Reno, NV-- Last night, a leaked Department of the Interior report made public by the Washington Post unveiled the appalling truth behind Secretary Zinke’s public land recommendations. The document’s vague, yet startling recommendations call for a shrinking and fragmentation of Nevada’s Gold Butte National Monument. The recommendations signal a complete disregard for more than 2.8 million public comments -- 98% urging to maintain the current and future protections for national monuments across the country.
SEATTLE, WA--Last night, Washington Post revealed Sec.Ryan Zinke’s recommendations to alter national monuments around the country-- risking the value and preserved nature of public lands. Despite maintaining Hanford Reach National Monument, Zinke ignored 98% of the 2.8 million Americans who submitted public comments urging the preservation of public lands nationwide. Stripping safeguards for these places is an unprecedented act in American history. The decision puts public lands in key states up-for-grabs for potential drilling, mining and clear-cutting.
A leaked copy of Interior Secretary Zinke’s secret recommendation on national monuments shows the Secretary hopes to strip protections from public lands and waters across the country. Sites that could lose protections include Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante in Utah, Cascade-Siskiyou in Oregon, Gold Butte in Nevada, Katahdin Woods and Waters in Maine, Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks and Rio Grande del Norte in New Mexico, Northeast Canyons and Seamounts near Massachusetts and Rose Atoll and Pacific Remote Islands.
A coalition of national conservation groups including Defenders of Wildlife, Sierra Club and Animal Legal Defense Fund filed suit against the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) today challenging border wall construction activities that threaten wildlife and public lands in San Diego and Imperial Valley, California.
The House Natural Resources Committee today will take up a series of anti-wildlife and endangered species bills. The extreme bills undermine the role of science in endangered species decisions, reduce government accountability and collectively gut the Endangered Species Act, one of the country’s most successful conservation laws.
The Sierra Club praised news today that President Obama will designate new national monuments recognizing the country’s civil rights history
Santa Barbara, CA -- On Monday, April 17, the Sierra Club and other local organizations will protest Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke’s speech at the Reagan Center.
Leaked documents from the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) outline the agency’s priorities for America’s public lands under the Trump Administration. The priorities include speeding leasing and permitting for dirty fuel development on public land, reforming the implementation of bedrock environmental laws to limit public input on projects and minimize accountability for companies that pollute our air and water or harm wildlife, and opening up new areas to development.
WASHINGTON, D.C.-- According to news reports, Donald Trump has donated his first quarter salary of just over $78,000 to the National Park Service. The move comes after Trump proposed slashing the Department of the Interior’s budget by 12%, which includes the National Park Service.
In response, Michael Brune, Executive Director of the Sierra Club,issued the following statement.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 16, 2017
Contact: Rudhdi Karnik rudhdi.karnik@sierraclub.org
Sierra Club Response To Trump’s Rigged Budget Proposal
Washington, DC -- Today, Donald Trump’s Department of Justice filed a motion announcing its intention to rescind the Bureau of Land Management’s safeguards for hydraulic fracturing (fracking). The DOJ has asked the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals to hold the Obama administration's appeal defending the rule in abeyance while they rescind the rule.
SALT LAKE CITY -- Utah Congressman Jason Chaffetz and Sen. Mike Lee on Monday announced that they would use an extreme and obscure legislative maneuver called the Congressional Review Act (CRA) to overrule common sense clean air protections for Utah national parks. Chaffetz began by introducing legislation in the House to repeal the Regional Haze Rule for Utah.