Alaska Senator Calls Obama’s Interior Secretary ‘A Horrible Disappointment’

Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski said the current Secretary of the Interior has been a “horrible disappointment” that will thankfully be leaving office soon. “Sally Jewell has been a horrible disappointment and is one vote I regret,” Murkowski said in an interview with an Alaska radio station Tuesday, according to Politico. “She will be gone soon and that will be good for Alaska,” Murkowski said...more

Interior Secretary: More Diversity Needed In National Monuments – ‘Bronze White Guy’ Too Prevalent

Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said on Tuesday at an event focused on Hispanic-American Entrepreneurship that the national monuments in the nation’s capital need to be more diverse. “If you drive around Washington, D.C., in every circle and every square you generally see a bronze white guy – sometimes on a horse, sometimes not - you have to work really hard – like in front of the Indian embassy you’ll find Mahatma Gandhi,” Jewell said. “A handful of women – maybe – if you look really hard – sprinkled around the city, but there are very few places and memorials that tell the story of the rich diversity that has made this country great,” Jewell said...more

House Republicans Chastise Interior Department for Ethics Issues

House Republicans repeatedly attacked the Interior Department Thursday as having "a culture of corruption" because of numerous instances of ethics violations and sexual harassment allegations. "There is an overwhelming amount of disturbing information the Inspector General has delivered in the last few weeks," Rep. Darin LaHood, R-Ill., said during the meeting of the House Natural Resources Committee's oversight subcommittee. Misconduct allegations have been reported in the National Parks Service, the Bureau of Land Management, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife service, to name a few. The committee has expressed concern that the Interior Department isn't taking action quickly enough against employees involved in the misconduct. Steve Guertin, deputy policy director for U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said at the hearing that his agency recently terminated Stephen Barton, a top official in the Wildlife and Sport Fish Restoration program. The IG's office had found that Barton failed to disclose outside employment at an organization that receives funding from the agency. He also used more than $90,000 to fund trips to Washington, his reported place of residence, from his actual residence in Idaho. The Office of the Inspector General will refer cases of misconduct it believes warrant criminal prosecution to the Justice Department. The committee took issue with the fact that the Justice Department decided not to prosecute 17 of 29 criminal cases presented by the IG's office. Deputy Inspector General Mary Kendall noted there were fewer than 80 investigators in her department, which limits her ability to address "more systemic issues within the department and its bureaus."...more

Jewell’s all hands, all lands vision draws strength from Interior employees

By Rocky Barker 

Tell Interior Secretary Sally Jewell public land is controlled by top-down edicts from Washington, and she will push back immediately.

“I don’t think that’s accurate,” Jewell says.

“I would say that I’ve not been witness to a situation where we’ve had a thoughtful discussion about where something needs to go and then someone in Washington makes an arbitrary decision to change it. That’s a dialogue people like to talk about but I don’t think is accurate,” she said in an interview with the Idaho Statesman.

But whether it’s getting 173 million acres of sagebrush habitat sufficiently protected from development to keep sage grouse off the federal endangered species list, or siting a high-power transmission line through Southern Idaho, she’s ready to stand up even if it’s unpopular.

“There has to be voices who speak up for benefit of the intangible value of the landscape, and that’s part of what we do,” Jewell said.

As Jewell enters the final eight months of her tenure as Obama’s Interior secretary, she’s taking on a more forceful role as defender of the federal government’s place in the West and the value of federal employees in their work and their communities.

Jewell seeks to counter the perception that led Utah and other Western states to promote the idea of transferring federal lands to the states. Anti-federal rhetoric hit its peak earlier this year when a band of militia led by Emmett’s Ammon Bundy occupied the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in southeast Oregon for 41 days.

Jewell calls her collaborative vision “all hands, all lands.” The idea is that wildlife depend not only on public land but private and state lands and that states have the lead role in managing wildlife. It has guided her effort to develop a sage grouse plan across 11 Western states, including Idaho, where oil and gas drilling, renewable energy development, livestock grazing and population growth all take place on much the same landscape.

Instead of drawing lines on a map with zones that dictate different uses, Jewell has sought to look at the landscape like the wildlife that uses it — without paying attention to lines or artificial barriers.

