NPCA hoping for brighter times for the national parks under a Biden administration/Rebecca Latson file
After "four brutal years" for the National Park System under the Trump administration, the National Parks Conservation Association is looking forward to working with the incoming Biden team.
According to the parks advocacy group, under President Trump more than one hundred environmental safeguards have been rolled back, including the Clean Water Rule, numerous Endangered Species Act regulations, and the National Environmental Policy Act, a 50-year-old law that has given people a voice in how their public lands are used. These will be among the first policies NPCA works to reinstate under a new Biden administration.
“Though our country is going through a period of change, our national parks can help bridge political differences, as they’ve done so many times before," said NPCA President Theresa Pierno. "We’ve seen the power our parks have to unite us as Congress and the current administration came together to pass critical legislation to fix our parks and protect millions of acres of public lands. Our country needs bipartisan efforts like these more than ever.
"...The last four years have been brutal for our national parks and public lands," continued Pierno. "Clean air safeguards were erased, park wildlife was endangered, and clean water protections were undermined."
The NPCA chief listed additional problems she saw with how the Trump administration approached the national parks, pointing to the lack of a Senate-confirmed director of the National Park Service as well as "(T)urmoil and pro-industry appointees at the top levels of the Interior Department, Environmental Protection Agency and Bureau of Land Management" that forced those agencies to put development of public lands in the United States above "protecting our national parks and neighboring communities."
“We have serious work ahead of us to undo the damage that has been done to our national parks and public lands," said Pierno. "But we are ready. We will forge key relationships with the Biden administration, as well as with new allies and returning park champions in Congress, and work together on behalf of our national parks.”
Comments
I realize that this discussion has centered around Border Politics but I must say that one of the good things about a new administration is that we will hopefully see fewer and fewer political appointees running the NPS in the coming years. I realize that congress has to approve nominees so it may not be possible to go that route all the time. But I am confident that the Biden Administration will look to appointing individuals who are actually qualitifed to be park managers. How long has it been since we have had a Director of the National Park Service approved by Congress? Trump was notorious for not filling key positions throughout the government so he could control his own agenda.
Hump, one of the major reasons to put up the wall is to stop trafficing women and children. You can't discuss one without the other.
Nor has, to my recall, pro-wall discussion focussed on [or even mentioned in a significant manner] trafficing women and children. It has primrily dropped the bogeyman brown criminal menace spectre.
Once again Rick, you missed the headlines. (BTW, trafficing women and children IS a criminal menace.)
No, ecbuck, I don't believe that for a single second. The Trump Administration's and republican party's actions have been very consistent, consistently racist regardless of their slick and evasive rhetoric. Stephen Miller has been their point man at the White House for racist immigration policies while McConnell has led the republican Senate's juggernaut to damage and dismantle the voting rights of citizens of color already here. You're just another twisted minion desperately trying to find an acceptable excuse for it. And, you still can't spell.
The wall is nothing but an expensive, and pointless, monument to Trump's fragile ego. Time to start tearing it down.
I find it disappointing that posters here continually choose to engage with trolls who don't seem to care at all about parks but just see this site as a way to push their particular political beliefs. It's well past the time that the trolls should just simply be ignored.
Hump - you don't believe trafficing women and children is a criminal menace? Now we found your problem.