The U.S. Interior secretary blasted an “extreme movement to seize public lands” as frustration among ranchers in the West continues to simmer, leading to standoffs.
Department of the Interior / Via medium.com
There's a battle brewing in the West, and the feds are ready to take off the gloves.
In a speech that seemed a bit like a battle cry Tuesday, U.S. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell laid out a broad vision for conservation in the U.S., calling for renewed efforts to fund National Parks, reaching out to a more diverse group of Americans, and cultivating new generations of people who appreciate parks.
But the address also included a strong response to recent conflicts in the West. Those conflicts, including the standoff at an Oregon wildlife refuge, the Bundy family's confrontation with the feds in 2014, and several other skirmishes — were sparked by the federal government's management of vast tracts of land in Western states.
While Jewell didn't mention those standoffs by name, department spokesperson Jessica Kershaw in an email to BuzzFeed News cited both Oregon and Nevada as examples of what Jewell referred to as "the emergence of an extreme movement to seize public lands" and "land grabs."
"This movement has propped up dangerous voices that reject the rule of law, put communities and hard-working public servants at risk, and fail to appreciate how deeply democratic and American our national parks and public lands are," Jewell said Tuesday.
The secretary also made a number of other hints that the feds are ready to take a harder line with those trying to stop conservation, including touting the benefits of the Antiquities Act — a law passed in 1906 that gives the president the power to designate national monuments with the stroke of a pen, and is among the most controversial tools used to set aside Western land.
The act has rankled some locals since at least the 1990s when Bill Clinton used it to create the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah. Today, it continues to prompt heated debate, with conservationists and some native groups demanding more land protections, while ranchers and mining interests call for fewer.
from BuzzFeed - USNews http://ift.tt/1TihylS
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