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Sally Jewell hopes to change lives by bringing children to National Parks

A group of about 25 mostly environmentalists and high-level public lands managers bolted into the new Sand to Snow National Monument one afternoon last week. Setting a blistering pace was Sally Jewell, the 51st Secretary of the Interior, who at 5 a.m. that morning had been hiking with Native Americans in Montana, not far from the Canadian border. Jewell believes that outdoor experiences are part of the DNA of humans and is concerned that today’s children are not getting out into the wildland frontiers of America. That’s why she believes the Obama administration’s “Every Kid in a Park” initiative is so important. Launched in September 2015, the Department of Interior program provides all fourth-grade students and their families with free admissions to National Parks and other federal lands and waters for a year. Jewell spoke about the sedentary, urban lifestyle of young people in America after she negotiated a log bridge over the rapidly flowing Whitewater River and nimbly danced around numerous rock obstacles. The trail Jewell and the other 24 briskly walked on goes from the Wildlands Conservancy’s Whitewater Preserve to Mission Creek Preserve. Both properties are privately owned but fall within the Sand to Snow National Monument boundary line, which extends to the 11,500-foot Mt. San Gorgonio on the west to the Sonoron Desert to the east...more

She's changed the lives of children already.  Take for example the children of those parents who would have worked on the Keystone pipeline.  And right now the children of thousands of parents employed in the coal industry.

Feds Signal They’re Ready To Rumble Over Western Land

by Jim Dalrymple II

There’s a battle brewing in the West, and the feds are ready to take off the gloves.

In a speech that seemed a bit like a battle cry Tuesday, U.S. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell laid out a broad vision for conservation in the U.S., calling for renewed efforts to fund National Parks, reaching out to a more diverse group of Americans, and cultivating new generations of people who appreciate parks.

But the address also included a strong response to recent conflicts in the West. Those conflicts, including the standoff at an Oregon wildlife refuge, the Bundy family’s confrontation with the feds in 2014, and several other skirmishes, were sparked by the federal government’s management of vast tracts of land in Western states.

While Jewell didn’t mention those standoffs by name, department spokesperson Jessica Kershaw in an email to BuzzFeed News cited both Oregon and Nevada as examples of what Jewell referred to as “the emergence of an extreme movement to seize public lands” and “land grabs.”

“This movement has propped up dangerous voices that reject the rule of law, put communities and hard-working public servants at risk, and fail to appreciate how deeply democratic and American our national parks and public lands are,” Jewell said Tuesday.

...The secretary also made a number of other hints that the feds are ready to take a harder line with those trying to stop conservation, including touting the benefits of the Antiquities Act — a law passed in 1906 that gives the president the power to designate national monuments with the stroke of a pen, and is among the most controversial tools used to set aside Western land.

Jewell described the Antiquities Act as “one of the most important tools a president has to improve our country,” adding that the Act ought to be used even if it is controversial.

“I do not think the Act should only be used in places where there is complete agreement, as some are suggesting,” Jewell said.

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Secretary Jewell calls for "major course correction" in conservation

"We as a country need to make a major course correction in how we approach conservation to ensure a bright future for our public land and waters," Jewell said in a speech in Washington, D.C. Land grabs for development, population growth and climate change are to blame, she said. And smarter landscape-scale planning and attention to deteriorating park infrastructure are essential. The majority of people visiting national parks in Colorado and other Western states appear to be old and largely white, Jewell said. "Which means we haven't found a way to connect to the young people of today, who are more diverse, more tech-savvy and more disconnected from nature than ever before," she said. "We need to kick off the new century of American conservation by issuing a giant, open invitation to every American to visit their national parks and public lands." A new analysis by the nonprofit group Conservation Science Partners, based on satellite images and federal land data, found that natural areas are disappearing rapidly. Jewell said this group's "Disappearing West" report is alarming "because healthy, intact ecosystems are fundamental to the health of our nation." The degradation of nature and loss of natural land coincides with flare-ups in the movement to seize public lands. Jewell referred to the armed standoff in Oregon this year, a 41-day ordeal at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, which exposed wide sentiments in Western states against federal control over activities on public land. Western politicians also have proposed sell-offs of public land and putting more federal land under state control. "This movement has propped up dangerous voices that reject the rule of law, put communities and hardworking public servants at risk, and fail to appreciate how deeply democratic and American our national parks and public lands are," Jewell said...more

