Krista Langlois’ piece on public lands looked all around the mulberry bush about raising entrance fees to national parks and other public lands, but never reached the obvious conclusion (“Who should pay for public lands?” HCN, 12/25/17). That is stated clearly in the second paragraph of Jonathan Thompson’s Perspective on page 25 (“Interior’s return to the ‘Crazy Years’,” HCN, 12/25/17). To paraphrase, Donald Trump, Ryan Zinke and their gang of thieves aim to strip Americans of their preserved natural, national heritage in an obvious set of steps:
- Strip away environmental protections;
- Make public lands visits unaffordable to working Americans;
- As visitation drops, tell Congress that Americans don’t care about their parks and preserves (this gang of vultures may just bypass that little step);
- Remove public-lands protections and sell them off to the highest gas/oil/uranium bidders — as Zinke so eagerly stated, “For too long America has been held back by burdensome regulations on our energy industry.”
How blunt can you be? For Zinke, “America” = “energy industry.” The suicidal among us can race off to certain planetary extinction before the year 3000 in their turbocharged RVs. The rest of us should, can, and will fight off these elected and appointed Rapists of America.
Dave Mandel
El Cerrito, California
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Steps to public-land destruction.
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