Zinke and Trump Are Ignoring the Public
This December, the federal government will hold a sale of oil and gas leases across Utah. The sale, yet to be finalized, may include hundreds of thousands of acres and several areas that conservationists would like to see protected as wilderness. Yet when it was announced last summer, the Bureau of Land Management gave the public just 15 days to comment. And when the final list comes out later this month, the public will receive only ten days to weigh in.
If you don’t think that sounds like much time, you’re not alone.
Even as Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke has made noise about returning more decision-making power over federal lands to local people and away from D.C., the Trump administration and Zinke's Interior Department have taken numerous steps to limit public input. “What we’re seeing is the virtual elimination of public participation requirements across the public lands systems,” says Bobby McEnaney, director of the Dirty Energy Project at the Natural Resources Defense Council. Changes by the administration range from a reduction in time for the public to review upcoming energy sales on federal lands to a proposal to charge Americans who protest on the D.C. Mall.
The changes have left many worried that the federal lands agencies no longer serve average Americans. “‘Public,’ for this administration, seems to be mainly, or exclusively, oil and gas and extractive industries,” says Matthew McKinney, director of the Center for Natural Resources and Environmental Policy at the University of Montana.
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