Posted on 01/25/2015 5:47:34 PM PST by digger48
JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) - President Barack Obama is proposing to designate the vast majority of Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge as a wilderness area, including its potentially oil-rich coastal plain, drawing an angry response from top state elected officials who see it as a land grab by the federal government.
"They've decided that today was the day that they were going to declare war on Alaska. Well, we are ready to engage," said U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, and chair of the Senate energy committee.
The designation would set aside an additional nearly 12.3 million acres as wilderness, including the coastal plain near Alaska's northeast corner, giving it the highest degree of federal protection available to public lands. More than 7 million acres of the refuge currently are managed as wilderness.
The refuge's coastal plain has long been at the center of the struggle between conservationists and advocates of greater energy exploration in the U.S. Political leaders in Alaska have supported allowing for exploration and production within the coastal plain. They have opposed attempts to further restrict development on federal lands, which comprise about two-thirds of the state, including within the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska.
A resolution passed the state Legislature with bipartisan support last year urging Congress to allow for exploration and development on the coastal plain. A federal lawsuit brought by the state over the Interior Department's refusal to consider a proposed exploration plan for the refuge's coastal plain is pending. The state in 2013 proposed an exploration plan that it said was aimed at determining the true oil and gas potential in the refuge.
(Excerpt) Read more at wthr.com ...
Stop the A$$hole!
Obama seeks bigger wilderness designation in Alaska refuge -— PING!!
Watch out for your Back!!
If wouldn’t have dared tried this kind of crap in Kenya. It must be nice to have the honkies scared to death of you.
But Americans ask:
WHERE ARE HIS DOCUMENTS?
They've got millions of rounds...and all the media...
What an idiot. Alaska has more nature reserves than any other state by far.
This is just more political kabuki to pacify the environmental wack-jobs donors.
“I fought to expand Federally protected reserves in Alaska, but those mean Republicans stopped me. Send us money now!”
Go away, Zero.
Nope. Reduce it!!
Reminds me if Bill Clinton and the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.
Which - if memory serves - we later found out was done to help out energy interests in a foreign country.
The next American president should abolish the EPA and all federal ownership of land other than national parks. The federal government has no business owning two-thirds of any state.
“..I fought to expand Federally protected reserves in Alaska...”
::::::::::
“I fought to confiscate more land for the Federal government to keep it away from American citizens...”
“who see it as a land grab by the federal government.”
good eyesight!!!
NUKE THE POLAR BEARS NOW!
NUKE THE POLAR BEARS NOW!
Should that be GAY Polar Bears?
States Rights issue, Just ignore him!
The Democrats pushed hard to get Lisa Murkowski elected on the Independent line, in place of a conservative Republican. Good to see her badmouthing Obama now.
To say he is ‘out of control’ is obvious.
Which was never done away with was it? Why W didn’t do away with some of the idiocy and bad ideas of the grifter hillbilly traitor defies logic and sense.
12.3 million acres equates to an area the size of Vermont and New Hampshire combined
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