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Oil Was Central in Decision to Shrink Bears Ears Monument, Emails Show
Retweeted by Ben Schreckinger: https://twitter.com/SchreckReports
The @nytimes obtained more than 25,000 pages of internal Trump administration emails after it sued the Interior Department in federal court, showing that oil was central in the decision to shrink the Bears Ears Monument @EricLiptonNYT @LFFriedman
Link to tweet
CLIMATE
Oil Was Central in Decision to Shrink Bears Ears Monument, Emails Show
By ERIC LIPTON and LISA FRIEDMAN MARCH 2, 2018
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WASHINGTON — Even before President Trump officially opened his high-profile review last spring of federal lands protected as national monuments, the Department of Interior was focused on the potential for oil and gas exploration at a protected Utah site, internal agency documents show.
The debate started as early as March 2017, when an aide to Senator Orrin Hatch, Republican of Utah, asked a senior Interior Department official to consider shrinking Bears Ears National Monument in the southeastern corner of the state. Under a longstanding program in Utah, oil and natural gas deposits within the boundaries of the monument could have been used to raise revenue for public schools had the land not been under federal protection.
“Please see attached for a shapefile and pdf of a map depicting a boundary change for the southeast portion of the Bears Ears monument,” said the March 15 email from Senator Hatch’s office. Adopting this map would “resolve all known mineral conflicts,” the email said, referring to oil and gas sites on the land that the state’s public schools wanted to lease out to bolster funds.
The map that Mr. Hatch’s office provided, which was transmitted about a month before Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke publicly initiated his review of national monuments, was incorporated almost exactly into the much larger reductions President Trump announced in December, shrinking Bears Ears by 85 percent.
....
Correction: March 2, 2018
An earlier version of this article misstated the year that Bears Ears National Monument was created. It was 2016, not 2017.
Julie Turkewitz in Denver and Nadja Popovich in New York contributed reporting.
Follow @NYTClimate on Twitter
A version of this article appears in print on March 5, 2018, on Page A11 of the New York edition with the headline: Oil Was Central in Decision to Shrink Protected Utah Site, Emails Show. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe
Oil Was Central in Decision to Shrink Bears Ears Monument, Emails Show
By ERIC LIPTON and LISA FRIEDMAN MARCH 2, 2018
Want the latest climate news in your inbox? You can sign up here to receive Climate Fwd:, our new email newsletter.
WASHINGTON — Even before President Trump officially opened his high-profile review last spring of federal lands protected as national monuments, the Department of Interior was focused on the potential for oil and gas exploration at a protected Utah site, internal agency documents show.
The debate started as early as March 2017, when an aide to Senator Orrin Hatch, Republican of Utah, asked a senior Interior Department official to consider shrinking Bears Ears National Monument in the southeastern corner of the state. Under a longstanding program in Utah, oil and natural gas deposits within the boundaries of the monument could have been used to raise revenue for public schools had the land not been under federal protection.
“Please see attached for a shapefile and pdf of a map depicting a boundary change for the southeast portion of the Bears Ears monument,” said the March 15 email from Senator Hatch’s office. Adopting this map would “resolve all known mineral conflicts,” the email said, referring to oil and gas sites on the land that the state’s public schools wanted to lease out to bolster funds.
The map that Mr. Hatch’s office provided, which was transmitted about a month before Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke publicly initiated his review of national monuments, was incorporated almost exactly into the much larger reductions President Trump announced in December, shrinking Bears Ears by 85 percent.
....
Correction: March 2, 2018
An earlier version of this article misstated the year that Bears Ears National Monument was created. It was 2016, not 2017.
Julie Turkewitz in Denver and Nadja Popovich in New York contributed reporting.
Follow @NYTClimate on Twitter
A version of this article appears in print on March 5, 2018, on Page A11 of the New York edition with the headline: Oil Was Central in Decision to Shrink Protected Utah Site, Emails Show. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe
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