Last week, the Washington Post acquired documents indicating that Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke urged Donald Trump to alter 10 of America’s national monuments in order to better exploit their natural resources. Zinke also pushed for four monuments to be shrunk, including Oregon’s Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument and Utah’s Bears Ears National Monument.
“The secretary’s set of recommendations would also change the way all 10 targeted monuments are managed,” the Post reported, with Zinke pushing for monuments to “address concerns of local officials or affected industries” and “permit ‘traditional uses’ now restricted within the monuments’ boundaries, such as grazing, logging, coal mining, and commercial fishing.”
Zinke’s short-sighted decision—championed by anti-conservation groups and at least partially motivated, as noted by the Salt Lake Tribune, by the Trump administration’s determination “to wipe out some of Obama’s legacy by redrawing or undoing some of the large monuments he set aside”—is merely the latest indicator that when it comes to environmental exploitation, the otherwise inept Trump Administration is terrifyingly effective. “No other administration has gone this far,” Kristen Brengel of the National Parks Conservation Association told the Post. “This law was intended to protect places from development, not promote damaging natural and cultural resources.”
There is an upside to all this, as hard as it might be to spot: While Trump’s national and international fuck-ups can feel impossible to influence, local environmental battles can be won. And there might be no better way to get started than by checking out this year’s Portland EcoFilm Festival.
