National
Department picks ‘acting’ chief for fish, wildlife and parks. “The Interior Department is improvising again to temporarily fill a long-standing vacancy, with the move of Andrea Travnicek to oversee the Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Park Service. Travnicek’s new designation as acting assistant secretary for fish, wildlife and parks accompanies fellow Trump administration appointee Susan Combs’ becoming acting assistant for policy, management and budget. Combs had served as acting assistant secretary since late March (Greenwire, March 30).” [E&E News, 8/8/18 (=)]
10 Bizarre Gifts Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke Has Received. “Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke appreciates nice things. His historic office at the agency’s headquarters in Washington, D.C., features a bronze bust of his hero Theodore Roosevelt and a replica skull of a dinosaur discovered in one of the national monuments he helped shrink. Then there’s the slew of taxidermy creatures: a bobcat, a bison named “Rosie” and a grizzly bear that Teddy apparently shot.” [HuffPost, 8/8/18 (+)]
Superintendent’s loud exit reverberates back home. “For Dan Wenk, it has been a summer of reflection, whether it’s climbing to the top of Mount Washburn with his wife or gazing at his favorite vista at the Hellroaring Overlook, the spot where his son proposed to his future wife. ‘You just take it in,’ said Wenk, the superintendent of Yellowstone National Park since 2011. Wenk, 66, is ready to give it all up and head to South Dakota to retire. But it’s not easy. ‘It is hard to pack up the office,’ said Wenk, whose last day is Sept. 29. ‘I’ve started to make piles.’ The relative quiet at park headquarters at Mammoth Hot Springs belies Wenk’s loud exit, which has been anything but usual. He set off a storm in June when he angrily accused his superiors at the Interior Department of forcing him out, with no good reason.” [E&E News, 8/8/18 (=)]
FWS faces legal threat for ending ban on pesticides, GMOs. “Conservation groups plan to sue the Fish and Wildlife Service over its decision to lift an Obama-era ban on certain pesticides and genetically modified crops on national wildlife refuges. The Center for Biological Diversity and the Center for Food Safety today formally notified the agency of the forthcoming legal challenge, starting a 60-day clock.” [E&E News, 8/8/18 (=)]
BLM to begin EIS on Conoco’s Willow discovery. “The Bureau of Land Management yesterday announced plans to write an environmental impact statement for ConocoPhillips’ proposal to develop its promising new Willow oil discovery in the 23-million-acre National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska. The Willow prospect, located in the northeastern corner of the reserve, could hold 400 million to 750 million barrels of recoverable oil. The company plans to spend $2 billion to $3 billion at the site, with first oil expected by 2024-2025. Once full production begins, Willow could yield 100,000 barrels of oil per day.” [E&E News, 8/8/18 (=)]
Western groups sue agency over royalty panel transparency. “A coalition of Western grass-roots community groups is heading to court to fight for more transparency around the Interior Department’s Royalty Policy Committee. The Western Organization of Resource Councils (WORC) contends that Interior stacked the panel with industry interests to garner more support for lower royalty payments on oil, gas and coal extracted from public lands and waters. The watchdog group Democracy Forward Foundation filed the lawsuit on WORC’s behalf in federal district court in Missoula, Mont.” [E&E News, 8/8/18 (=)]
Wildfire
California's largest wildfire tops 300,000 acres; containment remains at 47 percent. “The largest wildfire in California history has topped 470 square miles, nearly the size of the state’s largest city, Cal Fire reported Wednesday night. The Mendocino Complex Fire, a merging of the Ranch and River fires that both sparked July 27, was listed at 302,086 acres at 7 p.m. Pacific. While containment remained at 47 percent, the same as the previous night, Cal Fire reported progress on the frontlines.” [USA Today, 8/8/18 (=)]
Zinke blames ‘radical environmentalists’ for wildfires. “Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke is partially blaming ‘radical environmentalists’ for the dozens of wildfires burning in California and elsewhere in the West. In a USA Today opinion piece published Wednesday, Zinke said “active forest management” — including logging, prescribed burns and clearing brush — is the way to minimize wildfires on federal land. But green groups sue the federal government to stop such management practices, Zinke charged, exacerbating the problem.” [The Hill, 8/8/18 (-)]
AP | Romney calls for early detection, logging to stop wildfires. “As wildfires ravage the U.S. West, Republican Senate candidate Mitt Romney has called for more logging and a high-tech early detection system in a plan that was met with some skepticism. Romney, a candidate in Utah, said in an essay that more logging would thin out forests and clear dead timber so fires have less fuel.” [Washington Post, 8/8/18 (=)]
