With no announcement from the Department of the Interior, Susan LaPierre, the wife of National Rifle Association CEO Wayne LaPierre, was quietly given a role in shaping our national parks. From the National Parks Traveler:
Susan LaPierre, co-chair of the National Rifle Association's Women's Leadership Forum and wife of NRA Executive Director Wayne LaPierre, has landed a seat on the National Park Foundation's board of directors.
Mrs. LaPierre was one of four appointments to the board made earlier this year. None of the appointments was announced in a release by either the Interior Department or Park Foundation.
Mrs. LaPierre's appointment by Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke leaked out this past week in connection with a story detailing the National Park Service's opposition to a handful of sections in the Sportsmen’s Heritage and Recreational Enhancement Act, or SHARE Act, that would impact the Park Service's management of fishing and hunting within the National Park System.
This is such a Swamp giveaway that the news had to leak out rather than be announced. Donald Trump and Department of Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke seem to be giving special interest groups whatever they want, at the expense of our national treasures. Earlier this month the Trump administration ended a policy meant to discourage National Parks from selling bottled water, a successful policy designed to reduce waste and pollution. Last week, Zinke announced a plan to shrink several national monument areas. The move was widely seen as yet another giveaway to special interests:
Many of the leading players in the anti-national-monument push, including groups like the Sutherland Institute and Strata Policy in Utah, the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C., and the Property and Environment Research Center in Montana, are all flush with cash from dark money funds tied to the Koch brothers and allied petro-plutocrats.
Many of the Republican politicians most adamant in their opposition to the Antiquities Act, including Representative Rob Bishop and Senator Orrin Hatch, both of Utah, have taken hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from the fossil fuel industry over the course of their careers.
And the Trump administration's own actions—including its approval of the Dakota Access Pipeline, its rollback of the public land coal leasing moratorium, and Zinke's robust schedule of meetings with fossil fuel executives—have quite convincingly illustrated that it prioritizes extraction interests above all else.
Adding a gun nut to the National Park Foundation board of directors is just one more give away to lobbyists and Trump’s gun heavy political base.