National
As ethics questions swirl, Zinke knows how to work a crowd. “Zinke’s tenure has been mired in ethics investigations, but his message and policies played well at the Freedom Conference, hosted by the Steamboat Institute, a conservative advocacy group that featured speakers from a variety of conservative ideologies. Applause punctuated his speech as he called for more oil and gas production, more logging on public lands and better access for hunters. Zinke’s speech, much like his policies as Interior secretary, emphasized the importance of developing American energy resources. The United States recently surpassed Saudi Arabia in crude oil production, and Zinke said the country will soon outproduce Russia, the world’s top petro state. ” [High Country News, 8/16/18 (+)]
US interior secretary's school friend crippling climate research, scientists say. “Prominent US climate scientists have told the Guardian that the Trump administration is holding up research funding as their projects undergo an unprecedented political review by the high-school football teammate of the US interior secretary. The US interior department administers over $5.5bn in funding to external organizations, mostly for research, conservation and land acquisition. At the beginning of 2018, interior secretary Ryan Zinke instated a new requirement that scientific funding above $50,000 must undergo an additional review to ensure expenditures ‘better align with the administration’s priorities.’” [Guardian, 8/17/18 (+)]
Interest in management overhaul tests ban on 'bulk comments'. “The Bureau of Land Management says it received at least 223,000 comments during a 90-day public comment period that ended this month on a proposal to make potentially significant changes to Obama-era greater sage grouse conservation plans. But BLM spokesman Derrick Henry said that, while the agency is still receiving some mailed comments postmarked before the Aug. 2 deadline, it appears that the vast majority of the comments counted so far were ‘form letters’ that simply repeated the same comments or recommendations.” [E&E News, 8/16/18 (=)]
National Monuments
Zinke said he would never sell public land. But the Interior is considering it. “In an interview with The Post in February, Noel said he did not receive special treatment in how the boundaries were redrawn to extricate his property from the monument. ‘I never talked to anybody in Interior about changing the boundaries around my property,’ he said. ‘I will take the lie detector test if needed.’ Jennifer Rokala, executive director of the Center for Western Priorities, said the optics of the planned disposal are terrible. ‘This looks like an egregious attempt to sell public land for the benefit of one of Secretary Zinke’s Utah cronies,’ she said in a statement. “Interior officials specifically carved out land around Mike Noel’s property last year, now they’ve made it official — they’re trying to give national monument land away to their friends.’” [Washington Post, 8/16/18 (+)]
BLM Wants Grand Staircase-Escalante Open for Business. “With litigation pending, monument proponents say any change to management plans is premature. “It’s an entire waste of time,” Steve Bloch, legal director of the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, told The Salt Lake Tribune. ‘It’s clear that they are trying to race ahead and do as much damage as they can in the shortest time possible.’ The documents identify four management alternatives for both monuments, and in both instances the agencies identified the least-restrictive option as their preferred way forward. While both management plans are a major departure from the protections afforded monuments, the changes proposed for Grand Staircase-Escalante are notably stark. Under BLM’s preferred plan, nearly 700,000 acres of the original monument would be open for extraction. (BLM included a report detailing the potential for coal, oil, and natural gas development.) No areas in the monument would be managed as wilderness.” [Outside Online, 8/16/18 (+)]
Wildfire
Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke acknowledges role of climate change in wildfires. “Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke suggested that climate change may have a role in the recent wildfires that have ravaged California. When asked by CBS News reporter Weijia Jiang whether he accepted that climate change was part of the problem, Zinke said "of course." He also acknowledged that ‘temperatures are rising.’ However, Zinke also reiterated an argument that he made earlier this week, blaming environmental groups for preventing dead trees from being cleared due to their opposition to the logging industry.” [CBS News, 8/16/18 (=)]
Gov. Inslee: Interior Sec. Zinke would sell his grandchildren for big oil. “The Governor upbraided U.S. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, who declared at a California fire scene last weekend: ‘This has nothing to do with climate change.’ Zinke blamed ‘extreme environmentalists’ for blocking the thinning of forests. Zinke is blowing smoke, said Inslee, surrounded by children at Lawton Elementary School, adding: ‘Interior Secretary Zinke would flunk any science test that these kids take.’” [SeattlePi, 8/16/18 (+)]
Trump says blazes 'not a global warming thing’ “President Trump was so pleased that Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke dismissed the connection between wildfires and climate change that he asked him to repeat it during yesterday's Cabinet meeting. That set off alarm bells among forestry experts and former Interior Department leaders. Climate science may play a small role for the firefighters responding to the blazes — but it's key for anticipating fires and restoring the ecosystems they have burned, they said. Zinke's preferred policies have merit, they said, but the long-term success of his initiatives depends on understanding how global warming could alter forests in the coming decades.” [E&E News, 8/17/18 (=)]
