The ranking Democratic member on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee slammed the Trump administration Tuesday for its review of potential wilderness areas across national parks and other public lands.
In a letter with nine other Democrats, Sen. Martin Heinrich of New Mexico warned Interior Secretary Doug Burgum that his agency’s review of how potential wilderness areas are managed could threaten wilderness attributes on lands Congress may want to protect and appeared aimed at weakening public land protections.
The letter follows Interior’s June request for public input on two initiatives: new guidance on recreational climbing in wilderness areas and how agencies should broadly be managing wilderness study areas or lands with wilderness characteristics. The agency asked for input on existing policies governing those potential wilderness lands at agencies like the Bureau of Land Management and the National Park Service.
“It is atypical for the Interior Department to conduct land management planning by asking for comment on its agencies’ general operating procedures,” Heinrich wrote in the Tuesday letter to Burgum. “Given this administration’s obsession with development and disposal of public lands, it seems clear that this comment period is really just a ploy to weaken protections for public lands.”
