Free Republic

This will make your blood boil. Federal employees with the Park Service brag about how they swindled two World War II veterans off the land for pennies on the dollar. Federal employees revel in the fact that they swindle land from private property owners at pennies on the dollar, in astonishing admissions captured in a recently released video. “We went out to the mine and the owners were two little guys that had been in the Second World War,” a California park service employee recalls at a retirement celebration for Mojave National Preserve Superintendent Mary Martin in 2005. The employee...

Two New York legislators are launching a campaign to designate the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village as the first national park site honoring LGBT history. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and U.S. Rep. Jerrold Nadler are making their announcement in front of the tavern that was the scene of a 1969 uprising that was a key moment for the nascent gay rights movement. …

The National Park Service used falsified data to shut down an 80-year-old oyster company in Point Reyes, Calif, its owner claims. Drakes Bay Oyster Company operated in Point Reyes for decades until National Park Service officials used falsified data to force Kevin Lunny’s family-run oyster farm to shut down. The experience has left its mark on Lunny: “We are terrified,” he told lawmakers during a hearing Thursday. “Let me be clear, we did not fail as a business,” Lunny said in his prepared testimony. “This was not bad luck. Rather, the Park Service engaged in a taxpayer-funded enterprise of corruption...

A skull that was thought to have belonged to a Civil War soldier killed at Gettysburg is actually more than 700 years old and from the Southwest, say experts. The National Park Service has revealed that forensic anthropologists determined that the skull is from the late 1200s and belonged to a Native American man in his early-to-mid 20s. That's nearly 300 years before Christopher Columbus sailed to the New World and 400 years before the first settlement of English in the United States. The company that nearly auctioned the skull last year said notarized documents had showed it was discovered...

Would you pay more to visit your favorite national park? The National Park Service hopes so. The agency is proposing to increase entrance fees at many national parks across the country in an attempt to raise more revenue from visitors to help cover the cost of park operations and maintenance. The proposal comes at a time when Congress just authorized the largest expansion of the national park system in nearly three decades — but with no plan for how to fund it. The defense authorization bill, recently signed by President Obama, creates seven new national parks and expands nine existing...

The only barrier standing in the way of another shameful broken treaty with our Native Americans is the U.S. Congress. The federal government is planning to take the South Unit of Badlands National Park and turn it over to the Department of the Interior, to have it administered by the National Park Service. The NPS was in the news last year when they barricaded our national monuments and prevented elderly WWII veterans from seeing their memorial during the sequester. The NPS put up barriers along scenic look-outs so drivers couldnÂ’t see Mt. Rushmore, and closed park entrances across the country....

The National Park Service on Friday announced it was moving to ban drones on all its lands.. The move comes amid growing concern about hobbyists using drones to create dramatic videos. The ban would cover more than 84 million acres of public land. The director of the parks service cited safety concerns as well as potential harm to wildlife. "Imagine you're a big wall climber in Yosemite working on a four-day climb up El Capitan, and you're hanging off a bulb, ready to make a [difficult] move, and an unmanned aircraft flies up beside you and is hovering a few...

Decision would cut off ranchers' lifeline . A Western Slope federal parks official’s decision to limit access to Monument Road has touched off angry reactions from residents who depend on the route for their livelihoods. With little public input from Glade Park ranching community residents and without consulting with the Board of Commissioners in Mesa County, National Park Service (NPS) Director at the Colorado National Monument Lisa Eckert recently announced that vehicles containing “hazardous” cargo would be banned from using the route they have used for decades. Monument Road adjoins to Glade Park just a few miles inside the boundaries...

The operator of the Pisgah Inn on the Blue Ridge Parkway who defied the federal government shutdown last year now must fight to keep his contract. Bruce O'Connell has operated the inn for 40 years, the Asheville Citizen-Times (http://avlne.ws/1xNysyN) reported. O'Connell kept the inn open last year, even though the federal government shutdown brought an order to close during the funding dispute in Washington. The park concession contract is open for bid. O'Connell says he's not worried about fallout from his high-profile fight last year. He's more worried that a number of similar contracts recently have gone to big companies...

NEW YORK — The announcement May 30 that the National Park Service will begin installing markers at places of importance to the history of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans is a step toward including them in the national narrative — and components of education, supporters said. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell made the announcement at the Stonewall Inn, the scene of riots in June 1969 that are widely credited with starting the modern gay rights movement. Stonewall was made a national historic landmark in 2000, and June is widely celebrated as LGBT Pride Month. Jewell said the nation is on...

