U.S. national park visitors urged to pick up the garbage
BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — Former U.S. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke says National Park visitors should “grab a trash bag and take some trash out” as garbage bins at some parks overflow during the government shutdown.
With many government workers furloughed as the partial shutdown entered its 14th day on Friday, garbage has piled up at sites including California’s Joshua Tree National Park.
Zinke, who resigned effective Wednesday, told The Associated Press he sought to keep the parks open during the shutdown so that the public wasn’t penalized for the political feud centred on President Donald Trump's border wall.
Some park advocates have called for all national parks to be closed to protect them from possible harm.
But Zinke says visitors can help keep them open if they “pitch in, grab a trash bag and take some trash out.”
Zinke, who is being chased by ethics investigators and criticism that his time in government favoured industry, told The Associated Press he thought he lived up to the conservation ideals of Teddy Roosevelt and insisted the myriad allegations against him will be proven untrue.
The former Montana congressman also said he quit President Donald Trump’s cabinet on his own terms, despite indications he was pressured by the White House to resign.
During almost two years overseeing an agency responsible for managing 500 million acres of public lands, Zinke’s broad rollbacks of restrictions on oil and gas drilling were cheered by industry. But they brought a scathing backlash from environmental groups and Democratic lawmakers who accused him of putting corporate profits ahead of preservation.
Zinke said the changes he instituted meshed with Roosevelt’s belief in balance between nature and industry.
He added that they were needed in part to unfetter energy companies bound by unreasonable drilling curbs, largely imposed under former President Barack Obama.
“Teddy Roosevelt said conservation is as much development as it is preservation,” Zinke said, a reference to a 1910 speech by the Republican president. “Our work returned the American conservation ethic to best science, best practices ... rather than an elitist view of non-management that lets nature take its course.”
House Democrats plan to put Zinke’s almost two-year tenure under the spotlight with oversight hearings beginning next month.