Salazar rips GOP push for deep conservation cuts

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar on Wednesday launched a lengthy attack on House GOP proposals to sharply cut conservation funding, casting their effort as an affront to decades of bipartisan collaboration on outdoor preservation. “It is not a good day for conservation. It is a very painful day for conservation,” Salazar said in Michigan, where he had traveled to tout enhancements to a national park and wildlife refuge. His strongly worded attack on cuts in the GOP’s fiscal year 2012 Interior spending plan signals that conservation funding could play a major role in the wider political battle over environmental and energy spending programs. Salazar said the cuts would harm wetlands conservation, wildlife refuges and outdoor recreation such as biking and hunting, and other activities. The House GOP spending proposal unveiled Wednesday would slash almost 80 percent from Land and Water Conservation Fund programs in particular, which Salazar called “shortsighted” and alleged would “jeopardize the conservation legacy and future of the United States of America.”...more