The National Park Service announced Friday that it will launch a study to identify places of historical significance to the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community. Secretary Sally Jewell made the announcement at The Stonewall Inn, which was the site of the 1969 riots that helped launch the modern gay rights movement. It is currently the only site in the country designated a national landmark.

The National Park Service is launching an initiative to make places and people of significance to the history of lesbian, gay, transgender and bisexual Americans part of the national narrative. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell is convening a panel of 18 scholars next month that will be charged with exploring the LGBT movement’s story in areas such as law, religion, media, civil rights and the arts. The committee will identify relevant sites and its work will be used to evaluate them for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places, designation as National Historic Landmarks, or consideration as national monuments, Park...

In the early days of last October’s government shutdown, South Dakota governor Dennis Daugaard, a Republican, wanted to use state and private funds to keep Mount Rushmore open — an offer the Department of the Interior quickly rebuffed, even as its high-ranking staff circulated accounts of the shutdown’s harmful effects on would-be visitors and private-sector park workers. . Advertisement Evidently the Department of the Interior didn’t want the media to know it had so bluntly turned down the governor’s detailed proposal, which was accompanied by a logistical addendum that outlined how Daugaard would keep Mount Rushmore equipped with security, parking,...

I suspect it may come as a surprise to many people that the federal government owns just over a quarter of the nation’s landmass and, other than land set aside for military bases and naval ports that may seem excessive. It is.

When too much of a good thing can be too much. ... the swollen agency spends $2.6 billion a year. President Obama wants to spend still more money on parks, asking Congress to approve a scheme to spend an additional $1.2 billion over the next three years. The cash would be earmarked to celebrate the National Park Service’s centennial anniversary in 2016. It would fund, among other projects, an expensive youth work program and provide more muscle for the federales to wrestle land from individual property owners. ... Few national parks are financially self-sufficient. The rest are on the dole,...

Rep. Don Young took aim at a frequent target on Friday, blasting federal regulatory sprawl that he said endangered economic growth and the Alaskan way of life. Young spoke during a luncheon with the Associated General Contractors of Alaska in Fairbanks, and directed most of his fiery comments toward the growing profile of federal agencies. He said they’ve passed 13,883 new regulations in the past four years, compared to 628 new bills that made it through Congress. “We’re no longer a free nation,” Young said. “We’re a nation of regulatory law.” ... Young said President Obama’s philosophies aim to make...

They’re almost like a hired gun’. Armed Rangers were brought in from out of state by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to assist in security surrounding the Bundy Ranch, according to the family. A heated confrontation on Wednesday resulted in Cliven Bundy’s son Ammon being tasered by BLM officials and a 57-year-old protester being shoved to the ground. Stetsy Bundy Cox, Cliven’s daughter, told the Washington Free Beacon that some of the rangers had Oregon and California license plates. “You know, some of these guys don’t even know why they’re here,” she said. “A few people have talked to...

Wildlife lovers clamoring to bring gray wolves to Colorado may want to pay attention to those wooden outhouse-style structures in rural Catron County, New Mexico. They’re called “kid cages,” and they’re built to protect children waiting at school bus stops–from wolves. “The wolf issue is an example, especially with the kid cages, about how you’re putting the interest of wildlife over the interests of human beings,” said filmmaker David Spady. “Every American should be concerned about seeing kids in cages and wolves out wandering around freely.” Spady’s remarks came during a Tuesday screening of his film, “Wolves in Government Clothing,”...

SALT LAKE CITY — A coalition of conservation groups is hailing a federal judge's ruling Monday to strike down portions of the Richfield Bureau of Land Management plan they said gave deference to off-road vehicles at the expense of the environment. "This landmark decision is a resounding rejection of the BLM’s mismanagement of Utah’s stunning public lands,” said Stephen Bloch, legal director for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance. ... The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance was among seven groups that filed a legal challenge to the Bush-era plans following their adoption in 2008, contending they imperiled pristine landscapes. The Richfield plan...

Taxpayers shell out $52,000 a year to maintain the home of Black History Month founder Carter Woodson. Yet the tiny, dilapidated row house in northwest Washington D.C., with a "No Trespassing" sign and iron bars blocking the front door and windows hasn’t seen a visitor in the seven years since the National Park Service bought it for $2.1 million and designated it a National Historic Site. Senator Tom Coburn, R-Okla.,points to the house as one tiny symbol in a sea of dysfunction in the National Park Service. The Service, with its comparatively small budget, is, he says, a microcosm for...