To help mark the centennial of the National Park System, Secretary Jewell spoke today about the 100-year history of the Park System, but she also spoke about preserving Parks over the next century. Protecting the Parks for future generations, Jewell said, will require looking beyond Park boundaries in places like Moab, Utah. And it will require looking for solutions that move us beyond the conflicts that have traditionally characterized public land management in the West.
Nothing characterized those conflicts like the infamous “77 Leases” — an attempt by the Bush administration to open up vast expanses of iconic landscapes — some directly adjacent to Parks — to oil and gas development in the waning days of the last administration.
Sec. Jewell’s Interior has already taken an important step toward reversing irresponsible decisions like these by preparing “Master Leasing Plans” (MLPs) near Parks. MLPs are a common-sense, “smart from the start,” approach to planning that allows for oil and gas development, while protecting the characteristics of landscapes like Moab that make them valuable parks of the outdoor economy.
She recognized today the value of Interior’s new way of doing business through MLPs on public land — something for which Interior deserves our thanks, and that future administrations would do well to follow in order to avoid the mistakes and conflicts of the past.
While the final plan in Moab is still not completed, here’s some highlights of how those plans are working so far:
- In August, BLM published a draft version of the “Moab Master Leasing Plan” to manage oil, gas and potash on BLM lands adjacent to Arches and Canyonlands National Parks. Like the Dinosaur Trail MLP, the Moab Plan would also protect against impacts to Park resources, and the visitor experience, from oil and gas development outside the two Parks. When finalized, the Plan will provide another example of the type of landscape-level, inter-jurisdictional planning necessary to protect Parks into the twenty-first century.
- Last year, for example, BLM finalized the “Dinosaur Trail” Master Leasing Plan to protect Dinosaur National Monument, a unit of the National Park System in northwest Colorado. In providing how oil and gas would be managed on federal lands south of the Monument, the MLP requires that the Bureau of Land Management and the Park Service work together to protect against impacts from drilling on the Monument, like air, noise and light pollution.