The Biden administration is perpetuating its misguided campaign to preserve, not conserve, America’s natural resources.
On May 7th, the Department of Interior dropped its “Conserving and Restoring America the Beautiful 2021” plan. It’s viewed as the U.S.’s response to 30X30—a vague, nice-sounding yet potentially problematic initiative to “protect 30 percent of waters and 30 percent of lands” by 2030.
This report is a product of the Biden administration’s January 27th Executive Order 14008 entitled “Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad.”
For too long, preservationist environmentalists have conflated conservation (wise use of natural resources) with preservation (non-use of natural resources). If the plan proceeds, it’ll shut out true conservationists from stakeholder discussions and give special interests undue influence over natural resources management.
In response, Congressional and Senatorial Western Caucus members have released an alternative plan, Western Conservation Principles, to address the plan’s shortcomings—faulting it for being insufficiently conservationist in nature.
Here’s what it entails.