Grand Staircase alone but no. Everything has to be the biggest thing ever with Trump. He's not going to win this one in court.
The Trump team is arguing that other Presidents have changed monument boundaries in the past, including FDR. This is true. However, the changes were generally part of a legislated deal made with Congress. I don't think a President has ever acted unilaterally against a national monument invoking executive authority under the Antiquities Act. There's no precedent that matches Trump's actions of which I'm aware.
The last two times a national monument shrunk, Congress legislated an exception to the Antiquities Act for the state effected. Basically, Congress negotiated new boundaries in exchange for congressional involvement in any new monuments designated within the state. Jackson Hole, WY is probably the most famous example but the same thing happened to Carter in Alaska. Trump is on a fool's errand.
Meanwhile, Utah doesn't need anymore coal anyway. The state is already sitting on billions of tons of economically recoverable reserves while extracting less each year. The problem isn't finding enough coal. The problem is no one wants to buy coal. Coal advocates have some crack pot scheme to export Utah's coal overseas. The idea is a fairy tale for shareholders as they depreciate existing operations.
4
This land is your land.
This land is my land.
This land is not the fossil fuels gang's land,
And I don't want my government to give it away,
Far a fistful of campaign donations.
3
Taking our tax and social services dollars and handing them to rich people is disturbing, and makes me very angry. It makes me think that Congress and the President are not on the side of the American people. But going even further and stealing our public lands to give them to developers and private mining interests raises even more ire in this American. WE can elect a new Congress and President to restore tax balance, and take the money back. But if this Congress and administration take the public lands out of the public trust, they can't be restored to us, ever. Mining, oil and gas drilling, and road building will destroy some of our most sacred wild sites. Rich men will get richer, and entire eco-systems will be lost forever.
We need to fight harder and more effectively before these small pockets of wilderness are forever gone. Write to your Congress person or senator. Protest. Fight!
2
Of all the things I've lost in my life, I think I'll miss America the most.
3
This is the moment of the 3-month reckoning. All decisions to be made are to be made on the notion of maximizing the profit that can be extracted 3 months from now. Take the gains and run, and devil take the hindmost.
Open land to coal mining and coal mine shareholders can extract that profit and offshore it.
Open land to oil extraction, and oil company execs and shareholders can take that stock price spike, sell the stock and offshore the profits.
Fire all you employees, under-employ the nation, and take the 3 month spike and run.
Eliminate net neutrality and take the increase in price on the megacompanies and run.
Because in 3 months a few will get richer. But in 30 years? The environment will be a disaster, the land used cannot be restored, the jobs lost will reduce our worth as a global market, and we won't generate enough wealth to restore what we've lost.
The 3 month cycle is killing us.
1
Coal's heyday is over and most coal mining companies are essentially broke, which is why the government has failed to collect millions of dollar in fines imposed for safety violations dating back to the 1950s. And while Zinke tried to emulate Teddy Roosevelt by riding a horse to work on his first day as Interior Secretary, Teddy would probably shoot him if he were alive today. What Trump, Zinke and Pruitt are doing to our public lands -- which the emphasis on "our" -- is nothing short of criminal. And Orrin Hatch is one of their principal abetters in the Senate.
2
The only consistently exceptional quality of Trump and his policies is his open honesty of what is being recognized as the driving force behind the policies of the country ever since Europe came to the western hemisphere.He no longer wears the mask of humanitarian civilization worn for the last couple of centuries and openly is butchering the entire planet and the face of reality of human culpability in this process is horrifying to sensible people.The desperate efforts to flee to Mars is quite strange considering what a wonderful planet humanity had to begin with.From all knowledgeable experts,far worse is in the near future.
3
What astonishes me is that the Murkowski's and Hatches of the world think they have some God given right to do what they feel like because the "public" land is in AK or UT, their home states. There are 320 million of we the people of this soon to be lost great land of ours.
