In The Weeks Before Trump Takes Office, Obamas Mad Dash To Save Public Lands

Barack Obama has protected more environments than any other U.S. president in history.





With less than two months before he has to vacate the White House, handing over the keys to a successor who has vowed to open more federal lands and waters to drilling and mining, President Barack Obama is making a last-ditch effort to save swathes of public land.

This week, the Department of the Interior banned gold mining on 30,000 acres of land near the northern entrance of Yellowstone National Park. “There are good places to mine for gold, but the doorstep of [Yellowstone] is not one of them,” said DOI Secretary Sally Jewell on Monday.

Obama’s administration also cancelled more than two dozen oil and gas leases in Western Colorado earlier this month, introduced a ban on offshore oil drilling in the Arctic for at least five years and helped negotiate a settlement that canceled 32,000 acres of mining leases on Montana land considered sacred by the Blackfeet tribe.

In the coming weeks, the president could push through several eleventh-hour preservation projects, reported The Guardian, including naming new national monuments in the Bears Ears landscape in Utah, Nevada’s Gold


More: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/barack-obama-public-lands-trump_us_5837f4ece4b09b6056006007

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