Jewell knows elk scat in Tetons. How about D.C.?

A Salt Lake Tribune reporter shoved a smartphone in the face of Interior Secretary Sally Jewell to show her a picture of animal scat on a trail in Grand Teton National Park. “Is this bear poop?” the reporter asked. He told Jewell that he thought it was. And after seeing all the grizzly bear warning signs, he’d turned around and walked out. Jewell could tell the scat came from an elk, moose or large deer. “No, you could have kept on your hike,” said Jewell. The former CEO of REI and the avid hiker, climber and paddler recounted that tale in her first major press conference last week at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. The story showed she is well-versed in the creatures that roam the 500 million acres she manages. In her first six months in office, Jewell has been criticized for not hitting the ground running, for not having an independent plan of action for her tenure. Joel Connelly, a wise old columnist for the Seattle Post Intelligencer, wrote a column in August that asked if Jewell was “locked in the cabinet” by the Obama administration. He quoted former interior secretaries Cecil Andrus and Bruce Babbitt, who urged Jewell to get into the mix of problem-solving. “She has to quit playing to the PR trips and do a few substantive actions that will put her in control, and not the staff that now seems to be running things,” Andrus told Connelly. But Jewell’s approach to national monuments — the same as predecessor Ken Salazar — probably won’t make Andrus happy. She told Congress to pass the dozens of wilderness and land-protection bills that have backed up since 2010 or expect that President Obama will use the Antiquities Act to designate monuments himself. Andrus has said Obama should designate the Boulder-White Clouds and not wait for Congress. Republican Rep. Mike Simpson has worked for more than a decade to get more than 300,000 acres of the area protected as wilderness, only to have both Republicans and Democrats stop it. In her efforts to encourage local collaboration, Jewell, perhaps unwittingly, gives opponents to Simpson — including motorized recreation groups and big-wilderness advocate and Gershwin Prize-winning singer-songwriter Carole King — motivation to blow up the issue. “We won’t be focusing our energy where there is a whole lot of conflict,” Jewell said...more  

It ain't elk scat she has to watch out for in DC. No, I believe its called: