I am so happy with Obama's pick for interior secretary!
Bye bye Dirk Kempthorne, and good riddance to your environment destroying ways! And don't even get me started on Gale Norton, who Bush picked before Kempthorne and served as interior secretary until 2006.
Salazar is a good pick because he is an advocate for the environment, but he is also a realist and sort of a centrist. For example, he is an advocate for offshore drilling (obviously, I don't love that, but I do realize that energy is a problem). But he wants to balance energy development with environmental protections.
He is a US senator from Colorado, so I have been watching his career for a couple of years. I think he will do an outstanding job as interior secretary. He will be a great addition to an administration that is reasonable, intelligent, and progressive.
4 comments:
People who care about the West need to educate themselves on issues.
Obama's choice of Salazar as Secretary of the Interior is a disastrous one. Salazar's long line of background in ranching is a huge negative, not a positive one.
As a longtime advocate for the environment and particularly the protection of native predatory animals across the Western U.S., such as wolves, coyotes, foxes, bears and others, I was shocked and dismayed that Obama would choose someone from a ranching background as Secretary of Interior.
Salazar cannot help but be biased in favor of the cattle industry first; native lands and wildlife last.
The Secretary of the Interior has an immense and critical responsibility for preserving our precious lands and the wildlife within it. That is supposed to be their first priority -- and is their own stated first goal of their mission: "resource protection."
This ranching and cattle industry has a long, destructive history of putting their special profit-driven interests first; wildlife habitat and its native animals, particularly predatory animals such as coyotes, foxes, wolves, bears and other native animals, are considered "nuisances" to be gotten rid of!
Salazar has supported bad bills such as allowing for poisoning of prairie dogs. He has supported the use of our public lands for cattle grazing, displacing and destroying native animals, and using cruel snares, traps and poisons to get rid of them! He dislikes wolves and other predatory animals and will support legislation for their destruction and displacement.
He has opposed bills to preserve and protect feral and wild horses on our public lands, instead opting for their slaughter.
We need someone in the Interior willing to speak up for the wilderness and its long persecuted native animals at the hands of the cattle empire -- not someone connected with the industry!
For information on how the cattle industry in the West has impacted and destroyed both our lands and our native wildlife, especially predatory animals, please read Michael Robinson's incredible book, Predatory Bureacracy: the Extermination of the Wolf and the Transformation of the West. http://www.predatorybureaucracy.com/book
Also see: WesternWatersheds.org on how our BLM lands and its native animals have been abused by the cattle and ranching industry.
Check out http://www.wildearthguardians.org and learn how "Wildlife Services" has aided and abetted the ranching industry by destroying thousands of our native predatory animals (they use cruel, poisonous and lethal force, killing 10,000 mammals per year on behalf of ranchers) using our tax dollars.
Finally, check out: http://www.buffalofieldcampaign.org This organization protects buffalo and bison and monitors the continual efforts of the cattle industry to destroy these magnificent native animals spreading the lies that bison spread disease to their cattle (who are on our public lands) when it is actually the other way around -- cattle spread disease to wildlife.
I'll be the first to admit that he is not perfect. I don't agree with all of his positions on environmental issues. But he is so much better than the people who have been in his position for the past 8 years. He earned a perfect 100 score from the League of Conservation Voters in 2008 and opposed oil shale leases in western Colorado. He is more of a moderate and hopefully can bring more moserate people over to the side of environmental conservation. The more people we can get on the side of conservationists, the better.
i was wondering when you would comment.
LOL Suzanne! Actually, I do agree with a lot of what anonymous said. But I think that having someone in that position who has kind of been n both sides of an issue is also a benefit.
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