Rep. Rob Bishop, who chairs the House Natural Resources Committee, says he's thrilled to finally be working with a president who supports the idea of returning the control of federal land to states and localities. But in an interview with the Washington Examiner, he said Congress needs to work quickly to make sure President Trump's decisions to roll back national monument designations are locked into place, so a future president can't reverse those moves. "What they are doing has go to be put into some type of statutory language to actually give some finality to it," Bishop said. "Otherwise, everything Trump is doing now can be changed by the next president." Bishop said the issue is a challenge, however, because he argues that environmentalists and other opponents are misrepresenting the intent of the monument reforms, and the broader Trump public lands agenda. "We can only overcome it with the truth," Bishop said of opposition to Trump's recent move to shrink the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase Escalante national monuments in his home state of Utah. "The reality is this was never about conservation versus development. Interest groups who claim to be environmentalists are always making pictures of oil rigs and oil wells drilling on these areas." "That is a false narrative and it’s a fake issue," he added. "We are taking that narrative off the table and we are simply saying it’s a lie." Excerpts of his interview follow:
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