Jewell: Oregon takeover among several threats to West

An armed takeover of an Oregon national wildlife refuge is part of a disturbing “extreme movement” to seize public lands and reject the rule of law — putting communities and public employees at risk throughout the West, Interior Secretary Sally Jewell says in a speech outlining Obama administration conservation policies.The 41-day standoff this winter came at the same time as two other trends that threaten the West, Jewell said: A push by some politicians to sell off lands that belong to all Americans to the highest bidder, and the rapid disappearance of natural areas throughout the region due to climate change and increased development.Citing a new analysis by a non-profit conservation group, Jewell said natural areas in the West are disappearing at the rate of a football field every two-and-a-half minutes. The trend is especially alarming “because healthy, intact ecosystems are fundamental to the health of our nation,” she said.Jewell, who began her fourth year as Interior secretary this month, is set to deliver the speech Tuesday at the National Geographic Society in Washington. The Associated Press obtained excerpts in advance.The convergence of trends threatening the West has “propped up dangerous voices that reject the rule of law, put communities and hard-working public servants at risk, and fail to appreciate how deeply democratic and American our national parks and public lands are,” Jewell said...more

At Malheur, Sally Jewell was missing in action

by Matt Jenkins

The takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon was the latest in a series of fights against federal management of Western land that have, for better or worse, been lumped together as the Sagebrush Rebellion. The story will now unwind in the relative safety of the courts, yet I haven’t been able to shake one question: Where was Sally Jewell when the West needed her?

The former REI executive who is now the secretary of the Interior is in charge of national wildlife refuges like the Malheur; public grazing lands like the ones the Bundys run their cattle; Indian sacred sites like those of the Burns Paiute Tribe; as well as of our national parks, our endangered fish and wildlife, and our water.

Jewell ought to be the first person to stand up for these treasures when they come under attack. Instead, we got complete silence. Meanwhile, the occupiers tramped out to hold daily press conferences, laying forth a litany of grievances wrapped in anti-government venom, and the news media lapped it up.

...We needed Jewell’s voice to tell us this, too, or something like it. Instead, she took a trip to Africa. That trip, her press handlers will be quick to point out, was part of an international effort to stop wildlife smuggling. Fair enough. Standing up to people like the Malheur occupiers is not an enviable job, but it is, ultimately, Jewell’s job.

Her absence from the Malheur debacle felt like flat-out dereliction of duty. And the optics, as the media flacks say, were terrible. Incomprehensibly, in the midst of an armed seizure of one of her offices, the Interior Department’s media office released a video clip of Jewell in Kenya, “making friends with a baby rhinoceros.”

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Interior Secretary Sally Jewell answers Utah monument fears

Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said flatly she doesn't control President Barack Obama's pen when it comes to any new monument designation in Utah, but she insists there's no plan to sneak around Utah and create one under the "cloak of darkness." "There hasn't been any monument designation that President Obama has done that hasn't had a pretty open, public process," Jewell said. "It is an open, transparent process we have been engaged in all along." Jewell, in Salt Lake City for a Thursday announcement of a youth initiative with Salt Lake City Mayor Ralph Becker, met with the editorial board of Deseret Media Companies on Wednesday to discuss sage grouse, monuments and other Interior department issues. Her presence in the state has been accompanied by a swirl of angst by Utah's top politicians that a monument designation in Utah is a just an ink stroke away and comes the same day a much-touted Public Lands Initiative was flayed by Native American tribes. "Despite more than two years of dialogue with local stakeholders, we are concerned that the Public Lands Initiative Process and San Juan County have thus failed to reach out to, consult and respond to feedback from Tribes within or outside of Utah," a letter from leaders of the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition reads. Their letter late Wednesday was a rebuttal to one sent earlier in the day by Utah's entire congressional delegation to Jewell that implored her to let that process play out and refrain from any designation for Bears Ears, an area which spans 1.9 million acres in San Juan County.  But Jewell said she has yet to see any details of the Public Lands Initiative being shepherded by Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah. "We have not seen anything tangible," she said. "We have asked for detail, because we have seen no detail." She said it is hard to say the process should play out when she does not know what it entails. "What is really going to be important is to show us, bring us to the table. We do have a lot of lands that are involved in this, but we need to be brought to the table," she said. "We are going to continue to get requests from people who are worried about these lands." Native American tribes pushing for protections of Bears Ears have been in her office, with maps, pushing their cause, she said. Bishop said he hasn't shown any details to Jewell because the language in his bill — that includes all the land use proposals — is still being crafted. "A soon as it is drafted we will share it with her," he said. "What is slowing it down right now is the mechanics of actually drafting the language and getting the maps ready."...more

Obama Cabinet Member Hates Redskins, Likes Dead Eskimos

by Daniel Greenfield


Obama's Interior Secretary Sally Jewell really cares about Native Americans. That's why she'll oppose a Redskins stadium.

