Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke announced Thursday he will not recommend the removal of any national monuments, leaving the massive federal land grabs by Clinton and Obama in place, free beacon reported.
He seeks changes to only a handful of monuments, opening them up to hunting, fishing and possibly grazing. Mining or drilling were not mentioned. Lands are not going back to the states.
Environmentalists and tribal leaders want no changes.
Trump is not planning to sell off the confiscated lands for private use, Zinke assured the public.
Zinke had previously announced that no changes would be made to monuments in Montana, Colorado, Idaho, California, Arizona, and Washington. He did recommend at the time that Bears Ears national monument in Utah be downsized.
With these lands under federal control, no one except tribes can use them for anything.
The leftist tribal coalition demands no changes be made.
President Trump had issued an executive order requiring Zinke to review the land grabs and this is the result. The leftists in the environmental movement are prepared to sue over any changes, saying the President does not have the power to make changes.
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All changes were made according to an obscure early 20th century Antiquities Act never intended for that purpose. Congress has made no move to change the law.
The federal government land grabs will continue and nothing will be done, perhaps President Trump won’t grab land, but presidents of the future definitely will.
Currently more than half the West is federally owned. States and private landowners controlled the lands in the past, but the federal government has a Marxist bent towards land ownership.
The nation’s 13 western states are home to 93 percent of federal land, according to 2010 agency data compiled by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service. Almost exactly two-thirds of Utah land—66.5 percent—is federally owned, making it second only to Nevada’s 81 percent.
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