When the official comment period ended on July 10 for the Trump Administration’s review of 27 national monuments–the product of an executive order issued by the president that threatens to roll back many of them–more than 2.7 million people of all political stripes made their voices heard by submitting comments expressing support for America’s national monuments. That represents over 98 percent of all comments received.

CRS President David Jenkins had this to say:

“National monuments are a Republican idea stretching back to the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt. That ethic of safeguarding America’s natural heritage is patriotic, conservative, and more popular than ever. If Secretary Zinke has been honest about his desire to build trust and listen to the public, then he should no doubt heed the overwhelming support expressed for those monuments under review by the more than two million Americans who submitted comments.”

Kudos to all of the CRS members who took the time to make their voice heard.

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke has submitted a report to President Trump recommending a significant reduction in the protected public acreage of Bears Ears National Monument in Utah. Conservatives for Responsible Stewardship (CRS) issued the following statement from President David Jenkins:

“As an organization that applauded the selection of Zinke as Interior Secretary, we are deeply disappointed that in his first major decision he chose to roll back protection for Bears Ears National Monument. In doing so, Secretary Zinke is abandoning the Theodore Roosevelt conservation ethic he professes, choosing instead to side with radical anti-public land zealots who seek to exploit rather than conserve.”

President Trump has just signed an unprecedented executive order instructing the Department of Interior to review the national monument designations of past presidents stretching back 21 years. The intent, according to Vice President Pence, is to “begin to undo” these designations. Never before in the 111-year history of President Theodore Roosevelt’s Antiquities Act, the law that authorizes the creation of national monuments, have we seen such a radical attack on this visionary protection of America’s natural and cultural heritage.

In response, CRS president David Jenkins said, “At the heart of the word conservation is the word conserve which is also the root word of conservative. The Antiquities Act is a conservative idea that was brought forth by a Republican Congressman, passed a Republican Congress and was signed into law by a Republican, President Theodore Roosevelt. President Trump and Secretary Zinke should continue this tradition and conserve the Antiquities Act and all of our nation’s monument designations as they are an important part of our nation’s history and culture.”

Please use our CRS Action Center link below to urge Secretary Zinke to keep all of America’s national monuments intact.

Save America’s National Monuments

We just launched our new CRS Action Center to help ensure that our member’s voices are heard from Capitol Hill to the White House and beyond. This new tool makes it quick and easy to weigh in on key issues with your elected officials or comment on agency actions. You can even send a tweet to President Trump.

Messages sent via the Action Center integrate with the official web form of the recipient, ensuring it is properly considered as official constituent correspondence.  We will always feature 3 to 7 alerts on the Action Center page. We hope you will weigh in on these issues, but you can also use that gateway for other issues that concern you.

The page currently features alerts on misguided efforts to give away our public lands, roll back auto fuel-efficiency standards, undo waste prevention measures, and weaken the Clean Water Act. We also have one to encourage Republican members of the House of Representatives to join 17 of their colleagues in signing onto a landmark GOP climate resolution.

Please check it out. You will be glad you did. Here is the link: CRS Action Center

Remember the old adage waste not, want not? Apparently, some in Congress have forgotten it. There is a strong push–fueled by the oil and gas industry–to reverse a Bureau of Land Management (BLM) rule that requires oil and gas companies to be responsible and capture the natural gas that they extract from our public lands. The rule was needed because these companies have been cutting corners and wasting a lot of gas through flaring and leaks. Not only does wasted gas represent a big source of air pollution, no royalties are paid on a resource that belongs to all Americans.

Any true conservative should support efforts to prevent waste, especially waste that is costing taxpayers a bundle. Unfortunately, some lawmakers in Congress who profess to be conservative are trying to repeal the BLM rule through the Congressional Review Act (CRA). The House of Representatives already bowed to the oil and gas lobby by passing a CRA resolution rolling back the rule. Now, this issue is before the Senate.

CRS maintains that there is nothing conservative about waste or pollution and that BLM’s methane waste rule should remain in place. You can hear CRS board member Steve Bonowski from Colorado discuss the issue here, Western Officials Push U.S. Senators to Keep BLM Methane Rules,, and CRS President David Jenkins discusses it here: Conservatives Defend BLM Natural Gas Waste Rule.