The Obama administration will likely block Washington, D.C., authorities from building a new stadium for the NFL's Washington Redskins because of objections to the team’s name.
Interior Secretary Sally Jewell, whose department includes the NPS, told D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser in April that, unless the Redskins change their name, the Obama administration would not work to accommodate construction of a new venue, according to The Washington Post.
In a letter a month later, a local NPS official told Bowser the agency opposed the idea of building a new stadium.

I'll skip over the general state of political corruption and political correctness encapsulated in that little story. Let's just move on to Sally Jewell's boundless affection for the native peoples. You might even say that she loves them to death.

King Cove has a clinic, but no hospital or doctor. Residents must fly 600 miles to Anchorage, via Cold Bay's World War II airstrip, for most medical procedures including serious trauma cases and childbirth. Frequent gale-force winds and thick fog often delay or jeopardize medevac flights.
According to local Aleutian elders, 19 people have died since 1980 as a result of the impossible-to-navigate weather conditions during emergency evacuations.
U.S. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell on Monday rejected a proposal for a one-lane gravel road linking the isolated community of King Cove with the all-weather airport in Cold Bay some 22 miles away.
During an August visit to Alaska, Jewell was told that building a road that connects King Cove and Cold Bay was vital. But in December, Jewell rejected the road saying it would jeopardize waterfowl in the refuge.
“She stood up in the gymnasium and told those kids, ‘I’ve listened to your stories, now I have to listen to the animals,” Democratic state Rep. Bob Herron told a local television station.

So the good news is that if the Redskins just add a big pond for the waterfowl in their stadium, Sally Jewell will kill as many Indians as it takes to make it happen.

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Sage grouse could evade endangered status

Interior Secretary Sally Jewell told Western governors Wednesday she is confident an Endangered Species Act listing of the greater sage grouse can be avoided, but that any additional delays in that decision would be counterproductive. Speaking at the annual meeting of the Western Governors' Association at Lake Tahoe, Jewell criticized congressional action that put off any potential listing until after 2015. A court-ordered decision by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as to whether a listing is warranted or not is due by Sept. 30. "The last thing you want is uncertainty," Jewell said. "We have uncertainty now. If we delay, we will continue uncertainty." Last April, Jewell visited Reno to announce that a unique subspecies of sage grouse that lives only along the Nevada-California line, the bi-state sage grouse, does not need listing as a threatened or endangered species due to successful efforts to preserve bird habitat. The coming decision affects a much larger population of greater sage grouse that lives in Nevada and 10 other Western states. Concerned a listing could come with crushing economic consequences, Western governors have worked to develop conservation strategies to avoid that outcome. Plans to conserve the bird and its habitat on federal land were recently released by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service and are now under review. Jewell said the decision not to list the bi-state grouse could well set the stage for a similar decision on the greater sage grouse. "That's what we can have if we keep working together on the greater sage grouse," Jewell told governors from Nevada, Utah, Arizona, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, North Dakota and Guam. "I will remain optimistic … a not-warranted listing is a clear possibility. I think we can get there together."...more

