Today, the House Agriculture Committee passed Rep. Westerman’s “Resilient Federal Forests Act,” a piece of legislation that would make clear-cutting forests significantly easier and undermine environmental review. Movement on the legislation follows a directive from Interior Secretary Zinke to land managers across the country to adopt “aggressive and scientific fuels reduction management” and “pre-suppression techniques” to slow Western fires.
Instead of protecting public health and the environment, a new rule will only serve the coal industry, community members and advocates say. After the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) unreasonable request to delay the long overdue deadline for the final Texas Regional Haze plan, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt is doubling down and putting the health of Texas and Oklahoma’s families and public lands at risk for the benefit of Texas coal plants. While claiming to address sulfur dioxide pollution from Texas coal plants, the final rule issued by EPA today actually allows more pollution from these plants than they produced in 2016. By failing to finalize and implement the 2016 proposed plan that required actual pollution reductions in Texas, Administrator Pruitt is putting the interests of polluters over public health in Texas, Oklahoma and across the central United States.
Washington, DC -- Yesterday, Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke, when speaking before the National Petroleum Council, claimed that nearly one-third of the staff at the Interior Department are “not loyal to the flag.” He even went so far to claim that people at Fish and Wildlife Service “hated people to a degree.” Earlier this month, Zinke called for the largest rollback of protections for America’s p
A leaked copy of Interior Secretary Zinke’s secret recommendation on national monuments shows the Secretary hopes to strip protections from public lands and waters across the country. Sites that could lose protections include Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante in Utah, Cascade-Siskiyou in Oregon, Gold Butte in Nevada, Katahdin Woods and Waters in Maine, Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks and Rio Grande del Norte in New Mexico, Northeast Canyons and Seamounts near Massachusetts and Rose Atoll and Pacific Remote Islands.
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- In a move championed by Rep. Young and Senator Murkowski, the Senate today passed a Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolution to overturn the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Alaska National Wildlife Refuges Rule. Voiding the rule undermines the management of public lands in Alaska, ceding control of wildlife management on national public lands to a narrow set of extreme hunting interests.