Justice in Alaska

Since 1964, the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) has helped protect critical landscapes within our national parks and increase recreational access to public lands across the country. Congress permanently renewed this key program in a sweeping bipartisan public lands bill this year, but did not provide any promise of funding‚ leaving the program subject to the whims of Congress each year. Now that LWCF will be around for the foreseeable future, what’s next for America’s most important parks program?

“These plans show that a handshake doesn’t mean anything to David Bernhardt unless it’s with an oil and gas executive. At Bernhardt’s direction, the Interior Department is breaking a landmark deal that was brokered by Western governors, ranchers, and conservationists—all to allow more drilling and mining.

As the Interior Department moves to undermine the West’s landmark sage-grouse conservation plans, a new analysis from the Center for Western Priorities finds that oil and gas companies with ties to Acting Interior Secretary David Bernhardt own a fifth of all federal oil and gas leases in sage-grouse habitat throughout five key Western states.

After stocking his department with oil and gas lobbyists, Zinke goes full speed ahead on drilling and mining Last week, as most Americans celebrated Thanksgiving, the Trump administration quietly released two stunning reports detailing the current and forecasted impacts of climate change to the United States. The comprehensive studies concluded that the United States is […]

A conversation with Luis Benitez, director of the Colorado Outdoor Recreation Industry Office. Links mentioned in the show: Headwaters Economics, Federal Lands in the West: Liability or Asset? The history of “This Land is Your Land“