Hickenlooper: 'Very close' to avoiding sage-grouse listing

The debate over the greater sage-grouse is gaining intensity as a May 29 deadline looms for a federal agency to complete plans for the bird, Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper said Tuesday. “We’re not playing chicken, but we are pushing back against each other pretty hard,” Hickenlooper told the members of the Associated Governments of Northwest Colorado about discussions with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Colorado. Eleven states stand to be affected by a listing of the bird as threatened or endangered. The Associated Governments of Northwest Colorado was one of the first Colorado organizations to criticize the potential listing of the bird, saying that a listing would endanger the region’s energy economy. If the bird is listed, “All of Moffat County is out of business,” Moffat County Commissioner Chuck Grobe told Hickenlooper. The Interior Department has said it wants to reach the point that the Fish and Wildlife Service can find that no listing is warranted. Much of that decision lies with the way the BLM manages its lands and both agencies report to Jewell. “We are very, very close to avoiding a listing altogether,” Hickenlooper said, noting that he spoke to Jewell 10 days ago. Finding that the bird should not be listed is Jewell’s goal, Hickenlooper said. “I believe her. I don’t think she’s posturing.” Hickenlooper supported the filing of a suit against the agency when it listed the Gunnison sage-grouse as threatened, but declined to say whether he would do the same if the greater sage-grouse is listed...more

You can just imagine the horse trading, maneuvering and attempted bribery going on behind the scenes.  To list the bird would be political suicide for the Democrats and probably lead to a Congressional delisting or even changes to the ESA itself.  The enviros want neither of those to happen.  They will, however, use the threat of a listing to get all they can get.  The more serious envirocrats inside the administration will also be working for a program that will survive a legal challenge.  

All of this will, of course, be based on "science".

Interior secretary returning to Idaho to deal with sage grouse

Interior Secretary Sally Jewell is returning to Idaho for the fourth time since President Barack Obama picked her to be the nation’s public landlord in March 2013. The former REI CEO will talk about wildfires, the same issue she came to talk about the last three times. That’s not surprising since Boise is the home of the National Interagency Fire Center, the nerve center for fighting fires. But Jewell’s last trip and this trip will focus on fire and sage grouse. The 2-foot-tall bird has become a major chore for the former oil and gas drilling engineer, who had been an active member of the environmental community before she went to Washington, D.C. But the potential listing of the grouse as a threatened species — the symbol of the health of the West’s sagebrush ecosystem — has forced Jewell to spend a lot more time on the issue than she expected when she was appointed.. The sagebrush sea, once 290 million acres, has been cut in half over the past century, and in the Great Basin that includes Idaho, Oregon, Nevada and Utah, fire has been the final destroyer of much of that desert land. Jewell heard it from her biologists, ecologists and range managers, and from governors such as Idaho’s Butch Otter.  Getting an entire bureaucracy of firefighting agencies, land managers and wildlife biologists all moving the same direction is not easy. Climate change has increased fire intensity and spread for at least the past 20 years. But only now is the fire threat to the sagebrush sea rising to a place of prominence in the national discussion. It had been largely ignored, as were the birds by some of these same agencies only a decade ago...more

Read more here: http://www.idahostatesman.com/2015/05/15/3802044/interior-secretary-returning-to.html#storylink=cpy

California and Nevada sage grouse protections disappear into hot air

By Erik Molvar

This past Tuesday, the citizens of Reno, Nev. were treated to an impressive act of political sleight of hand. Based on a series of voluntary conservation efforts affecting only 3.4 percent of grouse habitat, Interior Secretary Sally Jewell nevertheless determined that 11 major threats to the tiny remnant populations of the Mono Basin sage grouse no longer threaten the species with extinction, as if by magic. The result is a political hijacking of the Endangered Species Act process that is required by law to render decisions based on facts and science. Wildlife loses, healthy lands lose and bureaucrats declare victory.

If the public was expecting Jewell to pull a rabbit out of her hat with an announcement of new local protections, they were surely disappointed. The same threats loom, the same scarce populations hang in the balance, the same absence of habitat protection applies across most of the bird's range. The administration, it seems, simply changed its mind that Mono Basin grouse declines are a serious problem that needs to be addressed.

Throughout the press conference announcing withdrawal of the proposed "threatened species" listing, each speaker tried to eclipse the last in praise of the collective, voluntary effort to protect sage grouse. In vapid platitudes, speaker after speaker praised the $45 million spent to improve habitat or secure conservation easements on some 44,800 acres of grouse habitat, neglecting to mention that these measures do not apply to most private lands with sage grouse habitat.

Don't get me wrong. It's great that conservation-minded landowners and agencies are willing to take positive steps to protect sage grouse.

