Last year Congress allowed the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF), one of America's most important conservation and recreation funding tools, to expire. Public lands legislation (S. 47) that just passed in the U.S. Senate includes a long overdue provision to permanently reauthorize this critical program. It is urgent that CRS members—and anyone who cares about America’s great outdoors—contact their representatives immediately and ask them to also pass S. 47 to restore LWCF. This longstanding program is based on a very conservative idea: use a small portion of revenues from the use of one type of natural resource, offshore oil and gas, to support the conservation of others, our parks, forests, rivers, and other conservation lands. Please click this link, RESTORE LWCF, and use the quick and easy interface to ask your Senators to permanently reauthorize LWCF. If you wish, you can edit and personalize the prewritten letter before sending. About LWCF LWCF, the brainchild of a commission established by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, was created more than 50 years ago to ensure that we balance the use of our natural resources with investment in conservation and stewardship. It is a critical tool in the protection of land for hunting, fishing, hiking, camping and virtually any other outdoor activity. In addition, LWCF safeguards our water supplies, protects critical wildlife habitat, reduces wildfire losses and helps prevent flooding. Investments in this program pay huge dividends, improving our quality of life, our health, and our economic well-being. LWCF accomplishes all of this without a dime of taxpayer money! What is more conservative than that? It makes sense that for more than 50 years,...
We just launched our new CRS Action Center to help ensure that our member’s voices are heard from Capitol Hill to the White House and beyond. This new tool makes it quick and easy to weigh in on key issues with your elected officials or comment on agency actions. You can even send a tweet to President Trump. Messages sent via the Action Center integrate with the official web form of the recipient, ensuring it is properly considered as official constituent correspondence. We will always feature 3 to 7 alerts on the Action Center page. We hope you will weigh in on these issues, but you can also use that gateway for other issues that concern you. The page currently features alerts on misguided efforts to give away our public lands, roll back auto fuel-efficiency standards, undo waste prevention measures, and weaken the Clean Water Act. We also have one to encourage Republican members of the House of Representatives to join 17 of their colleagues in signing onto a landmark GOP climate resolution. Please check it out. You will be glad you did. Here is the link: CRS Action...
For anyone who cares about safeguarding our environment, many of President Trump’s past statements have been worrisome, as have the people he put in charge of transitioning to a new administration. This makes it particularly important to have thoughtful, stewardship-minded leaders heading up the Department of Interior and EPA. Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Interior, Congressman Ryan Zinke, is worthy of support. He is an advocate for America’s public lands who opposes efforts to turn those lands over to states and special interests. He boycotted the GOP convention because the platform was anti-public land. Zinke clearly meets the threshold of someone who cares about safeguarding our natural heritage. The same is not the case with Trump’s nominee for EPA Administrator, Scott Pruitt. As Attorney General of Oklahoma Pruitt amassed a long record of opposing EPA and the environmental laws the agency is responsible for enforcing, including suing the agency 13 times. Moreover, Pruitt always seems to come down on the side of the polluter rather than the environment and the broader public interest. This tendency tracks closely with his ties to regulated industries, including donations to his campaigns and other endeavors. Putting Pruitt in charge of EPA would be akin to putting a fox in charge of a henhouse. For those reasons, Conservatives for Responsible Stewardship supports the Ryan Zinke for Secretary of Interior and strongly opposes the nomination of Scott Pruitt to head EPA. The Pruitt nomination falls short of the standard set by past Republican presidents to nominate EPA heads who believe in the agency’s mission and are committed to its important work. Background EPA is a...
