I’m writing in response to the article (Journal, Feb. 23) about Ryan Zinke’s proposal to move more Interior Department administration to locations in the western states.
As a citizen-owner of the public lands in question, and as someone that this article might identify as a Westerner who has “long argued federal land managers should be closer to the land they oversee,” this move sounds like a good idea on its surface.
However, the author reveals by the next sentence that under the Trump administration, I have “a powerful ally” in Zinke, who is “leading … Trump’s charge to roll back environmental regulations and encourage energy development on public land.”
Thank you, Associated Press – I nearly choked on some populist fervor. The Westerners in question, of course, are oil and gas, mining companies, the commercial meatpacking industry and various other heavy feeders. It seems likely to me that a BLM move would be a form of gerrymandering, designed to reduce the influence of urban voters on land management and increase the influence of industry on land management.
Perhaps a more appropriate location, then, for the BLM headquarters would be lower Manhattan, where current top-level administrators could be one less degree of separation from their real constituents, the investment banks.
The photo of Zinke is also telling, I think: It’s a dark, cloudy day at Bears Ears, but the secretary is wearing opaque blinders. As he rides, he looks down, turning his back on the sacred formations.
Ole Bye
Cortez