Will DOI & Forest Service Avoid First Mistake?

With President Barack Obama signing the stimulus bill in Denver, his natural resource agencies and Congress may be on the verge of their first unintended environmental policy mistake. The "green jobs" language for Department of Interior agencies in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (stimulus bill) is biased toward projects such as facility repair and road maintenance in our national parks, national forests and wildlife refuges. Instead, the stimulus bill's funding should prioritize the battle against the invasive terrestrial and aquatic species ravaging all our federal lands and waters. The dedicated Department of Interior staff that prepared stimulus recommendations to Congress erred by focusing on fixed assets such as buildings and roads instead of helping the fish and wildlife resources that make our public lands valuable to Americans in the first place. The U.S. Forest Service took a similar narrow approach to economic growth, offering a job package that focused on road maintenance, facilities repair and wildland fire management...The Coloradoan