Majority Of National Park Service Board Resigns, Citing Administration Indifference

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke speaks on the Trump administration’s energy policy at the Heritage Foundation in Washington in September 2017. Nine of 12 members of the National Park Service advisory board resigned Monday citing Zinke’s unwillingness to meet with the panel.

Andrew Harnik/AP

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Andrew Harnik/AP

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke speaks on the Trump administration’s energy policy at the Heritage Foundation in Washington in September 2017. Nine of 12 members of the National Park Service advisory board resigned Monday citing Zinke’s unwillingness to meet with the panel.

Andrew Harnik/AP

Three-quarters of the seats on the U.S. National Park Service advisory board are vacant following a mass resignation Monday night, citing Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke’s unwillingness to meet with them.

Nine of the panel’s 12 members, led by former Alaska Gov. Tony Knowles, handed in their resignations. The bipartisan panel was appointed by President Barack Obama and the terms of all members who quit were set to expire in May.

Knowles, in a letter of resignation to Zinke from himself and the eight other members, said the board had “worked closely and productively through 2016 with dedicated National Park Service employees, an inspiring Director and a fully supportive Department.”

Since then, as explained in the letter, the board had repeatedly tried and failed to secure a meeting with the new interior secretary.

“[Our] requests to engage have been ignored and the matters on which we wanted to brief the new Department team are clearly not part of the agenda,” the letter reads.

Alaska Public Radio quoted Knowles as saying that the Department of the Interior “showed no interest in learning about or continuing to use the forward-thinking agenda of science, the effect of climate change, protections of the ecosystems, education.”

“And it has rescinded NPS regulations of resource stewardship concerning those very things: biodiversity loss, pollution and climate change,” he added.

According to The Washington Post:

“The three board members who did not resign include Harvard University public finance professor Linda Bilmes, University of Maryland marine science professor Rita Colwell and Carolyn Hessler Radelet, the chief executive of Project Concern International. Terms for the first two end in May, while Radelet’s term does not expire until 2021.

In an email, Bilmes said she did not resign her post because she is conducting research with other colleagues funded by the National Park Foundation, and wanted to complete her project.”

Washington Sen. Maria Cantwell, a Democrat who is the ranking member on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, issued a statement of support for the resigning board members.

“The President still hasn’t nominated a director for the National Park Service and Secretary Zinke has proposed tripling entrance fees at our most popular national parks,” she said. “His disregard of the advisory board is just another example of why he has earned an ‘F’ in stewardship.”

Since taking office, President Trump has sought to roll back protections of national parks and public lands under the auspices of the Department of the Interior. The administration has ordered a dramatic downsizing of two massive national monuments in Utah and has announced plans to open up oil drilling in protected areas of the Arctic and the Atlantic.

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‘New California’ movement seeks to divide the Golden State in half

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Golden State conservatives seek to form ‘New California’

Two men launch campaign to split rural areas from ‘tyrannical’ coastal cities.

Two men have launched a campaign to divide rural California from the coastal cities, motivated by what they referred to as a “tyrannical form of government,” that doesn’t follow the state or federal constitution, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

Unlike the failed 2016 campaign to split California into 6 states, the “New California” movement, founded by Robert Paul Preston and Tom Reed, seeks to consolidate rural California into a distinct economy separate from the coast.

“After years of over taxation, regulation, and mono party politics the State of California and many of its 58 Counties have become ungovernable.”

- New California movement

“After years of over taxation, regulation, and mono party politics the State of California and many of its 58 Counties have become ungovernable,” the movement declares on its website. 

Preston and Reed say the citizens of the state live “under a tyrannical form of government that does not follow the California and U.S. Constitutions.”

“There’s something wrong when you have a rural county such as this one, and you go down to Orange County which is mostly urban, and it has the same set of problems, and it happens because of how the state is being governed and taxed,” Preston told CBS Sacramento.

The “founders” have evoked Article IV Section 3 of the United States Constitution as justification for establishing a new economy with a new state constitution. 

It states that a consensus must be reached by the state legislatures of California as well as congress. The process, according to New California representatives, could take 10 to 18 months.

The New California movement unveiled a “Declaration of Independence,” earlier this week that called for a “free and Independent State” with “full power to establish and maintain law and order, to promote general prosperity.”

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