I'm an old man now and if I have learned only one thing in those many years it is this. There are no boundaries, no state lines to the public land, it's all of ours. Whether it's in the far reaches of Alaska or the Florida everglades it belongs to all of us. So when our Congress or Administration are considering some important piece of legislation that affects our land, how about asking all of us what we think. Don't just do it to satisfy a senator to pass a tax bill. Or do it to spite a previous Administration. Or do it because it happens to be in your state. It's not yours it's ours, all 320 million of us.
I continue my contributions to the Environmental Defense Fund, That's the best I can do to try and slow this raping of the land.
4
The Looting of America's Public Lands is a real eye catcher.
Would looting include individuals making judgement of who can, and can not enter the forest considered looting of America's Public Lands?
Would cutting off access to generationaly used family camping areas considered looting of America's Public Lands?
Would criminalizing historic uses of public lands like gathering firewood, gathering foods to sustain ones family, or accessing ones private property considered looting of America's Public Lands?
If you would answer yes to any of these, hold on to your hats, it's been going on for 12 years now, and get's worse with each that passes. The looting I speak of is the US Forest Services Travel Management Rule.
Much like the steam roller you depicted in your sketch the federal government for the last 12 years, and more like 20 plus with the Clinton Roadless Rule has rolled over countless small rural communities, laid waste to subsistence and recreational use alike and looted the residents of the areas of the very thing that defines them, their individuality.
The "National Monuments" aren't being looted, if anything, they are being put back to where they were supposed to be to begin with, in public trust, as a resource, not as a burden. When these lands were "reserved" in the early 1900's it was done so with a promise that access and use would not be restricted, and every year we see the federal bulldozer run us over, as show in your sketch.
"The protections put in place over the last half-century by both political parties to guarantee Americans clean air, clean water and bountiful open space have been coming apart at the seams ...".
Those seams were poorly stitched, by apparatchiks, while under the influence of numerous substances; some chemical, though mostly political gamesmanship, probably even some carnal. The same generational-apparatchiks that have given the US its credit rating. Which in its downgraded status is generous, considering a request for nonexistent trillions to battle the sun. We should all, with great fervor, encourage this President to make Americas bond rating great again.
Even a casual reading of the "Antiquities Act", which is quite brief, leads to the conclusion that it has been abused by the Federal Government. National Monument designation was/is intended to for limited antiquities and then only to the extent necessary to protect the subject antiquity, notwithstanding Teddy's novel use of the act.
The Federal/State and local governments have a rapacious appetite for land control. 80% of the State of Utah in under government control and millions more acres are in the Government's sights for National Monument lock down across the United States. Add to this Millions of acres in Utah owned by/controlled by the Ute Nation which will control the Bear's Ear's Monument who wish to halt human activity or harvesting of resources. I find it curious that thousands of acres under Ute ownership are designated and used (?) for resource harvesting the profits benefitting the Ute Nation.
Proponents of this land grab will chant "this land's your land, this land's my land" and "if the government owns it, it belongs to We THE PEOPLE". Perhaps, but don't dare set foot on it, rock climb, trout fish, walk your dog, or pick up an arrowhead or you'll find out "This Land's NOT your land"
1
If everyone picked up an arrowhead, there would be none left. That is known as looting.
If everyone brought their dog, the landscape would be polluted and marred.
There is a reason for these restrictions. They're not capricious, they're not meant to punish people, they're meant to preserve the wilderness.
Also, you should read up on the Utah Enabling Act to make you feel better about why so much of the land is controlled by the federal government in Utah. Utah would never have become a state without it, so get over it.
1
That Zinke, with his colossal ego, should be giving away our heritage to the fossil-fuel lobby that can help put him on the way to the presidency, is no surprise.
