Most of the members of the National Park Service advisory board just quit en masse
Three-quarters of the members of the National Park System Advisory Board, a group that advises the National Park Service, quit on Monday evening. In a letter informing Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke of their decision, they said Zinke and his staff’s refusal to meet with them spurred the decision.
“From all the events of this past year I have profound concern that the mission of stewardship, protection, and advancement of our National Parks has been set aside,” the letter, written by departing board chair Tony Knowles and signed by eight others, and published by the Washington Post, reads. “I hope that future actions of the Department of Interior demonstrate that is not the case.”
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First authorized in 1935 under the Historic Sites, Buildings, and Antiquities Act, the National Park System Advisory Board is a bipartisan, 12-member group that advises the federal government on how to manage the United States’ national parks. All the signatories of Monday’s letter had terms set to expire in May.
In Knowles’s letter, he notes the advisory board’s work in engaging national experts in education, science, history, and anthropology, and taking part in park management and planning “to help design the right path to meet the challenges and changes for the second century of our National Parks.”
He said the group “emphasized scientific research and mitigation of climate change” as well as “evolving a more diverse culture of park visitors” and “protecting the natural diversity of wildlife,” among other initiatives, and sought to meet with Zinke and his staff about their agenda to brief them on their activities.
“We understand the complexity of transition but our requests to engage have been ignored and the matters on which we wanted to brief the new Department team are clearly not part of its agenda,” Knowles wrote. “I wish the National Park System and Service well and will always be dedicated to their success.”
As NPR points out, Alaska Public Radio quoted Knowles as saying the Interior Department “showed no interest in learning about or continuing to use the forward-thinking agenda of science, the effect of climate change, protections of the ecosystems, education.” He also noted that it has rescinded regulations concerning biodiversity loss, pollution, and climate change.
Secretary Zinke, formerly a US representative serving Montana, has come under scrutiny for promoting the president’s agenda over protection the nation’s public lands. Per the New York Times:
This month Mr. Zinke announced a plan to open up the majority of the nation’s coastlines to offshore drilling. And in December, the administration reduced the size of two national monuments in Utah, Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante, by some two million acres, the largest rollback of federal land protection in the nation’s history.
Zinke also raised eyebrows when a small company from his hometown of Whitefish, Montana, was awarded a $300 million contract to repair Puerto Rico’s power grid after Hurricane Maria. After coming under scrutiny, the contract was canceled.
Three board members did not resign: Harvard University public finance professor Linda Bilmes, University of Maryland marine science professor Rita Colwell, and Project Concern International chief executive Carolyn Hessler-Radelet, according to the Post. Bilmes’s and Colwell’s terms end in May, and Hessler-Radelet’s ends in 2021.
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We are confident that they will be replaced by conscientious servants of humanity...
You didn't even need to put /s after that as it was so dripping with unbridled sarcasm.
Dont Like where ya work? Quit your Whining, Go right ahead and quit!
Good Bye....... Dont let the door hit ya on the way out.
Pertinent!
Members of the National Park System Advisory Board serve with NO compensation. They don't 'work' there. Sheesh some people.
So as a member of the board they did no work...........
OK if thats the case as you imply then they needed to go.
If you actually had any intellectual curiosity about the kind of UNCOMPENSATED work they did, you'd go to the website and review what the board does for the citizens of the US.
If that is what you garner from my post, I can't help you.
Ignorance trumps insight. Insight requires thought and information processed to a conclusion, ignorance just feeds on itself.
Give it up. You cannot have a useful conversation with someone who posts in Bad Faith .
Every day she gets a little weaker The beauty she once knew has come and gone We've murdered all her sons and all her daughters The blood is on your hands, the time has come And now she's gonna die We've strangled all her trees and starved her creatures There's poison in the sea and in the air But worst of all we've learned to live without her We've lost the very meaning of our lives And now she's gonna die Once she ruled the earth with love and wisdom But we were much too smart to live her way With greed and lust we tried to rise above her The ignorance of man will reach an end 'Cause now we're gonna die
Zinke goal seems to be to turn as much federal land/monuments over to private ownership or the ability to mine/oil and gas exploration as possible. Fit's right in with the current administrations goals....
The sad thing is that as a Rep. for Montana, he didn't hold that ideology. He's done a 180 and drank the Kool-Aid.
He's forgotten what is in Montana that needs to be saved, he needs to be voted out by the people of Montana so that he can return and, remember.
Not even the Berkeley Pit in Butte was able to remind him of what unsupervised private enterprise can do to the environment.
It is one mile long by half a mile wide with an approximate depth of 1,780 feet (540 m). It is filled to a depth of about 900 feet (270 m) with water that is heavily acidic (2.5 pH level ), about the acidity of cola or lemon juice. As a result, the pit is laden with heavy metals and dangerous chemicals that leach from the rock, including copper, arsenic , cadmium , zinc , and sulfuric acid.
And, if Trump and, his minions get their way, that is the way all of America will look.