Politics

Politics · 15. December 2017

Uranium mill owners lobbied Interior officials to protect corporate interests.

Politics · 15. December 2017

President Trump has drastically reduced the amount of land included in Bears Ears National Monument.

Politics · 28. July 2017

A whopping 72 scientists have collaborated on a paper in which they advocate changing the default statistical significance threshold from 0.05 to 0.005.

Politics · 25. July 2017

Idaho’s Craters of the Moon, Washington’s Hanford Reach, and now Colorado’s Canyons of the Ancients have made it through round one of the national monument review unscathed. U.S. Secretary of the Interior, Ryan Zinke announced last Friday that he has recommended no changes be made to Canyon of the Ancients, a 178,000 acre monument containing an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 archaeological sites, located in southwest Colorado and managed by the Bureau of Land Management. In a statement,...

Politics · 11. July 2017

Time has run out on the national monuments comment period. According to a statement released by the Department of the Interior, over 1.2 million comments were submitted via regulations.gov and thousands more were submitted through snail mail. Secretary Ryan Zinke stated, “President Trump and I opened the formal public comment period – the first-ever for monuments designated under the Antiquities Act – in order to give local stakeholders a voice in the decision-making process.” When...

Politics · 28. June 2017

It’s too late for Bears Ears, but If you’d like to voice your opinion on the other National Monuments under review, you have until July 10. A quick review, Executive order 13792 mandated that all National Monuments created or expanded after January 1, 1996, be reviewed and potentially altered if the monument exceeds 100,000 acres OR if the “Secretary [of the Interior] determines that the designation or expansion was made without adequate public outreach and coordination with relevant...

Politics · 18. April 2017

Happy World Heritage Day everyone! What the heck is that you ask? Let us introduce you. World Heritage Day (a.k.a. International Day for Monuments and Sites) is an annual event held every April 18. It is promoted by the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), a global non-government entity dedicated to the preservation of heritage sites around the world, and by the United Nations World Heritage Centre. Every year there is a different theme and this year’s theme is “Cultural...

Politics · 16. February 2017

Fines for violating the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGRPA) are being adjusted for inflation thanks to the 2015 Federal Civil Penalties Inflation Adjustment Act Improvements Act. As its name implies, the 2015 Act requires Federal agencies to adjust penalties based on inflation. Agencies initially have to make a “catchup” adjustment after which they are required to adjust penalties annually so that fines remain deterrents of bad behavior. Effective February 16,...

Politics · 18. January 2017

The National Park Service announced it will fund 39 projects across the country in order to preserve sites critical to the African American Civil Rights Movement. The projects were chosen as part of a competitive grant application with the money coming from the Historic Preservation Fund. Grant monies will be used for various tasks such as surveying properties, site documentation, education and public outreach, conducting oral histories, planning, and physical site preservation. National Park...

Politics · 18. January 2017

Natural England recently intervened to save medieval grazing land from being turned into a solar farm. Rampisham Down, as it’s called, is in Dorset, England and consists of huge tracts of land full of acid grassland and heath plant communities. According to Natural England Rampisham Down is also “a rare example of the marginal common land associated with medieval grazing systems….It is the largest expanse of unimproved lowland acid grassland in Dorset and one the largest in the...