Posted on 10/31/2013 1:36:17 PM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
Department of Interior Secretary Sally Jewell vowed that President Obama would use executive authority to create more national monuments to protect lands if Congress doesn't pass legislation to do so.
"If Congress doesn't step up to act," Jewell said during a speech at the National Press Club in Washington, "then the president will take action."
Obama has used the more than century-old Antiquities Act to establish national monuments nine times, with six coming in the last year. The administration has said it would use the law only if local communities can demonstrate there is significant support for such action.
Those moves have invited backlash from House Republicans, contending those decisions are best left to Congress.
Congress hasn't approved a new national monument or park since 2010, with Republicans charging that the White House is keeping too much federal land off limits to oil and gas development.
Republicans say the shale energy boom could be replicated on federal lands, enhancing energy security and bringing more revenue to the Treasury.
The administration, however, notes that most shale plays are located on state and private lands outside of its control.
Jewell touched on that dynamic in her speech, referring to the Bakken shale formation that is the heart of the U.S. energy boom.
The Bakken nestles up against Theodore Roosevelt National Park along North Dakota's western border with Montana, providing an example of where conservation and development have the potential to clash, Jewell noted.
Emboldened by public cries to reopen the national parks during the federal government shutdown earlier this month, Jewell also called for stronger congressional support for national parks and federal lands.
She said the 16-day shutdown "clarified" the importance of parks, adding it cost communities near national parks an estimated $76 million per day.
The shutdown helped "shine the spotlight on just how much Americans love their public lands and the people that serve them," Jewell said.
But parks funding has been under attack by budget-conscious conservatives and lawmakers who want to expand drilling on federal lands.
On Tuesday, Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., released a study showing that the National Park Service has been spending money unnecessarily while it says it can't afford to pay for a massive backlog of maintenance project at the national parks. Trails at the Grand Canyon are in disrepair, and water at Yellowstone is pouring out of old pipes, for example.
Still, Jewell argued drilling coveted by Republicans and some centrist Democrats could coexist with conservation, issuing an order Thursday that aims to strike a "balance" between the two.
The move calls for a department-wide strategy to mitigate environmental conflict arising from resource development, which she said would help preserve federal lands while shielding businesses from potentially damaging environmental conflicts.
"Under my leadership at Interior, we will always take the long view. And we will always, always keep in mind that public lands are a trust, one that we manage for generations to come," Jewell said.
The plan calls for identifying environmental issues during the permitting process, while also establishing plans for land restoration and adaptation.
She promoted the development policy she rolled out Thursday as a way to minimize backlash and lawsuits against businesses for potential environmental damage.
"Project proponents will be able to invest with certainty and clarity in their projects and support the region's environmental needs rather than ad-hoc, project-by-project mitigation efforts," she said.
Jewell said there's room for Republicans to support conservation, calling national parks an "economic engine" for the communities.
She implored Congress to maintain funding for the Land and Water Conservation Fund — which uses revenues from offshore oil and gas development to enhance parks and open spaces.
President Obama recommended making that $900 million authorization permanent in his fiscal 2014 budget. But House Republicans pushed and passed an Interior budget that zeroes out that fund.
He’s your typical thief.
Choom is just grabbing more land for agenda 21.
Then repeal the Antiquities Act, problem solved.
Yep.
Yet more proof that foreigners don’t belong in our government.
Jewell is British, and grew up during the imposition of British Socialism on those formerly great people.
She’s also obviously never ditched the idea that we don’t have Monarchs in the U.S. and the President is bound by laws, he doesn’t make them.
But then he’s just as foreign as she is, so what would we expect?
The U.S. is managing to still produce oil despite the Obama administration’s roadblocks. So now they’ll just ‘nationalize’ the state and private land and take it and prohibit any oil exploration or drilling.
And some here think that Obama doesn’t work for the Saudi’s.
“calling national parks an “economic engine” “
Let’s just declare all 57 states a giant national park.
Then we will have economic recovery!!
What am I missing?
Will he get a kick-back for it — like Clinton got from the Riadys for the Utah coal grab?
It seems to me that if land needs to be protected, from poachers for example, then the feds shouldn’t be able to buy the land for public use.
Insights?
This is a major issue for conservative politicians when next the Republicans are in power.
Not only must they stop such presidential land grabs, and prohibit them in the future, but there is a vast amount of land, especially in the west, that needs to be returned to the states.
Doing so will enrage the Democrats, because it will first of all cripple Agenda 21. Second because it will make a lot of Interior Department personnel redundant. And third, because it would be the opening salvo in stripping power from the EPA and other oppressive government agencies.
Ironic coming from a President who won’t be going to Gettysburg on the 150th anniversary of Lincoln’s Gettysburg address. Jewell will ‘represent’ him..
http://blog.pennlive.com/gettysburg-150/2013/10/obama_chickens_out_skips_getty.html
O man just needs more things to shut down in the next shutdown.
Jewell is British, and grew up during the imposition of British Socialism on those formerly great people.
She’s also obviously never ditched the idea that we don’t have Monarchs in the U.S. and the President is bound by laws, he doesn’t make them.
But then he’s just as foreign as she is, so what would we expect?
She left at age 4 when her doctor father moved to the US.
It's a bit hard to pin “being foreign” on her...:^)
She's still doing a poor job though.
Maybe. But she’s not your typical Interior Secretary material.
Federal parks are usually located where there would be an attraction even if not a federal park.
It is the fact that they are federal, and thus subject to closure, and not subject to local development, that makes the local communities suffer.
EOs can be nullified by the next president or, if we had a real house of representatives it could be defunded. No EO is permanent unless we let it be.
Three problems here: first, notice how monument morphs into park; second, Jewell conflates conservation with locking resource development and multi-use out of these properties; third, this red herring of federal land closures being an economic engine.
My county is about the size of Connecticut. We are infested with alphabet agencies composed almost exclusively of radical green weenies – BLM, USFWS, USFS, and EPA, to name a few.
The BLM regularly posts water holes just before archery antelope season. Good luck getting close to an animal. Too bad you shelled out thousands of dollars getting here, hiring a guide, and so on. Be on your way, citizen.USFWS, with the help of commies and rinos in state government back east, designated the local river as a national refuge for squawfish. This is a trash fish that pays cash bounties in other states. To protect the squawfish, all the pike were removed from a river that previously was one of the top three pike sport fishing destinations in the world. Everyone wanted a chance at a 50-pound trophy. Those people are now spending their money elsewhere. Nobody pays for a squawfish photo safari.
USFWS, along with their fellow travelers at Colorado DOW and sinapu, visit to tell us how wonderful it will be when the Yellowstone wolves finally make it down here. Not to worry fellows, their preferred food is elk, not cows. You’d think these world experts on everything just might know the economic impact of elk hunters to a ranch – as in their largest single source of cash each year. Or not.
I want to stress this in no uncertain terms: NO ECO-TOURIST HAS EVER SPENT A NICKLE IN OUR BUSINESS. EVER. On the other hand, hunters, fishermen, miners, ranchers, drillers, roughnecks – I could go on but I think you know where I’m going – have kept us alive for over twenty years. Economic engine? More like economic terrorism.
Obama puts the dick in Dictator.
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