For anyone who cares about safeguarding our environment, many of President Trump’s past statements have been worrisome, as have the people he put in charge of transitioning to a new administration. This makes it particularly important to have thoughtful, stewardship-minded leaders heading up the Department of Interior and EPA.

Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Interior, Congressman Ryan Zinke, is worthy of support. He is an advocate for America’s public lands who opposes efforts to turn those lands over to states and special interests. He boycotted the GOP convention because the platform was anti-public land. Zinke clearly meets the threshold of someone who cares about safeguarding our natural heritage.

The same is not the case with Trump’s nominee for EPA Administrator, Scott Pruitt. As Attorney General of Oklahoma Pruitt amassed a long record of opposing EPA and the environmental laws the agency is responsible for enforcing, including suing the agency 13 times.

Moreover, Pruitt always seems to come down on the side of the polluter rather than the environment and the broader public interest. This tendency tracks closely with his ties to regulated industries, including donations to his campaigns and other endeavors. Putting Pruitt in charge of EPA would be akin to putting a fox in charge of a henhouse.

For those reasons, Conservatives for Responsible Stewardship supports the Ryan Zinke for Secretary of Interior and strongly opposes the nomination of Scott Pruitt to head EPA. The Pruitt nomination falls short of the standard set by past Republican presidents to nominate EPA heads who believe in the agency’s mission and are committed to its important work.

Conservatives for Responsible Stewardship (CRS) applauds the designation of Bears Ears and Gold Butte National Monuments. The President’s use of the Antiquities Act was entirely appropriate and in keeping with the Act’s original intent. Affording these public lands extra protection is genuinely conservative, and that is true irrespective of which president makes the designations.

“Bears Ears and Gold Butte are both rich in natural and cultural treasures that need to be protected from existing threats, they are exactly the type of places Theodore Roosevelt’s Antiquities Act was designed to protect,” said CRS President David Jenkins.

Republican presidents—including Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and Ronald Reagan—have a long tradition of contributing to our great natural endowment of parks, forests, wildlife refuges, national monuments, and other public lands. They understood that these lands, your lands, are an essential part of who we are as a people, and that protecting them is both conservative and patriotic.

To help make sure that tradition continues, CRS has launched a campaign urging President-elect Donald Trump to also make safeguarding America’s public lands a top priority. To find out more, please visit our campaign page.

On the week of its centennial anniversary (August 25) the National Park System, along with the state of Maine and every American, received an 87,500-acre gift of beautiful Northwoods forest that President Obama just proclaimed as Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument.

The land was generously donated to the American people by Burt’s Bees co-founder Roxanne Quimby and her family foundation, Elliotsville Plantation, Inc. A guarantee to safeguard the land in perpetuity was a condition of the gift, and President Obama relied on his authority under the Antiquities Act–a law established by Theodore Roosevelt–to secure the deal.

“Establishing the Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument allows the region and its economy to benefit from a remarkable land gift and monetary endowment, and on this 100th anniversary of the National Park Service, it shows the same vision and generosity that made Acadia National Park possible more than a century ago,” said CRS President David Jenkins.

Several years ago, 2012 to be exact, when new efficiency standards for light bulbs first kicked in, there was a hue and cry from talk radio hosts. They lamented the death of the “Edison light bulb” and told listeners that the government was forcing everyone to switch to inferior, “mercury-laced,” compact fluorescent bulbs (CFLs). Some even partnered with retailers to frantically urge their audience to stockpile the old inefficient bulbs.

It wasn’t long before some lawmakers jumped on the bandwagon and introduced legislation to block the standards, which were part of a 2007 bi-partisan energy bill signed into law by President George W. Bush.

Congressman Michael Burgess (R-TX) introduced various measures trying to block the standards or prohibit enforcement, and libertarian Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), citing an Ayn Rand novel, ranted about how consumer choice was being “crushed beneath the boot heel of the collective.”

All of this angst was based entirely on talk-radio fiction. The truth was quite different.