Feds push 'more aggressive' forest management. “With multiple wildfires raging across the West, the Forest Service today unveiled a strategy to reduce fire risks by strengthening partnerships with state, local and tribal governments. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue laid out the plan at an event in the Capitol attended by senators from both parties on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee.” [E&E News, 8/16/18 (=)]
Dems resist calls for more forest management reforms. “”Key Senate Democrats are rejecting Republican calls to enact additional forest management reforms in response to the wildfires consuming swaths of the West. House Republicans, including Natural Resources Chairman Rob Bishop of Utah and Energy and Commerce Chairman Greg Walden of Oregon, have been beating the drum for more change in recent days, calling for the farm bill conference to adopt provisions from a controversial House-passed measure, H.R. 2936, that would allow more logging and limit legal challenges to management projects (E&E Daily, Aug. 16). [E&E News, 8/17/18 (=)]
Calif. smoke drifts across continent. “Smoke plumes from California’s historic wildfires have wafted cross-continent to New York and other points on the Eastern Seaboard, a researcher at the State University of New York at Albany said today. ‘We have observed six events to date,’ Sarah Lu, an associate in the school’s Atmospheric Sciences Research Center, said in a statement, citing satellite readings and other monitoring data.” [E&E News, 8/16/18 (=)]
Offshore Drilling
Assembly, Senate bills that would ban development of oil-related facilities in state clear hurdles in Legislature. “Two bills aimed at protecting California’s coast from offshore oil drilling cleared a hurdle in Sacramento on Thursday, delighting environmental activists and a North Coast lawmaker as they girded for an upcoming battle with the powerful oil industry. The bills, intended to thwart the Trump administration’s plan to sell oil-drilling rights off all the nation’s coasts, including Northern California, were released by Senate and Assembly appropriations committees and cleared for enactment into law by the end of the month.” [Press Democrat, 8/16/18 (+)]
State and Local
AP | Interior Department eyes protected Arctic land for drilling. “The Trump administration is aiming to open millions of acres (hectares) of Alaska Arctic land for drilling that was protected under the Obama administration. The U.S. Department of the Interior began talks with state officials and the North Slope Borough, looking to update the 2013 management plan that kept drilling off about half of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, the Anchorage Daily News reported this week. The vast reserve spans about 35,937 square miles (93,077 square kilometers), and is almost as large as the state of Maine.” [Seattle Times, 8/15/18 (=)]
Williams, Gianforte Hold 'Roundtables' On Wilderness Study Areas. “The Democratic and Republican candidates for Montana’s U.S. House seat both held roundtable discussions about Wilderness Study Areas Wednesday.” [Montana Public Radio, 8/16/17 (=)]
AP | BLM Removes Sensitive Areas From Proposed Oil and Gas Sale. “Southern Wyoming groups have mixed feelings about the Bureau of Land Management's decision to remove three parcels from an oil and gas lease sales.vThe Rock Springs Rocket-Miner reported Tuesday that three of the parcels that the BLM chose to defer on are largely located in the Red Desert to the Hoback mule deer corridor, which pleased Sweetwater County officials and recreationalists.vThe three parcels totaled almost 8 square miles (21 square kilometers).” [U.S. News, 8/16/18 (=)]
Land transfer cuts off access to prime hunting access in Jefferson County. “An appeal to the Bureau of Land Management to keep 1,500 feet of primitive trail in Jefferson County public — preserving access to prime hunting on public lands — has led nowhere. Public Land/Water Access (PLWA) is trying to preserve public access to a rough, steep trail that leads to U.S. Forest Service land in the Bull Mountains in Jefferson County off Highway 69. The Bull Mountains, a range near Cardwell, is checkerboarded but some of it is part of the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest. Dave Sabo, Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest Service Butte district ranger, said there is tremendous hunting in the Bull Mountains in the fall.” [Montana Standard, 8/13/18 (=)]
Op-Ed, Editorial, and Analysis
Op-Ed: While Interior chief Ryan Zinke keeps ‘gaslighting’ on climate change, our forests burn more and more intensely. “But we can’t even have that discussion in a meaningful way if people like Zinke and his boss, President Donald Trump, are more focused on using tragedies to score political points while suppressing scientific research. Until that changes, they’ll fiddle while the West continues to burn.” [Salt Lake Tribune, 8/16/18 (+)]
Editorial: This is our land? Not if politics kills fund to protect national parks. “Among the bounties of blessings we Texans can brag about are our wide open public spaces. In West Texas, we can pitch a tent in the Guadalupe Mountains National Park and sleep under a night sky so clear we can peer into the Milky Way. In South Texas, we can wander through the Lower Rio Grande National Wildlife Refuge and see exotic birds as colorful as tropical fish, from Altamira orioles to green jays. In southeast Texas, we can canoe around the Big Thicket National Preserve, paddling for days through dark green curtains of water tupelos and towering magnolia trees.” [Houston Chronicle, 8/15/18 (+)]