Quote
of the week:
“It is often said we now live in two Americas.
Nowhere is that description truer then when it comes to land owned by the
federal government. In the United States east of the Rockies, the federal
government owns just 4 percent of all land. But west of the Rockies, the
federal government owns more than half of all land including almost two thirds
of all land in Utah. When an unelected and unaccountable bureaucracy owns and
manages more than half the land in your state, that is a recipe for disaster.” Senator Mike Lee
“Creating too large national monuments — results in agencies
lacking the necessary resources to adequately manage sites. The federal
government currently has a backlog of $18.62 billion in
maintenance projects. A better approach is to right-size monuments and
allow for limited economic activity in areas where there won’t be damage.”
“In the
nearly fifty years since it was signed into law, the ESA has done more to impede
economic activity, obstruct local conservation efforts, and give federal
bureaucrats regulatory control over private property, than it has done to
protect endangered species."
Senator Mike Lee
Good News Bears
~Mr. Zinke has ordered all his agencies
to put a priority on active management against wildfires. “We are spending $2
billion a year fighting fires, money that could be going to far better
conservation efforts,” he says, visibly annoyed. ~Such
mismanagement is what drives Western frustration, which threatens to become a
new Sagebrush Rebellion. “Some of the anger is that our grand bargains have
been broken, and those bargains said that you had wilderness, but you also have
grazing; you could also hunt and fish,” Mr. Zinke says. Now Westerners “watch
these catastrophic fires, and they’ve lost any faith that the federal
government is capable of being a good steward.”
“We will hold people accountable when we are
informed that they have failed in their duties and obligations,” Bernhardt
“There is a
reason we allow presidents to undo the actions of their predecessors. A president who could
unilaterally set policy forever would have far too much power and be free of
political checks and balances. President
Barack Obama designated most of his record-setting monuments during the
twilight of his second term, long after the threat of electoral defeat had
passed. Free of political checks, he ran wild with this power.”
Bad News Bears
~~~~~
Documenting
Bears Ears “No Monument” efforts since July 2016