On behalf of our activist community, I urge you to contact your senators and ask them to support S. 434, a bill to provide a report on federal land holdings and maintenance. Introduced by Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.), this bill would require the Department of the Interior to submit a report detailing all federal land holdings and the costs of maintaining them.
FreedomWorks President Adam Brandon released the following statement regarding U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke’s announcement of a plan to streamline the leasing permit process to comply with the legal requirement that permits be handled within 30 days.
The federal government owns an estimated one-third of all the land in the United States. But this is only a rough estimate, because even the federal government does not actually know how much land it controls.
Last year the Fish and Wildlife Service announced that the greater sage grouse did not qualify for coverage under the Endangered Species Act (ESA),perhaps because the observed numbers of male grouse had increased by 63% from 2013-2015. This decision was met with relief across the western United States, where livelihoods were threatened with destruction by draconian ESA regulations. But regulators can never be content with not regulating, so last week the Department of Interior (DOI) announced new guidelines to restrict economic activity in the name of protecting the grouse.