It’s Sen Lisa Murkowski whose support for drilling in the ANWR where the caribou go to calve, that stunned me. I thought well of Murkowski for what I then thought was her valiant stand in defense of the millions who depend on Obamacare. Now, after learning that drilling in the ANWR has been a family project, I am reinterpreting her vote as an effort to raise its price. Moreover, I very much doubt that the Murkowskis support the drilling on caribou calving grounds just so Alaskans can get a fatter check.
The Murkowski name is mud in my book and when the time comes, I will contribute all I can to defeat her.
3
Can we stop pretending that there is anything like a Conservative or a Moderate Republican these days? It’s like Hollywood wrote a script for 52 Doctor Evils to sit in the Senate, 241 in the House and one each in the White House and VP mansion.
They are treating nature like a bankrupt company in liquidation rather than a precious collection of irreplaceable resources to be protected.
2
Why do conservatives not believe in protecting and conserving natural resources for future generations including their own children and grandchildren? Republicans at the federal and state level have consistently voted against conservation and protecting the environment. Are they assuming they will make enough profit from their actions that their own children can buy clean air and clean water in the future?
223
These people aren't conservatives. They are liars in every last thing they do.
6
You’re presuming they care about anyone besides themselves. Any endgoal other that the accumulation of as much personal wealth as possible is not in evidence.
3
Because your idea is ignorant and false. Many want to protect things even more than say you. The monument was not eliminated 200K acres is a very large area.
These lands belong to all Americans, not just to those in close proximity. Preserve them for us.
83
Let's roll back all National Parks, monuments, recreation areas and historic sites to those set by Theodore Roosevelt and cap them at that point. This has spiralled out if control to the point that the maintenance backlog is in the billions. If people are truly interested in sightseeing, camping, hiking and climbing, the free market will provide it where it's profitable. My tax dollars shouldn't underwrite things I will never use, especially if they require government functions outside of those spelled out in the Constitution.
3
When the federal govt starts drilling for oil along the beautiful Long Island beaches and the value of your house declines, you'll have a different opinion.
5
why should we have National Parks? I don't use them. I also don't use any of the numerous state park beaches on long island. can we please get rid of those nuisances as well. I don't want my state tax dollars going towards anything I don't use.
Your tax dollars already underwrite the fossil fuels industry to the tune of millions of dollars.
5
As to Bears Ears, readers should be aware that the dispute is 99% symbolic. The land is vast and remote and inaccessible. Minimal development is proposed and all of it is at the land’s perimeter. If anyone can make mining profitable, the enterprise will not meaningfully interfere with public use of the land. So there is no meaningful degradation of Bears Ears on the horizon. It’s just the principal of the whole thing.
10
Ever seen the Peabody Coal Co. in action? How they treat the land and the people? To mine coal you need water. Look a the damage coal water slurry has done on the Navajo reservation. It's more than just principles.
3
Propaganda in it's purest form.
3
You're wrong. I live in Utah and visit those areas regularly. You haven't a clue about the vastness of those lands. You're expressing an uneducated opinion.
6
When Trump allows a free run to the fossils fuel lobby to plunder vast public lands containing rich resources of the nature as also sustaining the biodiversity and ecological balance not only is he embarking on the uncharted legal territory but also harming the conservationist efforts made in the past to fine balance the environmental imperarives and the judicious economic needs. It's correctly stated that while the Antiquities Act 1906 empowers the President to establish monuments, it never allows him any authority to abolish them as he has done with the declared monuments in Utah or other public lands.
88
Thank you for the perfect response
3
Professor Sharma,
You speak truth. The current occupant of the Oval Office is not acquainted with truth or reality.
The dumbing down of our electorate and the meddling of a foreign power in our electoral process has produced this unfortunate result.
We must do whatever is necessary to mitigate the disasters that are unfolding.
2
I assume that, barring a court order to the contrary, the Trump administration will work hard to get coal mining underway in lands formerly part of the Grand Staircase National Monument.
Including, of course, whatever subsidies are necessary to find markets for the coal. Perhaps a power plant a bit like the Navajo power plant at Page, Arizona?
