Our National Parks in Danger

Dismantling our democracy means dismantling everything we hold dear. That includes our environment, our national parks and monuments.  Nothing is sacred. The only thing that matters under Forever Impeached's crime enterprise is corporate profits and billionaires' greed.  

Our national parks,  our national treasures. 

Our National Parks and monuments encompass the glorious natural beauty of our country, from sea to shining sea.  Ken Burns in his documentary calls them "America's Best Idea."  Pioneer naturalist John Muir called them "our national cathedrals," counterpoints to the built environment and monuments of old Europe.  

America's natural environment is part of our history and cultural heritage.  It is threatened by the tRUmp administration and the oligarchs who run it. They are running our country into the ground. 

Zion National Park, which I visited with
my brother Loren. Incredible beauty.

Under a rogue president, Impeached Forever, who doesn't know our history and doesn't care, everything we love and value is being dismantled, including our national parks and monuments.   

"Under this administration, nothing is sacred as we watch the nation’s crown jewels being recut for the rings of robber barons," wrote Jonathan B. Jarvis, former director of the National Parks Service (NPS) and his brother Destry Jarvis, a long time Parks advocate for various nonprofits. (Jarvis and Jarvis, "Our National Parks are being Dismantled," The Guardian, January 10, 2020.)

The professional management of our national parks has been respected under both Democratic and Republican administrations for over 100 years, note the Jarvis brothers. Sure, they've had different priorities, "the Democrats often expanding the system and the Republicans historically focused on building facilities in the parks for expanding visitation." But the career public servants of the National Park Service (NPS), charged with stewarding America’s most important places, such as the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone and the Statue of Liberty, were left to do their jobs. They protected the parks and our natural heritage.

At the Grand Canyon, cold but awestruck
by its vastness, ancient geology, layered beauty.

This  has changed. Drastically. The change began almost immediately after Donald Trump's inauguration, when he whined about crowd size.  Remember that? He asked the Park service to change their estimates? 

This was not only among the first of the daily lies he has told since them, some 16,000+ of them, but it was probably when NPS wound up on the wrong list. 

The new Interior Secretary Ryan ZInke went after the Parks, doubling entrance fees, rescinding climate policies, moving career park superintenants around to force them into retirement, firing or replacing scientists. Nasty. 

The Sierra Club bemoaned Zinke's total disregard for the environment, concluding that his tenure at Interior "proved to be nothing more than a shill for corporate polluters."  

Zinke didn't last long, resigning under a cloud of criminality, ethics violations, and scandal, but his successor is just as bad. David Bernhardt, a former oil and gas lobbyist who was Zinke’s second-in-command, sees our pubic lands as treasures for oil and gas companies to drill, mine and exploit.  

And so, the Jarvises note sadly, we have "a systematic dismantling of a beloved institution, like pulling blocks from a Jenga tower, until it collapses."

The dismantling continues.   "It is clear that this administration cannot be trusted with the keys to the vault of our most precious places that define us as a nation, such as Mount Rushmore or Yosemite national park."  

Now we learn that the Interior department has just finalized plans to permit drilling, mining and grazing in Escalante and Bears Ears national monuments in southern Utah. It still shocks, the irreverance. This comes as the Bureau of Land Management is eyeing much bigger changes in how it manages 245 million acres of public land across the country and the minerals buried underneath them.  

Think of it. Some 245 million acres of public land once protected for the enjoyment of all Americans are now in danger for the profit of a few.  How can we allow our natural heritage to be so violated, so defiled?  

The Jarvis brothers make an interesting suggestion for the future. "When this nightmare ends, and we begin to rebuild, Congress should consider making the NPS an independent institution, more akin to the Smithsonian, and no longer subject to the vicissitudes of a hostile political agenda in a Department of the Interior dominated by extractive industries and anti-public land crusaders."  

We can work hard for a Blue tsunami in November 2020 that will take out the tyranical regime whose main goal is dismantling everything that truly makes America great. Saving our environment, our national parks and public lands, will be at the top of the agenda.

Some sources:

1.  Jonathan B. Jarvis and Destry Jarvis, The Guardian, January 10,2020,  https://news.yahoo.com/great-dismantling-americas-national-parks-110036985.html.

2.  http://www.pbs.org/nationalparks/, Ken Burns, "Our National Parks: America's Best Idea."

3.https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-trump-zinke-departs-20181215-story.html. 

4.  https://www.sierraclub.org/lay-of-the-land/2018/02/ryan-zinke-s-rocky-scandal-ridden-year-interior

5. The dismantling continues. https://www.rawstory.com/2020/01/trumps-epa-is-about-to-give-a-big-gift-to-the-coal-industry/?utm_source=&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=3625

6, https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2020/02/06/trump-administration-will-allow-drilling-logging-sensitive-federal-lands-utah/ 

7.  https://www.courthousenews.com/white-house-finalizes-plans-to-shrink-utah-national-monuments/

8.  https://www.npr.org/2020/02/06/803467297/trump-administration-finalizes-plans-to-allow-development-on-downsized-monuments?

The Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument boasts stunning features such as the Escalante Canyons, seen here in an undated photo. Together with Bears Ears, the Trump administration has greenlit big changes for the monument — though the legality of the move remains unclear. Jerry Sintz/AP