BLOG: Trump Administration Targets Public Lands

Evan Popp
Sep 20, 2017
2 min read

Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke has recommended that President Donald Trump modify at least 10 national monuments, which would include shrinking the land area of at least four sites in the West. The modification would open these currently protected areas to commercial interests such as logging, coal mining, commercial fishing and grazing.

Conservation organizations have come out strongly against the recommendation. The Nature Conservancy released a statement, which read in part:

Other environmental groups, such as the Sierra Club, took to Twitter to voice their displeasure with Zinke's proposal.

If enacted, this opening up of a handful of national monuments and parks would be at odds with the purpose of creating public lands in the first place. Theodore Roosevelt, often referred to as "the conservation president" once wrote of the importance of public lands:

In addition, what Zinke and the Trump administration miss with their dismissal of land conservation is that public lands have extraordinary value; it's just that their value is a different kind than the financial value the Trump administration is focused on. National Parks and monuments are where people often go to unwind from stressful situations or to get away from crowded cities. In addition, being in these large, open spaces allows people to appreciate the stunning natural beauty in this country.

These are the moral arguments for opposing Zinke's recommendation. But there are also practical reasons to keep our public lands away from corporations and development.

As climate change continues to worsen, opening up more areas to development and dirty energy sources like coal mining would be disastrous. The country needs to be transitioning to renewable energy sources like solar, not continuing to rely on the sources that helped get us into this environmental mess in the first place.
Developing public lands means that fewer people will be able to enjoy them and develop an understanding of the importance of nature and natural areas through that use.

What do you think about the potential development of public lands? Tell me in the comments.