30
Barring a war or some other calamity requiring a sudden, sharp uptick in electrical energy production, coal mining is essentially dead. The nation has found abundant sources of natural gas, cheaper to extract, cleaner to burn. So, no, the Trump Administration will probably not work hard to get coal mining underway (although it might allow private industry to attempt it, if the industry wants to assume the costs — which under present conditions —doesn’t seem likely).
22
The plant is closing no matter what in 2019.
The Utah Geologic Survey has determined that the majority of the thermal coal in GSENM is too deep to mine.
3
You really think the Drumpfian Swamp is going to initiate "finding markets for coal???" Oh wait....yeah, maybe they will. After all, they tend to pick the low-hanging fruit of illogic. Why would they want to mess with anything that makes sense like renewable resources where the markets already more than exist. Why would they want to lead the way for future generations? Way to complex and exudes too much care and concern for their ego-laden "intellect."
Trump and his allies have no interest in preserving our natural pristine places, doing what they do only for self enrichment. I was struck by another recent article in the Times about the prime minister of India who is coming under increasing fire in his country for the incredibly toxic air quality in New Delhi, the prime minister being a strong advocate of weakening or lessening environmental regulations .. the parallels to Trump and his 'pro business thinking' are striking.
I read that in the National Monument which is Bear Ears, that only 16,000 people live in this vast area, half of whom are of the Navajo Tribe. These false promises of 'jobs' coming out of any proposed looting of the environment are fake, overblown promises, like everything else out of Trump's mouth. It is only about making already wealthy individuals and companies even richer.
Let us hope that the courts take seriously the vehement objections of native indigenous people, and those in our country who valid wild, pristine, unique landscapes, with its unique animals and plant life and Preserve.
118
The current agenda of the GOP is to lie, to lie about any and everything that is good for the public and to lie to promote their agenda.
Here we have Senator Hatch a Mormon, a member of a religion that prides itself on honesty and integrity joining with a few wealthy users of public lands to claim these lands belong to the state of Utah, and that Utah should have control of them.
Those lands were bought under the treaty of Gudalupe-Hildago and paid for from the U.S. treasury with the citizens money. Utah disclaimed ownership of all lands and was given lands for government and schools. Hath and the others know this, they are counting on the citizens of the U.S. to know know it.
This is an attempt by corrupt public officials to give our lands to private interests. That is all it is, a steal, a swindle which tRump is a master of, and Hatch is an abettor.
This expropriation of our lands is being challenged so we must wait to see how honest the courts are. We know there are two justices that will side with the thieves, we will have to see just how honest the other three are.
Citizens arise throw out the crooks, take back our government from the Fascists traitors now in office, let society reject them.
189
The biggest lie of all is that this festering stew of misrepresentation is "under God", as if anybody besides people is responsible for it.
2
Maybe djt and his minions will read this editorial to better understand why he is in that "hour-by-hour battle for self-preservation" part of the title of a lengthy article about djt today by MAGGIE HABERMAN, GLENN THRUSH and PETER BAKER.
They write "But despite all his bluster, he views himself as a maligned outsider engaged in a struggle to be taken seriously, according to interviews with 60 insiders."
Maybe if he wasn't hell bent on raping the environment, increasing pollution and giving a huge tax cut to himself and his cronies, he would gain some respect. Respect is earned not a given and he hasn't done the required work.
Telling, isn't it, that he is more concerned with his self-preservation than the preservation of our national parks and natural resources.
109
And making sure women die, don't forget that.
2
Thank you for this editorial. Please, readers, write your congresspeople and tell them you do not support loss and degradation of our American legacy of public lands.
And please too express opposition to HR 1349, which would rescind Wilderness Act regulations protecting the wilderness experience and ecological quality by opening Wilderness Areas to mechanical transportation, including motorized mountain bikes, i.e. dirt bikes, under cover of "better access." See:
http://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/363779-americas-wilderness...
