Save National Monuments From Ruthless Mining and Drilling

Target: Doug Burgum, U.S. Secretary of the Interior

Goal: Do not reduce size of national monuments for resource extraction.

Donald Trump’s first term as president saw a significant reduction to two national monuments: Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears. The lands were reduced – and protections stripped away – in order to give fossil fuel and other special interests an opportunity to drill and mine for their environmentally toxic money-makers.  The reductions were later reversed after Trump left office. The president is looking to up the ante in his second term, as a memo from the Department of the Interior will put at least six national monuments at risk.

A century-plus-year-old law has long granted presidents the authority to safeguard — not attack — natural regions that have significant cultural, geographic, or historic importance. The nation’s leaders quickly realized the value of natural national monuments in not only protecting lands and waters but in protecting the wildlife that inhabit these majestic areas. These monuments also provide a significant boon to local tourism and thus local economies.

The Department of the Interior is supposed to work on behalf of the 500 million acres of public land it oversees, not on behalf of the “energy dominance” of special interests, as the interior secretary suggested. Sign the petition below to remind the secretary of this important mission.

PETITION LETTER:

Dear Secretary Burgum,

Over 26 billion dollars: this is the amount of money that national park visitors brought to local economies in just one year’s time. If you want to talk about economic power, that is power. You need not drill or mine America’s parks and national monuments in order to see significant gains. The lands are gold mines as they are.

If the Department of the Interior proceeds with plans to reduce multiple national monuments, more will be lost than land. Local profits will be lost, sacred sites for indigenous Americans will be lost, irreplaceable wildlife and ecosystems will be lost, and much of this country’s natural beauty will be lost. In a cost-benefit analysis, who wins?

Remember who and what you serve. Don’t exploit the hundreds of millions of acres under your watch, and don’t exploit the goodwill of the American people and their love for their enduring lands.

Sincerely,

[Your Name Here]

Photo Credit: Bureau of Land Management