Image above from LINK.
Please forgive my first DK rant, albeit a minor one. Truly, I had thought I would be able to get past the first year (at the very least...) before I went on a rant. Not so. We are approaching the end of the ninth month since this administration hoisted themselves into office, and I cannot even think of the upcoming years. Time moves at the pace of day to day, as horrors unfold.
For many people music highlights their growth from young adult to adult. For many others, it’s landscapes. Places which we knew in our early teens, and later as young adults and then as adults. They mark those moments when we transitioned from child to teenager to grown-up. Landscapes which are so magical that it made us think of the whole, instead of just us — as a singular. Landscapes which hold amazing biodivesity, cultural history, paleontological record, geological shifts embedded in it, that it perforce made us view all of it (indeed the Earth itself!) with a sizable dose of respect, awe, love, and to view whole through the lens of longue durée.
You’re probably wondering what set me off?
This:
Following months of secrecy about the results of Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke’s sham “review” of national monuments, some concrete details have been revealed in a memo that was leaked to the Washington Post. To no one’s surprise, Zinke has apparently recommended that President Trump shrink four national monuments and open six others to mining, drilling, and logging. The result threatens to be the largest-ever reduction of protections for public lands and waters in U.S. history.
Let that sink in for a moment: the largest-ever reduction of protections for public lands and waters in U.S. history, which could total millions of acres. How, exactly, is that making America great? Link
Additionally —
UNITED States Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke’s drive to shrink the boundaries of a handful of national monuments is an assault on Western-American values. It’s a legally dubious scheme that upends Teddy Roosevelt’s conservation legacy, and it demands a shove back from Washington’s congressional delegation.
SNIP
“In this exercise, Trump and Zinke are fighting the will of the American public to gift-wrap pieces of the Pacific Northwest’s crown jewel of biodiversity for the logging industry,” said the Western Environmental Law Center’s Susan Jane Brown.
SNIP
Zinke’s report goes beyond the scissoring of monument boundaries and recommends altering management plans designed to harmonize wildlife, recreation and public use. It’s also riddled with inaccuracies, including basic details on hunting and fishing rights at two monuments in New Mexico. Link
Also, this:
Secretary Zinke is recommending that Trump cut the boundaries of Bears Ears, Cascade-Siskiyou, Gold Butte, Grand Staircase-Escalante, Pacific Remote Islands and Rose Atoll National Monuments, possibly shrinking them to a mere fraction of their size.
He is further recommending that Trump modify management plans to allow for logging in Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument, commercial fishing in the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts National Monument, and commercial grazing in the Organ Mountains and Rio Grande Del Norte National Monuments. See these majestic places on our blog. These protected lands and waters belong to all of us,[...].
Link
While the dim Dotard bloviates on twitter, and wants us to believe that he is losing whatever teensy grip he has on reality, his biddable and nasty henchmen are out unraveling things. Because the only thing Republicans are really good at is destroying and undoing things like healthcare, equality, progress, natural beauty, collective heritage, clean water and air, safety, and such. I’m sure you can come up with your own list.
I can no longer see them as anything other than a freaking greed driven death cult.
Destroying is the one thing they are really good at. Also, because fossil fuel exploration and mineral mining in iconic landscapes is where Dotard’s administration feeds.
To wit, Ryan Zinke and his bosom friends — the mining companies — and Republican troglodytes in Utah who want people to buy their lies. Indeed, hyperbolic troglodyte Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) even said establishment of Bears Ears National Monument was an “attack on an entire way of life.” Yes. Really. The full quote:
"For Utahns in general, and for those in San Juan County in particular, this is an affront of epic proportions and an attack on an entire way of life."
As should be apparent by now, Republicans are hyperbolic, blowhards who lie, just like Orrin Hatch. All you have to do is listen to some of the tripe delivered by Republicans from Utah (or anywhere else, for that matter). Here is another one from Mike Noel (R-Ut)—
Noel had previously described the Bears Ears National Monument designation as akin to the “unilateral tyranny exercised by the King of England against the American colonies two and a half centuries ago.”
Link. Bolding mine.
Seriously, Republican hyperbole, exaggeration, and bloviation would be fun to catalog, except they are so repetitive and tedious. The one thing they all have in common of late, is their stupid and vacuous analogies. Stupid analogies could very well be their main trademarked characteristic. By now, it should be evident to everyone living on the planet, that being Republican means having an innate ability for obtuse and asinine analogies.
So, when the Tweeting Tiny-handed Loser Majeure was installed into the White House, his henchman Ryan Zinke rode off on horseback, out of DC. to carry out the orders of Republican donors, namely break up the natural national jewels and hand them over to those donors:
In a sweeping executive order with few precedents, Trump instructed Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to review as many as 40 national monuments created over the past 21 years to determine if any of his three predecessors exceeded their authority in setting aside large tracts beyond the land that needed protection. The review is targeted on monuments that are at least 100,000 acres in size and reaches back to 1996, midway through the Clinton administration, when Bill Clinton’s creation of the 1.7-million-acre Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southern Utah stirred such fury that opponents still search for ways to shrink it two decades later. Link
While Dotard rolls on with his malignant and vapid Twitter Presidency, his flair for misdirection should not be underestimated. Such as when:
In the midst of highly publicized steps to dismantle insurance coverage for 32 million people and defund women’s healthcare facilities, Republican lawmakers have quietly laid the foundation to give away Americans’ birthright: 640m acres of national land.