Preserving quantity of public land matters. So does quality of our most pristine places.
89
The sounds emitted by motorized vehicles have already been demonstrated to disrupt ecosystems.
5
Thank you for urging people to WRITE to their congressperson. Email is useless. It gets an auto response that often only vaguely address the issue you emailed about.
Snail mail, make phone calls, attend town hall meetings, and visit their local office. That gets their attention. Not as much as a bribe, err, "campaign contribution", but still far more effective than a worthless email.
3
The country elected, barely, a sleazy developer to run the country. A controversial, unscrupulous businessman to set the tone in America. The true trickledown: I take what I want and if you don't like it, sue me. I do what I want and if you don't like it, sue me. Among his first acts in office: appoint a cabinet full of billionaires and turn them loose. The less they know, the better. The less experience, the better. The less likely to act for the benefit of all Americans, the better. This band of over-privileged, under-qualified faux public servants are the true trickle down of Republican politics. Clean air, not necessary. Clean water, not necessary. Preservation of public lands, not when there is money to be made.
No, the country elected a self-server in chief and he is sharing the wealth. It's a give away of the greatest magnitude. Land, environment, natural resources are now equated with profit. An opportunity to add to the immense wealth of a few at the expense of the many. A rare opportunity thrust upon uber rich to get richer.
The empirical policies of this administration seem quite evident: chaos, misdirection, indiscriminate lying and juvenile behavior while the country is looted and pillaged. Stir up some hate, insult a few allies, discredit our democratic institutions, weaken the free press, sow discord around the world all while holding the greatest give away in American history.
396
I commend you for telling it like it is.
Unfortunately, this is the reality we live with.
Question is, how to respond to it and reclaim our country and democracy.
This is not democracy!
7
This one should be a Times Pick. Says it all.
6
The PEOPLE of the United States elected a harsh but truthful man who spoke honestly about real issues. I personally got tired of eight years of pretty, well-spoken lies from the last guy.
If the people you look down on get a bunch of jobs, they'll all want to ride to work on your roads. Perhaps you can upgrade your happiness quotient by moving to Canada or Europe? Why live where you are mad all the time?
In order to satisfy the greed of a handful of companies and their shareholders, Mr. Trump and the Secretary of the Interior are willing to destroy pristine wilderness areas, or at least significantly degrade them. This can only be called obscene and immoral.
Our country doesn’t need more extractive industries polluting the air and water. The people who visit these beautiful places have always wanted peace and tranquil surroundings. Mr. Trump is willing to exchange that for more money, more profits, more luxuries; he is not really interested in what the ordinary citizen wants or needs, just in making a fast buck.
These are spiritual places, historically significant to the peoples of First Nations. We must not brutally deface them for a few handfuls of gold.
341
So you would be more happy if extraction is done in say China where pollution is much more prevalent. If we need resources and have them we need to use them responsibly, not just have them from foreign countries. If you don't want us to produce something you should both directly and indirectly stop using them.
I have two close friends who are exploring the many site that were inhabited by the native Americans long ago. They started collecting artifacts to keep but both had profound spiritual experiences. Needless to say they took nothing and filled back any digging spots. How would people feel if another race of people wanted to remove and exploit our burial grounds....
3
I couldn't agree more. Spirituality and/or historical significance doesn't register with these people as they are spiritually and morally bankrupt. Their love of money has become a pathology, and the rest of us and our progeny will suffer for it.
2
Long after Monica Lewinsky is forgotten, Bill Clinton will be remembered for the creation of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.
Long after Obamacare is forgotten, President Obama will be remembered for the creation of the Bears Ears National Monument.
Long after his monumental lies are forgotten, President Trump will be remembered for failing to destroy these American Monuments.
