Bush - 0 National Parks or Monuments, 1/20 Reagan's (!) Wilderness [View All]

[hatrack]

"When it comes to protecting America's natural heritage, George W. Bush and his advisers have talked reverently over the past four years about Theodore Roosevelt, the Republican conservation pioneer who preserved millions of acres of scenic land.

Yet even as Interior Secretary Gale Norton visits Yosemite National Park today, on Earth Day, Bush's record says something else: He's no Teddy Roosevelt.

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• Since 1901, no president has opened fewer new national parks. Bush has signed bills establishing a Flight 93 national memorial in Pennsylvania; commemorating the Cedar Creek Civil War battlefield in Virginia; and enlarging Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve in Idaho. Sixteen new national park units opened under his father, 20 under Ronald Reagan and 48 under Jimmy Carter.

• Similarly, Bush has set aside roughly 500,000 acres as wilderness, where logging, mining and motorized vehicles are prohibited. By comparison, Ronald Reagan set aside 20 times as much -- 10 million acres -- including huge swaths of California's Sierra Nevada range.

• The Bush administration has added 29 new species to the Endangered Species list, with all but four coming as a result of a court order. The first President Bush added 234 species.

• Bush is one of only a handful of presidents in the past century who did not use his administrative power to create a new national monument. Nearly every president since 1900 has established new monuments, starting with Theodore Roosevelt, who created 18 including Grand Canyon, Olympic, Muir Woods and Pinnacles.

• Bush is also the only president in the past 30 years since Congress set up the national marine sanctuary system who has not established a single sanctuary, the ocean equivalent of national parks where oil drilling is banned."

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Gee, maybe he'll designate some postage-stamp monument today . . . NAAAAAHHHHH!!!