Interior proposes withdrawal of Trump rule that would allow drillers to pay less | TheHill

…" After thoughtful consideration, the Department of the Interior is proposing to withdraw an attempt by the previous administration to shortchange American taxpayers for the resources that oil and gas companies extract from public lands," an Interior Department spokesperson said in a statement...

https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/557809-interior-proposed-withdrawal-of-trump-rule-make-drillers-pay-less

US demand for clean energy destroying Canada's environment, indigenous peoples say

Push is inadvertently causing long-term environmental damage to the traditional hunting grounds on Inuit public lands
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jun/22/us-clean-energy-demand-destroying-canadian-environment-indigenous-peoples-say

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke wants to return national monuments to 'traditional' mining and logging

The Washington Post has obtained a copy of a report from Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke suggesting that millions of acres of public land be given away while millions more should be open to mining and logging....
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/1699568

Congress moves to restrict public input on public land planning

Another Congressional Review Act moves forward, this time thwarting progress at the Bureau of Land Management....
https://thinkprogress.org/congress-moves-to-restrict-public-input-on-public-land-planning-e8461a41dfd4#.an2qfr6o6

After a massive backlash, a Republican yanks his bill to sell off public lands (Vox)

Jason Chaffetz wanted to sell off 3.3 million acres of federal lands. His base freaked out....
http://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2017/2/2/14479462/chaffetz-public-lands-backlash

Congressman Proposes Massive Giveaway of Taxpayer-Owned Energy Resources to the State of Utah

A controversial legislative proposal released Thursday by Representative Rob Bishop (R-UT) would transfer all federally-owned energy and mineral resources in southern Utah to state control, paving the way for massive new uranium, coal, and oil extraction across the area’s national forests, redrock canyons, and other public lands.

The bill, known as the Public Lands Initiative, seeks to achieve this unprecedented transfer of federal energy and minerals by simultaneously designating new wilderness areas in southern Utah, which has been a longstanding goal of conservation advocates in Utah.

Conservationists in the state, however, immediately rejected the bill as a nonstarter....
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2016/07/15/3798656/mineral-resources/

GOP Platform Proposes To Get Rid Of National Parks And National Forests

The Republican platform committee met this week to draft the document that defines the party’s official principles and policies. Along with provisions on pornography and LGBT “conversion therapy” is an amendment calling for the indiscriminate and immediate disposal of national public lands.

The inclusion of this provision in the Republican Party’s platform reflects the growing influence of and ideological alliance between several anti-park members of the GOP and anti-government extremists, led by Cliven Bundy, who dispute the federal government’s authority over national public lands.

“Congress shall immediately pass universal legislation providing a timely and orderly mechanism requiring the federal government to convey certain federally controlled public lands to the states,” reads the adopted language. “We call upon all national and state leaders and representatives to exert their utmost power and influence to urge the transfer of those lands identified.”....
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2016/07/15/3798652/gop-platform-national-parks/

GOP Platform Committee Wants Feds To Turn Fed Lands Over To States ASAP

In a nail-biting vote Monday, the committee tasked with writing the Republican Party's 2016 platform voted to include language calling on Congress to return federal lands to the states immediately. The amendment was so close that instead of being recorded by voice vote, Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY) asked members of the platform committee to stand to show their support....
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/gop-platform-committee-wants-feds-to-turn-fed-lands-over-to-the-states

Congressional Proposal Would Create A Texas-Sized 'Republic Of Cliven Bundy' | ThinkProgress

Cliven Bundy may be in jail, but he still has friends in Congress.

The U.S. House of Representatives next week is expected to vote on a proposal that would exempt 48 counties, primarily in the West, from the law that has been used for more than 100 years to protect archaeologically, culturally, and naturally significant resources in the United States, including the Grand Canyon and the Statue of Liberty.

The counties that would be exempted from the Antiquities Act of 1906 cover more than 250,000 square miles — an area nearly the size of Texas. The amendment, which was authored by Rep. Stewart (R-UT) and Rep. Gosar (R-AZ), appears to have two main purposes....
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2016/07/08/3796737/republic-of-cliven-bundy/

It's 'Political Sleight-Of-Hand': For Their Next Trick, Republican Magicians Will Make Your Federal Land Disappear

Earlier this year, a group of right-wing extremists, led by the infamous Bundy family of Nevada, took over the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge for 41 days before the FBI and state police were finally able to apprehend them. The occupiers have slowly been revealed to the nation for what they are: a cluster of conspiracy theorists who can barely articulate a coherent opinion, much less an intelligible ideology.

But looking past this group of yahoos, with their guns and their handles of Wild Turkey, one finds a much more sinister and powerful effort to sell off huge swaths of public land to private interests looking to exploit the land’s resources for profit.

“A couple of years ago, we started seeing legislation popping up in state legislatures,” John Sterling of the Conservation Alliance explained, “asking federal governments to transfer federal lands to the state.”

These bills, invariably introduced and supported by Republicans, are wrapped up in a “small government” ideology, the same kind that the Bundys were spouting when they commandeered the wildlife refuge. The rhetoric appeals to “a vocal group of people who don’t want the federal government doing anything,” Sterling explained, and so are easily lured into the idea that the federal government’s control of these lands is somehow a violation of “states rights.”

But, as conservation experts understand, there’s a multitude of reasons that this land is better held by the federal government than state governments....
http://www.alternet.org/environment/republican-magicians-make-federal-land-disappear

We May Be About to Witness One of the Great Privatizations of America's Public Lands

It goes without saying that in a democracy everyone is entitled to his or her own opinions. The trouble starts when people think they are also entitled to their own facts.

Away out West, on the hundreds of millions of acres of public lands that most Americans take for granted (if they are aware of them at all), the trouble is deep, widespread, and won’t soon go away. Last winter’s armed take-over and 41-day occupation of Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in southeastern Oregon is a case in point. It was carried out by people who, if they hadn’t been white and dressed as cowboys, might have been called “terrorists” and treated as such. Their interpretation of the history of western lands and of the judicial basis for federal land ownership—or at least that of their leaders, since they weren’t exactly a band of intellectuals—was only loosely linked to reality....
http://www.alternet.org/environment/public-land-america-might-be-about-go-private