President Trump has just signed an unprecedented executive order instructing the Department of Interior to review the national monument designations of past presidents stretching back 21 years. The intent, according to Vice President Pence, is to “begin to undo” these designations. Never before in the 111-year history of President Theodore Roosevelt’s Antiquities Act, the law that authorizes the creation of national monuments, have we seen such a radical attack on this visionary protection of America’s natural and cultural heritage. In response, CRS president David Jenkins said, “At the heart of the word conservation is the word conserve which is also the root word of conservative. The Antiquities Act is a conservative idea that was brought forth by a Republican Congressman, passed a Republican Congress and was signed into law by a Republican, President Theodore Roosevelt. President Trump and Secretary Zinke should continue this tradition and conserve the Antiquities Act and all of our nation’s monument designations as they are an important part of our nation’s history and culture.” Please use our CRS Action Center link below to urge Secretary Zinke to keep all of America’s national monuments intact. A Threat to America’s...
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...
Remember the old adage waste not, want not? Apparently, some in Congress have forgotten it. There is a strong push–fueled by the oil and gas industry–to reverse a Bureau of Land Management (BLM) rule that requires oil and gas companies to be responsible and capture the natural gas that they extract from our public lands. The rule was needed because these companies have been cutting corners and wasting a lot of gas through flaring and leaks. Not only does wasted gas represent a big source of air pollution, no royalties are paid on a resource that belongs to all Americans. Any true conservative should support efforts to prevent waste, especially waste that is costing taxpayers a bundle. Unfortunately, some lawmakers in Congress who profess to be conservative are trying to repeal the BLM rule through the Congressional Review Act (CRA). The House of Representatives already bowed to the oil and gas lobby by passing a CRA resolution rolling back the rule. Now, this issue is before the Senate. CRS maintains that there is nothing conservative about waste or pollution and that BLM’s methane waste rule should remain in place. You can hear CRS board member Steve Bonowski from Colorado discuss the issue here, Western Officials Push U.S. Senators to Keep BLM Methane Rules, and CRS President David Jenkins discusses it here: Conservatives Defend BLM Natural Gas Waste Rule. Background The BLM, which oversees oil and gas development on nearly 250 million acres of public lands, is required to prevent the waste of public resources that belong to all Americans. To fulfill this mandate, over the past few years the agency...
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...
Conservatives for Responsible Stewardship (CRS) applauds the designation of Bears Ears and Gold Butte National Monuments. The President’s use of the Antiquities Act was entirely appropriate and in keeping with the Act’s original intent. Affording these public lands extra protection is genuinely conservative, and that is true irrespective of which president makes the designations. “Bears Ears and Gold Butte are both rich in natural and cultural treasures that need to be protected from existing threats, they are exactly the type of places Theodore Roosevelt’s Antiquities Act was designed to protect,” said CRS President David Jenkins. “Whether looting, vandalism, or a host of other illegal activities, the threats to these important parts of America’s heritage are ongoing and serious. Preserving them is, as President Reagan would say, our great moral responsibility,” Jenkins added. It is important to point out that the Antiquities Act, which gives the president authority to proclaim monuments, is a Republican invention. It was crafted by a conservative Republican, passed by a Republican Congress and signed into law by Republican, President Theodore Roosevelt. Recognizing that Congress was often incapable of acting quickly enough to protect artifacts or natural areas from threats, those Republicans gave the president authority to safeguard these places through monument designation. “Congressman, and notorious monument opponent, Rob Bishop and his cohorts in the Utah delegation are pitching a fit about these designations—especially Bears Ears—as expected, but these are the same radical folks who want America to give away its public lands, and who are hell-bent on totally upending the Theodore Roosevelt conservation ethic that has served our nation well for more than a century,”...
Republican presidents—including Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and Ronald Reagan—have a long tradition of contributing to our great natural endowment of parks, forests, wildlife refuges, national monuments, and other public lands. They understood that these lands, your lands, are an essential part of who we are as a people, and that protecting them is both conservative and patriotic. To help make sure that tradition continues, CRS has launched a campaign urging President-elect Donald Trump to also make safeguarding America’s public lands a top priority. To find out more, please visit our campaign...