But these voluntary efforts can't make up for the current absence of mandatory protections on the rest of this population's 1.8 million acres of critical habitat, originally proposed for protection by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service...more

Molvar is the Sagebrush Sea Campaign Director for WildEarth Guardians

We don't get you wrong.  You're preaching the same old environmental gospel:  voluntary okay, coercion the best.  We don't have the time nor the inclination to get involved in on-the-ground planning on a site-specific basis, so send in the jack-booted thugs to do our bidding.   You can't control the site-specific stuff through the courts, but you have great success in court-mandated, top-down thuggery.  Yes, we hear your gospel.  We're just non-believers.

Alaska Miners Dispute Jewell's Claim That ‘Much’ Of Alaska’s Federal Lands Are Open To Mining

Alaska mining advocates are taking issue with something Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said last week, while defending federal resource management in Alaska. Here’s what Jewell said: “We are in no way preventing development of Alaska’s resources on public lands. We’re facilitating development in a number of areas. Much of the mining in Alaska is on public lands.” The Alaska Miners Association has written a letter to Jewell disputing that “much” of Alaska’s mining is on federal lands. Alaska has six big mines. Two, Kensington and Greens Creek in Southeast, are on federal land. The others are on state and Native land. Deantha Crockett, executive director of the mining group, says Alaska has more than 400 placer mines, but only about 80 are on federal land. “I think our concern is when you say “much” you’re talking about 18 percent of placer mines, and two out of six large-scale mines,” Crockett said. “I guess I don’t consider that to be ‘much.'” Crockett says the lack of mining activity on federal land didn’t happen by accident. More than 60 percent of the state is federal land, but Crockett says too much is closed to mining. “And the then the acreage that is administered by the federal government that isn’t closed to mineral entry, frankly, there are tremendous permitting delays and a whole bunch of bureaucracy that’s affecting these operation from moving forward,” Crockett said...more

Interior Secretary Sally Jewell Defends Federal Land Management

Interior Secretary Sally Jewell today defended the federal government’s land management and brushed off calls from legislators in Alaska, and other states, to seize federal lands. Jewell spoke at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, to a standing room only crowd, many from a nearby conference of the outdoor recreation industry. It was a room strongly in favor of preserving federal land. Jewell urged them to make their views known at every level of government. “These are lands that belong to all American people. Just because they’re in the boundary of a state does not mean they belong to the residents of that state. They belong to all American people,” she said. The Alaska House last week passed a bill demanding the federal government turn over its lands in Alaska to the state. Similar measures have passed in other western states. Speaker of the Alaska House Mike Chenault, like other Republican legislators, says it’s a just cause. “I’m not afraid of a fight, and I’m not afraid of doing what I think is right,” he said, in supporting the bill in Juneau. Jewell doesn’t sound too worried. “While there has been a fair amount of rhetoric and even some laws passed in state legislatures, there’s none of them that have been found to be constitutional with regard to a takeover of federal public lands by states,’ she said. “So there’s a lot of talk but there hasn’t been a lot of action.” The talk in Alaska grew louder this winter, when the Obama Administration announced a series of anti-development measures in the state...more

Legislation to "seize" federal land? Most of the bills are calling for a study on the possibility of transferring some of these lands back to the states.   Does Jewell believe it is not "constitutional" for the states to conduct these studies?  She knows it is, but like many in the enviro community Jewell is doing her best to mislead and distort the issue.  Why are they working so hard to prevent these studies?  The feds do a study before they acquire lands, why shouldn't the states?  Let's get the facts out there first and then debate the issue.  What are they afraid of?

Four ways Interior Secretary Jewell can salvage her legacy

By Randi Spivak

For anyone who cares deeply about America’s wildlife, wild places and the future of our climate, Interior Secretary Sally Jewell has been a disappointment.

Despite a quickly warming climate, she’s opening vast tracts of public lands and ocean to dirty fossil fuel development—places like Utah’s iconic canyon country, Alaska’s Chukchi Sea, and the Atlantic Coast, which has been off-limits for three decades. She’s also promised to open millions more acres of public lands for drilling and mining and just released new rules for fracking that are riddled with loopholes for polluting companies.

Jewell’s Department of the Interior has also proposed to end Endangered Species Act protection from nearly all wolves in the lower 48, abandoning the recovery effort long before scientists recommend. Thus far, Interior has also blessed inadequate management plans to save the greater sage grouse, despite the recommendations of its own scientists. When push comes to shove, our public lands – and the endangered wildlife they’re home to – lose out, time and time again. All to curry favor with big oil, mining, livestock, timber and multinational corporations.

