Trump Turns Public Lands Over To Greedy Corporations

Republican Teddy Roosevelt is largely responsible for protecting many of our national resources and treasures -- and urged others who followed him in power to do the same. We owe him a huge debt of gratitude for that.

Sadly though, today's Republicans are not of the stature of Roosevelt. When they look at lands protected by the government, they don't see natural wonders belonging to all Americans. They see land that could be exploited for profit by greedy corporations (who will repay them with large campaign donations) -- and one of the worst of these is Donald Trump. Trump has single-handedly turned over large tracts of our public lands to greedy corporations.

The following is part of an article by Jenny Rowland for Think Progress:

Trump took an unprecedented step for a U.S. president in December — signing a proclamation that dramatically reduced the size of two national monuments. Bears Ears National Monument was cut by more than 85 percent and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument was reduced by half. This resulted in the largest elimination of protected areas in U.S. history. The move put tens of thousands of Native American sacred sites at risk, along with key wildlife habitat, and areas used for outdoor recreation.

While the longer-term fate of Trump’s likely illegal action will play out in the courts, also buried in his December proclamation was a provision that on February 2, 2018, the areas excluded from the monuments would become open to private mineral companies to begin staking mining and drilling claims. . . .

Staking a mining claim on public lands gives an individual or company the exclusive right to extract minerals from a specific area of that land. Under the nearly 150-year-old 1872 Mining Law, staking a claim still involves literally putting stakes into the ground at the four corners of the boundary of your claim. This is then followed up within 90 days by recording the claim with the local BLM office and paying a modest annual fee. . . .

Bears Ears in particular, has proven deposits of uranium and other minerals within it’s original boundaries. One company, Energy Fuels Resources, owns and operates a uranium mine just outside the boundaries of the original monument. In May, the company submitted a letter to Interior requesting reductions to the monument and noted “there are also many other known uranium and vanadium deposits located within the [original boundaries] that could provide valuable energy and mineral resources in the future.”. . .

The potential destruction to Bears Ears is also gaining attention from conservation observers outside of the U.S.; earlier this week an arm of the United Nations asked the president to reverse his action, writing that the reduction to Bears Ears could cause irreparable damage to historical artifacts. . . .

While the national monuments in Utah face imminent harm, they are not the only public lands currently at risk. The Trump administration’s national monument report includes plans to alter at least eight additional monuments that range from allowing logging in Maine’s Katahdin Woods and Waters, to allowing commercial fishing in the Pacific Remote Islands.