Utah Congressman Vows To Kill America’s Top Parks Program

[Panich52]

Think Progress

Utah Congressman Vows To Kill America’s Top Parks Program

Barely 24 hours after Pope Francis appealed to U.S. lawmakers to help protect “our common home,” Rep. Rob Bishop (R-UT) announced that he intends this week to kill the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF), which is known as America’s best parks program. The move — which is expected to succeed — places dozens of U.S. national parks at heightened risk of commercial development, including Grand Teton National Park and Gettysburg National Military Park. ...

(read more)
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/09/29/3706756/rob-bishop-lwcf-reauthorization/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=tptop3&utm_term=5&utm_content=5

[Eleanors38]

1. This is an on-going campaign by the Far Right to end public lands....

The plan is to break the public lands programs, divest all fed lands to the states, and when the states immediately say they cannot administer/fund these lands (and they can't) the development rights or the land in toto will be sold to corporate interests. The effort is meeting strong resistance from outdoors people, and even magazines like Outdoor Life, Petersen's Hunting, and numerous "non-liberal" organizations are editorializing against the campaign. A strong coalition of hunting/fishing groups like Safari Club and commercial fishers and environmental groups stopped the atrocious Pebble Mine scheme in Alaska.

Liberals and Democrats should note this, and quit be sucked away into the culture wars. Build bridges.