It’s hardly the record of an Interior secretary who should want to be remembered for protecting America’s most iconic places and species. Much less of a civic leader trying to keep us from climate disaster.

Jewell’s final chapter at Interior, though, has yet to be written. She can begin righting her legacy and our public lands future with four crucial steps...

Spivak is public lands program director for the Center for Biological Diversity. 

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And they are, surprise, surprise: 1) More Wildlife Refuges and corridors, 2) Don't Drill, 3) Don't mine, and 4) Protect Native American areas.

 

Secretary Jewell's speech and my comments

On Tuesday Interior Secretary Sally Jewell gave a speech on energy at the CSIS.  The following are excerpts from her speech, but the headings and organization are mine:

Climate Change

    This is a speech about energy – but you can’t talk about energy without talking about climate change. That’s good – one of the main reasons I left the private sector for this job was not just to talk about climate change, but do something about it. I’m proud to work for a President who is taking historic, meaningful steps to cut dangerous carbon pollution.
     And so, as the person entrusted with America’s biggest land management portfolio, I’ve also got to ask questions like: What are we doing to achieve a low carbon future?...
    For us at Interior, we are already adjusting our land management strategies for the impacts of climate change.
    But we also need to do more to address the causes of climate change. Helping our nation cut carbon pollution should inform our decisions about where we develop, how we develop, and what we develop.

Fracking

    That’s why, in the coming days, we will release a final rule related to hydraulic fracturing – or fracking – on public lands. The rule will include measures to protect our nation’s groundwater – requiring operators to construct sound wells, to disclose the chemicals they use, and to safely recover and handle fluids used in the process.
    The standards only apply to activity on public and tribal lands, where, as a matter of geology, about 25 percent of America’s unconventional oil and gas sits. You can do the math: that means that three-quarters of the resources are found on state and private lands.
    So, the responsibility for developing this energy safely must now be taken up in state capitals, engineering labs, and board rooms all across the country.

Flaring

    In the coming months, we will also propose standards to cut methane emissions and wasted gas that result from venting and flaring during oil and gas operations.
    Methane is the third-largest source of greenhouse gas emissions and traps more than 20 times as much heat as carbon dioxide over the course of a century.
    But this powerful greenhouse gas is routinely released during energy development. In fact, above northern New Mexico, where there are more than 40,000 gas wells, satellite images show a methane gas plume the size of Delaware.
    We will be updating our decades-old standards to encourage the kind of infrastructure and technology that companies I’ve met with in the Bakken and Permian basins have demonstrated can reduce harmful emissions and capture the natural gas as a source of energy and revenue for the American people.

Off-shore

    Building on the sweeping reforms I mentioned earlier, we will propose a rule in the coming weeks that raises the bar on blowout preventers and well control measures based on technological progress advanced by industry. Operators will be required to use best practices to protect against and effectively respond to any loss of well control.

Coal

    I think most Americans would be surprised to know that coal companies can make a winning bid for about a dollar a ton to mine taxpayer-owned coal.
    Coal is going to continue to be an important part of our nation’s energy mix in the future. But the Government Accountability Office, our Inspector General, and Members of Congress from both sides of the aisle agree that the federal coal program needs reform.
    We need to ask ourselves: Are taxpayers and local communities getting a fair return from these resources? How can we make the program more transparent and more competitive? How do we manage the program in a way that is consistent with our climate change objectives? These are hard questions. But it’s time for an honest and open conversation about modernizing the federal coal program.

Royalty Rates

    In the coming weeks, we’ll also take public comment on a proposal to give the Bureau of Land Management the flexibility to adjust royalty rates on the oil and gas resources that belong to all of us.
   This is important, especially given the dramatic growth of oil production on public and tribal lands. Production has increased in each of the past six years, and overall, combined production was up 81 percent in 2014 versus 2008.
    It’s not just about royalty rates. We need smarter management, too. In 2015 – incredibly – we’re still processing a majority of oil and gas permits by paper. And we’ve got about 150 inspectors in the BLM who are responsible for inspecting over 100,000 oil and gas wells spread over millions of acres of public and tribal lands.