To California, The Wildfires Are Tragic. To The Trump Administration, They’re Convenient. “Apparently seeing a disaster as an opportunity to push partisan policy, the Trump administration has opted to continue its bizarre attempt to connect devastating California wildfires to a longstanding fight between farmers and environmentalists over water resources. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross on Wednesday issued a directive that prioritizes water for fighting wildland fires over protecting endangered species. The move comes just two days after California officials dismissed President Donald Trump’s claims that the fires have been exacerbated by a water shortage resulting from ‘bad environmental laws.’” [HuffPost, 8/9/18 (+)]
High stakes for water supplies in wildfire debate. “From the top of Little Bald Mountain, Marie Davis can see brown patches of forest for miles around — evidence of fires that have burned hundreds of thousands of acres in the past several years. A geologist with the Placer County Water Agency, Davis remembers how just one of those fires — the King Fire, in 2014 — stripped the landscape, allowing 330,000 tons of topsoil to erode from mountains into the water agency's three nearby reservoirs. Hydroelectric operations shut down for weeks.” [E&E News, 8/8/18 (=)]
National Monuments
800 Miles with Bears Ears Prayer Runners. “The group—composed of members of the Hopi, Navajo, Ute, and Ute Mountain Ute tribes; a few of the New Mexico pueblos; and a contingent from the Wintun and Maidu tribes in California—had come together to run nearly 800 miles from New Mexico, Arizona, or Colorado to Bears Ears from March 12 to 17. Four separate routes snaked like veins through patches of tribal land, atop mesas, through coniferous forests, past oil pump jacks, and alongside busy highways. The event, with its rented minivans and overflowing boxes of performance snacks, was logistically similar to a team relay run like the Ragnar race series, but to define it as such would be misguided. These weren’t racers—they were prayer runners. And this group represented a largely untapped generation of voices and activists, many of whom are young, in the current fight over public lands.” [Outside Online, 8/8/18 (+)]
State and Local
BLM kicks off review of Calif. fracking impacts. “Federal officials are moving forward with a plan to study the impacts of hydraulic fracturing on public lands in California. The Bureau of Land Management yesterday unveiled plans for a supplemental environmental impact statement to weigh fracking’s effects on public lands around Bakersfield and the broader central area of the state. Leasing has been paused in the area since 2017, when BLM reached a settlement with environmentalists concerned about the agency’s level of review.” [E&E News, 8/8/18 (=)]
Op-Ed, Editorial, and Analysis
Op-Ed: Seeing stars from public lands is like winning the lottery. “Yet, those public lands are under threat with the prospect of a different lottery winning: that single lump sum as a return, that instant gratification that will soon fade away, that of developing these lands for profit. If these lands are lost, ground under the heel of our expanding subjugation of nature, the stars are lost with them. Those city lights and the thick smog of pollution will drown them out. The distant light of a million centuries, glowing silver across the vast darkness of space, gone to the development of a year. Let us keep our public lands. I am just one small person in a very large world telling my own little story, but there are many thousands more just like me. Please, let us continue to look up to the night sky — and see the stars.” [Missoulian, 8/8/18 (+)]
Op-Ed: Ask Zinke to reconsider energy policies on public lands. “The rush to increase oil and gas leases on Bureau of Land Management public lands will require the agency to shift its focus from managing public lands for multiple purposes (grazing, water, fish and wildlife and historic, cultural and recreation uses) to an all-out effort to expedite oil and gas lease sales and energy development. The effect this will have on rural communities is that the BLM will have less resources and staff for such things as fire prevention, rangeland improvement, conservation of fish and wildlife habitat and recreation. Maybe this gives you some ideas for a homemade sign to carry at the rally. You could also email or call Rep. Scott Tipton who is supportive of this administration’s energy policies and ask him to reconsider where he stands on oil and gas development in national monuments and refuges.” [Steamboat Pilot & Today, 8/8/18 (+)]
Op-Ed: Trump’s nonsense tweets on water and wildfires are dangerous. “Our fire and water challenges are worsened by climate change. Because the world has waited so long to respond to warnings from the scientific community, we must now work to cut the emissions of greenhouse gases that are driving worse — and accelerating — climate changes while we also tackle efforts to adapt to climate impacts we can no longer avoid. Smart solutions to our water problems are out there. Smart solutions to the threat of California wildfires and the growing threat of climate change are out there. But they’re not helped by ill-informed, politically divisive comments from the president.” [Washington Post, 8/8/18 (+)]
Editorial: Where There’s Fire, Trump Blows Smoke. “What’s really alarming about President Trump’s preposterous tweets about the California wildfires is not what he gets wrong, which is plenty, but what they say about his stubborn refusal to grasp the basics of climate change and, perhaps worse, his and his administration’s contempt for the science that is drawing an ever-tighter link between a warming globe and extreme weather events around the world.” [New York Times, 8/8/18 (+)]