That is if we, including all the city dwellers who may never set foot in either monument, fight this sacrilege. The Times incorrectly portrays those who oppose the neutering of these Monuments "dismissively" as environmentalists and Native Americans. In fact, the opposition includes hunters, the tourist industry, and millions of Americans for whom the beauty and affordability of these places provide food for their souls, places to decompress, a spiritual and religious opportunity to perceive of one's life in the context of the natural.
Trump is afraid of the outdoors, as he is afraid of anything he can't control. He is weak, not just in character but in courage, simply a wimp across the board. The Moki Dugway to him is incomprehensible. And though a toady of the N.R.A., I have no doubt he is afraid of hunting and hunters. To save these Monuments, it is necessary to show the courage that Trump lacks, to fight on every front - not just lawsuits and online comments - and, with the likes of him and Zinke, to make it personal.
Long live Edward Abbey and Everett Ruess.
Hayduke Lives !
151
Abbey and Ruess! Thank you for mentioning them!
It won't take long for Trump and Zinke, with a little help from Hatch and Murkowski, to desecrate Utah's unique monument lands, and Alaska's pristine lands and waters, of nature and the native Americans, into multiple pits like the one in Butte, Montana.
206
Yes, these lands that have been protected thus far by the work of many previous administrations can quickly be obliterated by this reckless president and his henchmen. Trump's legacy will be the destruction of our public lands and the dismantling of environmental protections. This is criminal.
3
65% of Utah is federally owned. If there are any federal lands on Long Island, they probably total an acre. You have done a terrible job preserving Nassau County's land. And Suffolk has the worst air pollution in the state. Now you're telling us Westerners what we should do. No thanks.
1
The GOP's assault on public lands, the environment, health care, tax policy, and other areas would not be possible without the rolling coup that has been taking place since the implementation of the Help America Vote Act, a truly Orwellian name. It was pushed through Congress without any debate by Mitch McConnell and Robert Nay who went to jail for 30 months for fraud. It passed in the spring of 2002. Most of the country had voting machines by November of that year.
There is no way that extreme rightwing Republicans should have 2/3 of the governorships and state legislatures, a large majority in the House, and a small majority in the Senate when exit polls indicate that three Senate races were manipulated in 2016 alone.
In 2006, Democrats regained control of Congress, however, exit poll data shows that "there was gross vote count manipulation and it had a great impact on the results of E2006, significantly decreasing the magnitude of what would have been, accurately tabulated, a landslide of epic proportions."
Jonathan Simon and Bruce O'Dell: Landslide Denied: Exit Polls vs. Vote Count 2006
http://electiondefensealliance.org/landslide_denied_exit_polls_vs_vote_c...
In 2010, with 300 safe House seats Republicans won an unprecedented 128 seats with a small national vote share even though close races should break about even.
In 2014, the approval rating of the Republican Congress was at an all-time low (about 8%).
(cont'd below)
97
(part 2)
The 'Party of No' swept up more seats despite the fact that progressive ballot measures passed by wide margins (even in non-blue states). Yet the explanation given by the media for Republican "wins" was that voters "simply didn't vote for Democrats."
For more analysis follow Jonathan Simon's interviews at http://codered2014.com/. While there is some overlap, you will learn new information from each one. Simon is the author of "Code Red: Computerized Election Theft and the New American Century."
Exit polls indicate Trump did not win the Electoral College. The 2016 primary, general election, and recounts:
http://www.mintpressnews.com/donald-trump-warned-of-a-rigged-election-wa...
Google: Josh Mittledorf: Intro to Election Theft (part 1 of 4)
"Are votes in American elections being counted accurately? In an open democracy this should not be a question for forensic science, but in 21st century America that's just what it is. The U.S. is unique in the developed world in counting votes with proprietary software, ruled a trade secret and not open to inspection.
There is stiff resistance to looking at the ballots with human eyes which might offer a check on the computers. So we are left looking at statistics and anecdotes, trying to determine whether vote counts are honest and reliable. The evidence does not inspire confidence. But whatever you think of the evidence, there is no justification for a system without the possibility of public verification."