Budget

    To carry out our mission – and to be a better partner to industry – we need resources. Repeated budget cuts have tested the BLM’s ability to keep up with industry demand for new permits and to effectively enforce safety and environmental standards.
    That’s why the President’s budget calls on Congress to support a strong onshore inspection program partially funded through fees...
    That’s a perfect example in the budget where Congress needs to move beyond mindless austerity brought about by sequestration and make a smart investment in the future, in infrastructure and innovation. That means investing in safe and responsible energy production, but also in our ability to protect our critical landscapes, our wildlife and their habitats.

Children

...the America we want to hand our children.

...We owe it to our kids to get this right.

...and my responsibility to my granchildren's generation is at the top of my mind with every decision we make

...Every day, I think about this phrase: "We don't inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children."  My job is to take the long-view.

I'm glad "it’s time for an honest and open conversation about modernizing the federal coal program."  Apparently all previous conversations have been dishonest and closed.

We need an increase in royalty rates for oil and gas resources that "belong to all of us."  Theoretically, everything Interior manages belongs to all of us.  Where are the fee increases for Wilderness and wildlife, etc., that "belong to all of us"?

Does she really believe we think hiring more bureaucrats and issuing more regs will make Interior a "better partner to industry"?

I'm sure you noticed that spending less is "mindless" while spending more is a "smart investment."  Sorry, but no cigar.  The proposed fee would raise $48 million, yet results in only a $6.9 million increase in program capacity.  How can that be?  Because $41.1 million will be "directed towards other priority activities."  Industry would be charged a new fee most of which would be spent on wildlife, wilderness, recreation or whatever (I quickly spot a +$11.2 million for National Conservation Lands and a +$6.6 million for Recreation).  Combine that with a request of $93.4 million for BLM land acquisition and you can see their real priorities.

And then there's the children.  Every since Clinton no one seems to justify anything based on adults and current events.  We must take the "long view" to protect our children.  All based on the liberal shibboleth that free markets are totally governed by short term profit returns while the DC Deep Thinkers have the luxury of making decisions for the public good over the long term.

Hogwash.

Everybody knows the time horizons for any administration are two and four years.  Two years until the next Congressional election and four years until the next Presidential election.  If you seek anything longer you better turn to the private sector.

Interior secretary under fire on wolf protection

Interior Secretary Sally Jewell is standing by a proposal to de-list the gray wolf as an endangered species, but she stops short of endorsing legislation to overturn court orders that are keeping the animal under protection. Jewell is coming under pressure from House Democrats to heed the courts and at least protect the wolf under a downgraded, threatened status. The Fish and Wildlife Service proposed in 2013 to de-list the gray wolf in most of the continental United States but courts have blocked the action in Wyoming and the western Great Lakes region. Legislation was recently introduced to finalize the de-listing. Under questioning by one of the bill's cosponsors, Rep. Dan Benishek, R-Mich., at a House Natural Resources Committee hearing Thursday, Jewell didn't endorse the measure (HR 884), but she said the administration would follow its directive if enacted. “Clearly we will uphold whatever laws are passed by Congress,” she told the committee. “My preference is certainly not to legislate the Endangered Species Act (ESA). But if Congress passed legislation certainly we will uphold the law.” But a letter to Jewell signed by 79 House members, mostly Democrats, and delivered to Jewell ahead of the hearing proposes to list the gray wolf as threatened, rather than endangered. Downgrading the wolf to threatened status would “allow states significantly increased certainty and flexibility” in managing the animals, the letter said. Jewell said the department would see “what we're permitted to do under the law.” Rep. Collin Peterson, D-Minn., the ranking member of the House Agriculture Committee and another cosponsor of the del-isting legislation, wrote to Jewel in January, asking her to appeal the court decision that reinstated protections for the wolf in his home state. Peterson said reversing the court ruling would return management of the animal back to the state and help farmers and rancher facing a difficult decision between protecting their livestock and complying with another difficult federal court decision. On a separate issue, Jewell assured the committee the department would heed a policy rider in the fiscal 2015 omnibus spending bill that would prevent the Fish and Wildlife Service from finalizing rules to protect sage grouse habitat under the Endangered Species Act. But she said the department would still meet a court-ordered deadline in September for determining whether the bird merits protection under the law. "The rider prevents us from writing any regulations .. however, it doesn't prevent the service from coming to a determination on a listing decision."...more