Part of the original Bears Ears National Monument before Pr*sident Trump moved to shrink it, a matter being fought over in court.
Credit: Flickr/Bureau of the Land Management

Incompetence has given environmentalists and other public lands advocates confirmation that the Interior Department’s review of national monuments carried out last year was no balanced affair but a move intent on advancing the interests of loggers and drillers. As reported by The Washington Post on Monday and Tuesday, the incompetence came in the form of a release of unedited email documents under the Freedom of Information Act.

Dino Grandoni reported that these “show more candid conversations than ordinary FOIA releases because the Interior Department sent out the unredacted correspondence by accident.” Officials there removed the email documents from the Interior website and urged anyone who had downloaded them to hit delete.

What the correspondence shows is that Interior officials were focusing their attention on what could be extracted from public lands if these lost their designation as national monuments or were shrunken: timber, fish, minerals and fossil fuels. What was circumstantial before is now clear. It’s […]