Energy companies will wreck land

By Eric Baldwin, Las Vegas

Friday, Sept. 29, 2017 | 2 a.m.

A leaked memo from Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke recommends that President Donald Trump put parts of our national monuments up for sale.

If the recommendations are carried out, it would amount to the largest elimination of protections for public lands and wildlife habitat in U.S. history. Lands meant for hiking, hunting and fishing would be turned over to private corporations with no interest in preservation for future generations.

During the public comment period for the monuments under review, 98 percent of the 2.8 million comments submitted favored maintaining the existing boundaries of the national monuments, according to the Center for Western Priorities.

Once the process of resource extraction begins, the previous wildlife habitats and natural land will be destroyed forever. Energy companies will use the land once, remove all of its existing value and then move on. Instead of a sustainable economy of outdoor recreation and tourism, nearby communities will be left worse off when the mining or drilling operations deplete a location’s existing supply and are sent to a new location.

National monuments already benefit the economies of surrounding communities and are irreplaceable commodities.