The political crusades targeting national parks for drilling and exploitation

[struggle4progress]

by Oliver Milman
Tuesday 23 August 2016 07.00 EDT

“It’s easy to feel besieged here,” said Wendy Ross, superintendent of the Theodore Roosevelt national park. Ross’s park, named after the “conservationist president” who helped to keep America’s natural treasures unspoiled, is surrounded by oil and gas drilling that has transformed the landscape.

The boom in cheap natural gas has led to drilling and flame flaring just outside the boundaries of the 110 square mile national park, located in North Dakota’s badlands. There is virtually nowhere in the park in which its 600,000 annual visitors cannot see a drilling rig, an oil pump, a highway or a cellphone tower in what was once a sleepy rural area.

Ross said she is bombarded by letters and messages on Facebook from tourists over these eyesores. She frets that the park’s special status for clean air will be ruined by pollution and that a new oil refinery, planned for an area just two miles east of the protected area, will heighten this clash between nature and mining.

“The visitor experience is impacted by this type of structure,” Ross said. “These proposals all add up, they have a cumulative impact. There’s a perception that we are trying to shut down the energy industry but we just want responsible placement of these things” ...

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/aug/23/national-parks-100th-birthday-political-threats

[kimbutgar]

1. I'm going to the Grand Canyon next month because I want to see it before it gets

Destroyed by mining.

[LastLiberal in PalmSprings]

2. Two words you never see together: "responsible" and "energy industry"

If the GOP had its way there would be no public lands (including parks) and it would be drill and mine and log and whatever else they could think of to destroy the environment.