Link
Please do no believe that it’s all done for naught. It is being done for a payback. Republicans are eyeing some hefty give-backs to their donors in their home states:
Athan Manuel, Director of the Land’s Protection Program for the Sierra Club in Washington, said that he’s surprised the issue of drilling in national parks is even on the table. “This issue has been dormant for 40 years because amongst Democrats and Republicans there’s a consensus that we shouldn’t drill in our national parks,” Manuel said. “I can’t stress enough how dormant this issue was. This administration is just so incredibly pro-fossil fuels, pro-coal, pro-gas, they’ll even consider endangering our most special places.”
This isn’t the first instance that these longstanding rules have come under fire under the new administration. Earlier this year, Arizona Rep. Paul Gosar introduced House Joint Resolution 46, which calls for the repeal of the 2016 updates to the 9B rules through a process called the Congressional Review Act. If the resolution is successful, the 2016 updates will not only be repealed, but the Park Service will be barred from ever changing them again. No vote has been scheduled for Gosar’s bill yet.
Link. Bolding mine.
From the tweet linked above —
The state’s vision, shared with Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, is to shrink Bears Ears to one-tenth its current 1.35 million acres, scaling the southeastern Utah monument down to about 120,000 acres surrounding Mule and Arch canyons west of Blanding, according to maps and other documents prepared by Gov. Gary Herbert’s office and obtained by The Salt Lake Tribune through records requests.
SNIP
But Utah’s plan was immediately panned by Native American leaders, who say it disregards the wishes of the tribes that sought the monument in the first place.
The state’s proposal “demonstrates their failure to listen to the concerns of our people who have lobbied and fought for over 80 years for this designation,” Navajo Nation President Russell Begaye said Friday.
“Now that we finally have achieved that, we want to keep the designation as it is,” Begaye said. “We are asking President Trump and his administration to support our position. It is unfortunate the state and [San Juan] County do not respect the views of their citizens and neighbors.
Additionally:
“(Native American) grass roots … in Utah and beyond are deeply disappointed,” leaders of Utah Diné Bikéyah – a grassroots tribal group that began developing the Bears Ears conservation initiative in 2010 – wrote in a statement, “and aggrieved that (Zinke) appears to have recommended reducing Bears Ears National Monument.” Link
That is a diminished monument by 90%. Freaking ninety percent! Zinke proposes to shrink the first truly inter-tribal supported national monument. And the state of Utah and Ryan Zinke’s Dept. of Interior, never shared that information with the inter-tribal coalition:
Through an open records request, the Salt Lake Tribune obtained maps detailing the state of Utah’s ideas for shrinking Bears Ears National Monument. The map, never shared with the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition (the formal body of five tribal governments that advocated for Bears Ears’ designation), and never released for public review, proposes shrinking Bears Ears National Monument by more than 90 percent — from 1.35 million acres down to 120,000 acres. Utah also proposes replacing part of Bears Ears National Monument with a national recreation area for the Indian Creek area adjacent to the Needles District of Canyonlands National Park, but Congress would have to designate that. And Indian Creek is more than just a place of recreation; it is home to diverse and fascinating rock art, cliff dwellings, ancient tool quarries, a historic Ute winter camp, and numerous sites of pilgrimage still used by Native Americans today. Link.
For Bears Ears, there are four big takeaways from the recently leaked secret document —
- The state isn’t serious about protecting antiquities
Hardly any — less than 10 percent — of the total Bears Ears monument has actually been inventoried by archaeologists since the 1930s, but what they’ve found so far is a stunning array of irreplaceable historic sites.
- The governor wants it both ways
Gov. Gary Herbert argued recently that monument designations, as he put it, place a target on sensitive areas and are magnets for tourists who could damage or steal the relics.
He’s not wrong.
But the governor is still proposing a monument on a smaller scale and in an area that contains some of the highest concentrations of artifacts. So the tourist attraction and subsequent risk doesn’t go away.
- There are no real energy resources anywhere in Bears Ears
But one of the most striking things when you look at the state’s Bears Ears maps is how, aside from a band of uranium deposits north of the buttes, there really are no energy or mineral resources to speak of anywhere inside the monument — no coal, no oil, no gas, not even any potash.
- Zinke still hasn’t done his homework
[...] Zinke’s report was going to be a dud — the Interior Department is still missing too many top people and was too short-staffed to take on an actual review.
link
It’s an old viddie, but I’m linking because it is worth seeing.
The above viddie found at this site.
Please be sure to read the excellent main page diary from today.
Amazing BLM photos at this link.
This is the Itzl Alert Network. (Itzl is the name of the dog in the picture.) We publish
a diary here every day, just before midnight. This group is here for us to check in with each other, to let people know we are alive, and doing OK.
We have split up the publishing duties, but we welcome everyone in IAN to do daily diaries for the group! Every member is an editor, so anyone can take a turn when they have something to say, photos and music to share, a cause to promote or news! If you would like to write a diary, let us know in a comment.
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Monday: Crimson Quillfeather. Tuesday: ejoanna. Wednesday: Pam from California. Thursday: art ah zen. Friday: FloridaSNMOM. Saturday: Gwennedd. Sunday: loggersbrat.
From link above —
Some big plant-eating dinosaurs roaming present-day Utah some 75 million years ago were slurping up crustaceans on the side, a behavior that may have been tied to reproductive activities, says a new University of Colorado Boulder study.
The evidence for the crustacean-chowing dinosaurs comes from fossilized feces samples known as coprolites, said Associate Professor Karen Chin, curator of paleontology at CU Boulder's Museum of Natural History. Dating to the late Cretaceous Period, the coprolites were discovered in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southern Utah by a team from the Denver Museum of Nature & Science who invited Chin out to their dig.
From what we know about dinosaurs, this was a totally unexpected behavior," said Chin. "It was such a surprising discovery we wondered what the motivation could have
When infrastructure was really well built because they took it seriously…