On June 15th, CRS president David Jenkins testified before the House Natural Resources and Homeland Security committees at a forum about Countering Extremism on America’s Public Lands. Ranking Members Raul Grijalva (D-AZ) and Bennie Thompson (D-MS) held the forum after their requests for full committee hearings on the topic were rejected by Committee Chairs Rob Bishop (R-UT) and Michael McCaul (R-TX). Jenkins expressed disappointment that this subject has not gotten a full committee hearing. “In light of the Malheur Refuge takeover, increasing threats against land managers, and the rise of militant groups like Oath Keepers, this is clearly an issue that deserves bi-partisan attention.” He told the lawmakers that the Obama Administration was too timid in dealing with the 2014 Bundy Ranch standoff and called Congressman Rob Bishop’s (R-UT) inflammatory rhetoric “inexcusable.” The forum can be viewed on the embedded video included in this post. CRS comments begin at the 30:08 mark. The written comments submitted by CRS are included as well. Statement of David Jenkins, President of Conservatives for Responsible Stewardship Before the United States House of Representatives Committees on Natural Resources and Homeland Security Minority Forum: Countering Extremism on America’s Public Lands June 15, 2016 Ranking Member Grijalva and Ranking Member Thompson, thank you for the opportunity to testify today about militant extremism on our public lands. I am David Jenkins, president of Conservatives for Responsible Stewardship (CRS), a national grassroots organization of conservatives who are dedicated to the original conservative philosophy that compels us to be good stewards of our natural heritage. Let me begin by expressing disappointment that we are not discussing this problem at a full...
Conservatives for Responsible Stewardship (CRS) is running print ads in the Salt Lake Tribune and Deseret News urging Utah Congressman Rob Bishop, who chairs the House Natural Resources Committee, to denounce Bundy-style thuggery and lawlessness on our nation’s public lands, which even after numerous arrests, still threatens public safety and the visitor experience. In the face of an alarming escalation of violence and intimidation by armed anti-public land militants, which culminated earlier this year in the take over of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, Chairman Bishop has refused to denounce such extremism. Instead, he too often seems to be egging it on. Not only did he refuse to cosponsor a resolution condemning the refuge takeover, he regularly hurls insults at land managers, and he recently co-sponsored a bill to strip federal agencies of their law enforcement authority. When asked if he would hold hearings about the Malheur incident and other extremist acts, the Chairman doubled down, saying that instead he wants to continue oversight of “what we feel is the abuse of individuals by the federal land management agencies…” The “abuse” Bishop rants about is nothing more than fiction. Wyatt Prescott, Executive Vice President of the Idaho Cattle Association, recently pointed out in Boise Weekly that the claims that ranchers and the livestock industry are at odds with land managers like BLM is the product of “a misunderstanding at best.” Bishop appears intent on inflaming sentiment against public lands and those who manage them to advance his land transfer goals. This would be irresponsible under any circumstance, but in light of recent threats against land managers and various incidents...
The arrest of the key members of the Bundy clan and recent action to bring an end to the armed takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge were long overdue and CRS applauds the efforts of the FBI and other law enforcement personnel. In June of last year CRS called on the Obama Administration to bring scofflaw rancher Cliven Bundy to justice, along with the militants he rallied to an armed standoff with law enforcement in Nevada back in 2014. Our concern was that failing to promptly do so only further emboldens these radicals to greater extremes and more lawlessness. That concern proved prescient on January 2nd when Ammon and Ryan Bundy, along with a handful of fellow militants, forcibly occupied the Malheur Refuge. In the CRS press statement on the occupation being brought to an end, CRS president David Jenkins said: “We commend the FBI and other law enforcement officers for ending the armed seizure of this beloved refuge and arresting those involved. Blame for this entire episode, including the unfortunate death of Lavoy Finnicum, falls squarely on the militants who, through their lawless and irresponsible actions, endangered lives from day one.” He added: “Despite all of their rhetoric about the Constitution, freedom and God, in truth the occupiers—along with those who support them—are attacking our nation, its laws, its values, its history, and the democratic processes established by our forefathers. The use of armed force and intimidation to get one’s way in a democracy is the worst kind of bullying. It undermines freedom and tramples on the rights of every other American.” CRS also issued a statement...
