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As the Trump administration continues to roll back protections and ignore overwhelming public support for conservation, investigations into the actions of land management agencies continue. Rep. Raúl Grijalva, the chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, is giving the Interior Department one more week to comply with his document requests before issuing a subpoena. Last month, the committee voted to give him the power to issue subpoenas, which many other committees can already do. Grijalva set a deadline of March 16 for the Interior Department to comply with his requests, stating, "based on DOI's ongoing and unjustified obstruction and bad faith, the Committee is prepared to issue a subpoena if the deadline enumerated is not met."
As previous investigations continue, a new investigation into a $2 million Forest Service grant to the state of Alaska, which was used to support efforts to open the Tongass National Forest to logging, was just opened by the Agriculture Department's inspector general. The funding went to an effort to roll back federal limits on cutting old-growth trees, and $200,000 was given to an Alaskan timber industry association. The investigation will determine whether the Forest Service broke any rules to prop up Alaska's timber industry.
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Science and our own moral compass demand that America has a plan for our public lands. We need a plan that protects and restores vitally important lands and waters. And we must invest in strengthening our ecosystems and wind down fossil energy development so that public lands store more carbon than they emit.”
