Sorry, but I'm still not jazzed by #neoliberal national monuments

And, let's be blunt, B-grade environmentalists — that's what any national monument that's run by the Bureau of Land Management, the U.S. Forest Service, or both, is. Period. Any new national monument not in the National Park Service's control will, in its non-wilderness areas, be run as a multi-use area, with at least some degree of logging, grazing and extractive industries allowed.

Going back to Slick Willie on Grand Staircase-Escalante, through Shrub, and now to Dear Leader, we've added little in the way of real national monument lands. We've also not helped NPS out with its ongoing budget shortfall. And Dear Leader has foisted upon us a commercialized, neoliberal centennial celebration for the Park Service.

Two of the three B-grade national monuments Obama declared a week ago adjoin Joshua Tree National Park; why weren't all or part of Mojave Trails and Sand to Snow added to it?

Answer? It would eliminate multiple use in non-wilderness areas, and it would cost the NPS money that Obama won't fight to get. And a political battle that he might not want, unless he can expand current Joshua Tree boundaries by executive order.

And, why didn't he try? The Antiquities Act creates national monuments by executive action; it doesn't specify what agency runs them. At a minimum, this could have been Joshua Tree NM, jointly administered with the NP. Slick Willie's Giant Sequoia NM could likewise have been tied in with Sequoia/Kings Canyon NP.

And Castle Mountain is an inholding inside Mojave National Preserve, also run by the NPS, so a somewhat similar argument applies.

Per maps of all three, available here, significant amounts of Mojave Trails is non-wilderness. (I don't know how much of that area is WSA or not.) Also, the map of Mojave Trails shows a significant amount of private land inholdings. That's bad enough on a faux national monument.

Add to it that Obama is, outside of the golf course, an even less nature-philiac president than Clinton, even as concerned environmentalists decry the lack of people of color in our national parks, and the circle is squared.

A roadless kudo for Team Obama

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack has announced a one-year moratorium on road-building in national forests. Basically, it’s a continuation of President Clinton’s 2001 roadless rule, which has been tied up in legal knots ever since. Those legal battles are part of why Vilsack announced the moratorium.

Immediate winner? Alaska’s Tongass National Forest, where it has been estimated 35 miles of additional roads would be needed for several logging sales to be pulled off.

Roadless Rule still alive and kicking, sort of

Despite President Bush's attempt to gut President Clinton's Roadless Rule in national forests by making state governments jump through hoops, it's still alive in seven Western states.

Well, sort of. Most states that have done anything have adopted protections well short of what Slick Willie proposed to "enshrine" by executive order.

That's the whole problem, though. We need a Roadless Act - legislation - not just a Roadless Rule.

Meanwhile, a U.S. District Judge found Bush's Roadless Rule Lite to have violated the National Environmental Policy Act. But, another district judge, in another federal circuit found that the Roadless Rule itself violated NEPA.

That, too, is why we need legislation.

YES move Forest Service to Interior

An idea whose time has been knocking at the door for 50 years or more, moving the U.S. Forest Service from the Department of Agriculture to Interior, may finally, finally be here.

“Today the evolution of our forests has gone away from production and more towards preservation, and it seems to me that the natural move has made it over under the umbrella of the Department of the Interior rather than the Department of Agriculture,” Rep. Todd Tiahrt (Kan.), the top Republican on the subcommittee, said at a Feb. 12 hearing on the agency.

Rep. Norm Dicks (D-Wash.), the panel’s chairman, believes such a move would help shore up the Forest Service's budget and align agencies with similar missions, said his spokesman, George Behan.

“You have more recreational campground areas in the Forest Service than you do even in the Park Service,” Behan said. “So there's a logical reason for considering it. However, the question has to be asked, ‘Is it the best thing for each agency and for land management?’”

Tiahrt is not being close to telling the truth, of course. Not in this administration. Anybody who has e-mailed petition after petition to members of Congress, the Forest Service or both, on things like Bill Clinton’s roadless rule, Bush’s Healthy Forests initiative, preservation of the Tongass and more, clearly knows that.

But, that does underscore even more why the USFS needs to be moved — to send a message and put it on a tighter rein.

Don Kettl, director of the Fels Institute of Government at the University of Pennsylvania said moving the Forest Service to Interior might send a symbolic message that national forests are to be preserved and enjoyed, not harvested and developed, which could be perceived as a threat to the timber industry.

Heck, I would support the Reagan-era idea of merging the Forest Service with the BLM as part of the process. It’s weird to have a view of Colorado’s famed 14ers, or 14,000-foot peaks, on BLM and not Forest Service lands.

Call Dicks’ subcommittee staff director Rob Nabors at 202-225-2771 or Dicks’ office at 202-225-5916 to show your support.

Forest Service allowing uranium exploration near Grand Canyon

With almost no public input, the U.S. Forest Service is allowing exp href="just three miles from a Grand Canyon overlook.

Let’s put it this way: Public input was so limited that not one of the more than half-dozen environmental groups who send me e-mail action alerts on a variety of issues had an alert on this baby.

Here’s the USFS spin:

Barbara McCurry, the Kaibab National Forest’s spokeswoman on this issue, said her agency had little choice but to allow the drilling under the 1872 mining law that governs hard-rock mining claims. “The exploratory drilling is pretty minimal,” Ms. McCurry said, adding, “Our obligation is to make sure that any impacts are mitigated.”

To the degree this is true, which is a fair amount, but not as much as the USFS claims, then we need to reform the 1872 mining law; the House has already passed amendments to it.