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Monday, October 30th, 2023

For Many in Wyoming, a Biden Plan to Protect Land Is Beyond Unpopular

Author:     Lisa Friedman
Source:     The New York Times
Publication Date:     Oct. 26, 2023
 Link: For Many in Wyoming, a Biden Plan to Protect Land Is Beyond Unpopular
Stephan:  

Wyoming, a deeply Red state gives us an example of how Republicans either don’t or won’t understand the crisis of climate change and oppose the policies Biden’s administration is trying to activate to deal with it. This is becoming a chronic problem and has become part of The Great Schism Trend. Within a decade I predict as the quality of life in Red states deteriorates compared with Blue states enormous grievances are going to emerge in the Red states as they accept no responsibility for their inferior life quality but fill with resentments about it.

Pronghorn antelope in the Seedskadee National Wildlife Refuge in southwestern Wyoming, one of the areas that would be covered by new protections. Credit: Tom Koerner / USFWS / Mountain-Prairie

Of all of the efforts by the Biden administration to protect environmentally fragile lands, few have generated as much vitriol as a proposal that would block oil and gas drilling on 1.6 million acres of high desert sagebrush steppe in Wyoming.

One lawmaker in the Republican-led Wyoming Legislature called President Biden’s plan an attempt at “total government control.” Another declared it the worst disaster in American history, affecting “more people than the Civil War, Pearl Harbor and 9/11 combined.” Some spread fears that China would influence the government’s decision-making. A federal lands manager said she had received violent threats, prompting an investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The 1,350-page proposal for managing 3.6 million of acres of federal land in Southwest Wyoming was years in the making but still took many Wyoming residents by surprise when the Bureau of Land Management made it public […]

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