RAVENSGATE KEEP REALM OF MYSTERY
APRIL 2001 RANTS AND RAVES
Well, well, well, lookie what we have here.--- This is excerpted from
The Wilderness Society. Please see my comments that immediately follow this excerpt. "Sadly, America celebrates the 31st annual Earth Day facing the systematic roll back of critical environmental protections by the Bush administration," said William H. Meadows, president of The Wilderness Society. "From arsenic in our drinking water to industrial development in protected places, the first three months of the new administration produced a stunning litany of anti-environmental proposals that threaten our health, our communities and our world-famous wild places."
The enviromental rollbacks that directly threaten wildlands include:
proposing to drill for oil and gas in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and in national forest roadless areas, national monuments and other public lands protected for their unique beauty, wildlife other natural resources
failing to support existing protections for national forest roadless areas
undermining protections for national parks from damage caused by snowmobiles, swamp buggies and other off-road vehicles abandoning a pledge to reduce carbon dioxide emissions that cause global warming
signaling the intended withdrawal of new reclamation safeguards for "hard rock" mining
soliciting ideas for reversing protections afforded national monuments from damage caused by all-terrain vehicles, industrial development and other destructive activities
The safeguards the Bush administration is trying to unravel are the result of years of open public process, involving millions of people. For example, they continue to delay implementation of the Roadless Area Conservation Rule, a U.S. Forest Service conservation policy that resulted from the greatest public outreach in the history of federal rulemaking. The U. S. Forest Service received more than 1.6 million official comments from the American public and conducted more than 600 hearings nationwide.