134
Good work! Thank you.
4
RLS, thank you. Please keep pointing this out, as we cannot address the manifold iniquities of bought and paid for Republicans as long as stealing the vote via hacking, intimidation, suppression, etc. is endemic.
8
"Polls have shown considerable support among Utah’s citizens for the monuments — one of which, the Grand Staircase, has large though not easily marketable coal deposits; neither of which has much oil and gas; and each of which is a treasure trove of magnificent landscapes and priceless Native American artifacts."
I find this so incredibly sad. These sanctuaries of beauty, if they don't survive the slew of lawsuits, will be gone forever once commercial interests take their toll.
The one thing we know about natural resources: they can't be recreated. Once gone--whether to the specious claim they're essential for our energy independence or something more mundane, like real estate development--they are gone forever.
Donald Trump and the rest of his very rich cabinet members and friends don't care about this looting however because they will always have the money to wall themselves off from ugliness or the blights of modern civilization.
Not so the rest of the country, including vacationers, naturalists, and of course, Native Americans who know how to respect and preserve these monuments, as many are sacred.
Apparently "this land is my land, this land is your land" no longer carries much weight. As much as Donald Trump rails against decisions affecting local jurisdictions being made by Washington bureaucrats--and presidents--isn't this just something else he feels doesn't apply to him?
298
A similar plundering is also taking place in my country. And globally that is
what's going on in many countries. Plunder now and let the future generations
handle the consequences.
2
Just as she said, it is so incredibly sad in so incredibly many ways.
2
we need to go out there and camp and walk around...look at rocks and birds. The land has a right to be exactly what it is; it needs no homo-so-called sapiens meddling.
1
We need to come up with a more balanced land-use policy in America that avoids relegation of our western states to second-class status. President Obama’s declaration that 1.35 million acres of Utah would be set aside as a National Monument (Bears Ears) was excessive, to say the least. That area is greater than the total area of the State of Delaware and 174% the size of the entire State of Rhode Island. Giveth me a break.
It’s a “looting” of public lands to reverse such an excessive taking performed in the last microseconds of the Obama Administration? That carves out a Delaware from Utah?
The two million acres that Trump returned to productive commercial use within Utah is equivalent to 3,125 square miles, or almost the entire area encompassed by Delaware and Rhode Island COMBINED. It’s astonishing that this effort to return to Utah the ability to generate jobs and taxes and some semblance of sovereignty over its own land is so controversial – particularly since the most valuable parcels remain protected by National Monument status.
Excess of any kind eventually produces a counter-reaction. There are 129 national monuments administered within the U.S. and its possessions, in addition to 21 national preserves, 51 national historical parks and 59 national parks. America’s public lands are doing great and remain quite ample.
12
This is not one of RL's better posts. "Excessive" by any criteria but personal objection? "Productive" use does't include being a national treasure enjoyed by millions of Americans (over years of time; remember that once gone these acres can't be regained). And out of the largest-area states they encompass only the area of our tiniest states? Methinks the standard of comparison is being distorted.
47
Thomas:
The fact that it's not one my "better posts" may have something to do with the fact that you disagree with this one.
2
Quite. It may also have something to do with the lack of justification. It's all assertion, just as you have occasionally accused me of -- sometimes correctly, but here there are not other commenters providing detailed reasons. (Not yet.)
22
"This mind-set is shared by all of Mr. Trump’s appointees who have anything to do with the environment, and it is a virtual copy of the thinking that prevailed among George W. Bush’s policymakers 15 years ago"
This is because Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and Alex Jones have been busy the past 15 years with a constant drum beat of "energy independence" "clean coal" and "Solyndra". The cacophony never stops and the falsehoods about renewable energy, global warming and carbon taxes continue to be parroted by the "leaders" of the far right who inturn elect people more than willing to enact this environment destroying policies.
241
Bring back the Fairness Doctrine to fight back against the constant lies.
4