War on the West II

Heritage ^ | 2/24/2010 | Rob Gordon

[Outside da Box]

A recently revealed Department of Interior “internal working document” has set off similar fire alarms across the West. It identifies BLM lands as potential sites for designation as new national monuments, as possibly meriting “special conservation” status or as targets of “land rationalization”. Unlike a national park or national wildlife refuge, these actions are carried out by the Executive Branch without any need for Congressional approval.

The Department of Interior document in question ­- reportedly drafted at the behest of Obama’s Interior Secretary Ken Salazar – identifies more than six times the land area locked up in the Grand Staircase designation and, like it, has the potential to thwart access to a wealth of natural resources including oil, gas, gold and timber. The document’s brief descriptions of the potential national monuments in AZ, CA, CO, MT, NM, OR, UT and WA does not include acreage figures for all of the14 BLM sites. The total for where figures are given is 13,535,000 acres, an area larger than Maryland and Delaware combined. In counties with land bases predominately held by the BLM, eliminating access to natural resources on these lands can be near mortal economic wounds.

[I Buried My Guns]

Those lands belong to the American people. Also, the wealth below those lands belong to us as well.