28/12/2023
Today's good news: On this date (December 28) in 2016, President Barack Obama designated Gold Butte National Monument, in southern Nevada (photo). .
Its 297,000 desert acres lay on the doorstep of far-right outlaw, fugitive and taxpayer-subsidized cattleman Ammon Bundy, who has long abused America's publicly owned wildlands. .
Today's bad news: On this same date in 2023 we were reminded of the continuing battle to preserve what remains of America's relatively healthy natural environment, which we've enjoyed for decades as mechanized and non-mechanized wildland travelers. .
The reminder came as a self-serving letter to constituents from Idaho Rep. Mike Simpson (R), a career politician and beneficiary of related largess. In it, Simpson brags that "my FY24 Interior and Environment Appropriations Bill PASSED (his emphasis) the House." .
The bill, he states, "slashes the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Budget by 39%." At the same time, Simpson continues, he worked to prohibit the listing as threatened or endangered the West's rapidly declining Greater Sage Grouse, which struggle to survive as wildfires, drought, subsidized ranchers and miners degrade the West's beleaguered sagebrush ecosystems. .
He also worked, he says, to continue the royalty-free, environmentally catastrophic and heavily mechanized extraction of publicly owned minerals by even foreign mining companies. .
As longtime advocates for healthy, accessible and sustainably managed public lands, we take hope from the good news ... and motivation from the bad. .
