Submitted by Jeff Weinberger on Fri, 11/28/2008 - 10:30.
The comments about freeing Yellowstone from the noise and pollution of snowmobile(r)s reminded me of the best camping trip I ever took, and the fact that some of the places I visited are now threatened by the leasing of adjacent land for gas and oil drilling. Just a friend and I, in the early 90's, toured and camped at some of the national parks and monuments of Arizona and Utah, all places to which I'd never been. We were coming from our homes in L.A., which probably helped make the experience all the more overwhelming. Grand Canyon, Arches, Bryce Canyon and Zion were just a few of the places we stopped. And now Bush wants to leave office in a blaze of ignominious glory by heaping more misery on ourselves and our natural world in his waning days. Although a regional Park Service director, Michael Snyder, asked the Bureau of Land Management's state director, Selma Sierra - I wonder if she was chosen for the doublespeak impact of her name - to pull the tracts to allow more time for public comment, she refused.
Tracts right next to Arches, Canyonlands and other locations in Utah are going up for auction right before Christmas, an early present and another undue gift to Big Petroleum. Not surprising but it also must not be allowed! I urge this organization and its supporters to fight against this impending horror. The next time I travel to Arches National Park the only structures I'm interested in seeing are natural rock, not manmade derrick or pipeline.
Protecting our Parks
The comments about freeing Yellowstone from the noise and pollution of snowmobile(r)s reminded me of the best camping trip I ever took, and the fact that some of the places I visited are now threatened by the leasing of adjacent land for gas and oil drilling. Just a friend and I, in the early 90's, toured and camped at some of the national parks and monuments of Arizona and Utah, all places to which I'd never been. We were coming from our homes in L.A., which probably helped make the experience all the more overwhelming. Grand Canyon, Arches, Bryce Canyon and Zion were just a few of the places we stopped. And now Bush wants to leave office in a blaze of ignominious glory by heaping more misery on ourselves and our natural world in his waning days. Although a regional Park Service director, Michael Snyder, asked the Bureau of Land Management's state director, Selma Sierra - I wonder if she was chosen for the doublespeak impact of her name - to pull the tracts to allow more time for public comment, she refused.
Tracts right next to Arches, Canyonlands and other locations in Utah are going up for auction right before Christmas, an early present and another undue gift to Big Petroleum. Not surprising but it also must not be allowed! I urge this organization and its supporters to fight against this impending horror. The next time I travel to Arches National Park the only structures I'm interested in seeing are natural rock, not manmade derrick or pipeline.