Seeking to shrink Bears Ears, uranium firm met with Interior before review
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Source: roll call
House panel plans oversight hearing on monuments next week
Posted Mar 4, 2019 3:08 PM
Jacob Holzman
A meeting between an Interior Department official and a company tied to mineral interests in the Bears Ears National Monument area — almost a month before President Donald Trump requested a review that substantially reduced its boundaries — may end up in the crosshairs of House Natural Resources Chairman Raúl M. Grijalva.
Documents show that Energy Fuels Resources (USA) Inc., a subsidiary of a Canadian energy firm, met with a top Interior official who would be involved with the review before Trump requested it.
When President Barack Obama designated the monument in December 2016, its boundaries encompassed or abutted over 350 uranium claims tied to the company. Its uranium processing mill, the only such facility in the United States, was located mere miles from the monument. Proximity to a national monument can lead to additional regulatory scrutiny.
In December 2017, Trump, following recommendations by Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke that were developed during the review, significantly reduced the size of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments.
Trump’s revamped boundaries for Bears Ears also likely removed all of more than 100 uranium claims tied to Energy Fuels. ...............................
Read more: https://www.rollcall.com/news/congress/bears-ears-uranium-firm-hearing
Natural Resources
?Verified account @NRDems
7h7 hours ago
The Trump administration destroyed Bears Ears National Monument and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. The American people deserve to know who was in the room when it happened. We’re holding a March 13 hearing to get answers.
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The House Natural Resources Committee will hold a hearing on a review that led to substantially reduced boundaries for Bears Ears National Monument in Utah. A company tied to mineral interests there met with a senior Interior Department official nearly a month before President Donald Trump requested the review. (George Frey/Getty Images file photo)
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The Theft of Grand Staircase–Escalante
https://www.outsideonline.com/2391192/grand-staircase-escalante-trump
Leath Tonino
Mar 4, 2019
In 2017, the Trump administration announced that it was shrinking the iconic Utah national monument by nearly 50 percent. Leath Tonino devised a sketchy 200-mile solo desert trek, following the path of the legendary cartographer who literally put these contentious canyons on the map.
Deanna Glover’s voice hits a high note along with her eyebrows, tone and expression conveying the same grandmotherly concern.
She’s not my grandmother—we met for the first time an hour ago—but that hardly seems to matter to the sweet, white-haired 80-year-old. “Tell me you’ll have a friend hiking with you, because it’s a lot of country,” she says. “And, you know, I start to worry.”
The Kanab Heritage Museum, in Kane County, Utah, is cluttered with arrowheads, wedding gowns, antique farm implements, and sepia photographs of the families that founded the town of Kanab in 1870. I phoned Deanna, a descendent of these Mormon pioneers, earlier this April morning, and though the museum, her baby and brainchild, was closed, she insisted on opening it so that the displays could inform my upcoming 200-mile, two-week trek through Grand Staircase–Escalante National Monument.
Hiking with a friend? I shake my head, and a latent anxiety rears up, the prickly fear-thrill of engaging a desert that demands resourcefulness (drinking water found in sculpted potholes), extreme caution (camouflaged rattlesnakes in the middle of the trail), and a tolerance for solitude (my girlfriend, as I hugged her goodbye before leaving for Utah, told me to enjoy peeking into the recesses of my own skull).
Recounting this quip to Deanna, I notice the grip on her walker tighten. “Oh, I’ll be praying for you then,” she says. “I’m not kidding—it’s a whole lot of country.”
Ocher buttes, umber scarps, maroon hoodoos: whole lot of country indeed. Extending north and east from Kanab, the monument encompasses one of the gnarliest stretches of the lower 48. To borrow writer Charles Bowden’s apt phrase, it’s “the heart of stone.”
Ever since President Clinton established the monument in 1996, it has been contentious: old-timers versus newcomers, Republicans versus Democrats, advocates of using the land versus advocates of protecting it (as if these were mutually exclusive agendas). Conservative politicians in pressed blue jeans and blazers tend to see it as an affront to economic growth. Dirtbag adventurers in Chaco sandals deem it one of the epicenters of North American slot canyoneering. In Kanab, mention Edward Abbey, the Southwest’s iconic nature writer, and you’ll receive either a high five or a tirade, depending on your interlocutor........................................
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A rational person would ask: "why do they not care about protecting some of the nation's finest natural sites and recreation areas that are protected for all Americans to enjoy?" Although our standard thought would be that Republicans only care about corporate interests, that still does not adequately explain their disinterest in America's precious national monuments and other protected areas.
Then, this occurred to me: Republicans are entirely owned lock, stock and barrel by the invisible ultra wealthy. Their actions and policies reflect the desires of those select few extremely wealthy industrialists, miners, media barons, bankers, retailers, financiers and hedge fund managers.
That group of billionaires simply do not care about these public properties because they do not use them and hence see no personal value other than to exploit them. Public needs and Mother Nature's future be damned to them.
They are the type of people that live in gated communities, belong to private exclusive golf clubs, have vacation homes all over the globe, own multi-million dollar yachts and can take private jets to anywhere on earth at a whim.
In other words, Republicans are owned by people that have no personal allegiance to America and her lands.....
