Sunday, April 17, 2011

The Grand Canyon Is More Than a Big Hole in the Ground

Of all the natural wonders I've seen in my life, the Grand Canyon ranks up near the top! My wife has never been there and, if things keep going the way they are going, the Grand Canyon one day may not be the great tourist mecca it is now or, if it is, it may cost you a pretty penny to visit.

You see, it and other national parks, sites and monuments are under attack on two different fronts. The first front has to do with the continued assault on the federal budget. As non-defense spending gets slashed, it's hard to imagine that parks and forests would not feel the budget ax as well. If the Parks and Forest services as well as the Bureau of Land Management had their budgets cut significantly, then you can rest assured that some parks, campgrounds, forests and trails would be shuttered.

Of course, with an eye on privatization, I'm just waiting for a plan to emerge to turn our national parks completely over to Corporate America -- In many parks, we are already part of the way there. Why have government foot the bill when the private sector supposedly can run these natural marvels at a profit?

I shudder at the day when we can all take in the Halliburton Grand Canyon, the Blackwater Gettysburg National Battlefield and Mount Rushmore brought to you by General Electric!

The other way our national parks are under assault is due to mining claims in and around our natural wonders. According to a report released this week by the Pew Environmental Group,
As the Obama administration considers whether to put federal land surrounding Grand Canyon National Park off limits to future mining claims, a report by the Pew Environment Group shows many national parks and landmarks are in jeopardy due to a dramatic increase in gold, uranium and other hardrock claims. The report calls on the Obama administration to use its power to protect these sites and work with Congress to modernize the 1872 mining law that still governs hardrock mining on public lands in the West.

Ten Treasures at Stake: New Claims and an Old Law Put Parks and Forests at Risk (PDF) uses federal data to map claims staked around 10 national parks, wilderness study areas, historic and cultural sites and other natural landmarks. On the list are Grand Canyon, Yosemite, Arches, Canyonlands and Joshua Tree National Parks; Mount Rushmore National Memorial in South Dakota; Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument in Washington; Siskiyou Wild Rivers in Oregon; Gila Wilderness in New Mexico; and Dinosaur National Monument in Colorado and Utah.

The report finds that more than 8,000 claims have been staked in national forest and other public land adjacent to the Grand Canyon since 2004, a 2,000 percent increase. More than two-thirds of the claims on public lands near Yosemite National Park and 99 percent of claims surrounding Arches and Canyonlands in Utah have been staked since 2005...
According to an article posted on Common Dreams,
environmental organizations argue Obama had already demonstrated reluctance to take on a fight with Republicans over protecting America's natural heritage.

Under a spending deal reached last week, Obama agreed not to use money from a newly launched wilderness initiative that would have protected 7.3 million acres of land from drilling...
I realize that most of the attention lately has been on the threat of the evisceration of the social safety net, but national parks and wilderness areas warrant our attention too. If we don't summons the energy to fight for them, national and even state parks, as we now know them, may soon become relics of a bygone era!

No comments:

Post a Comment

Comments are unmoderated, so you can write whatever you want.