Obama May Tap a Strong Progressive to Manage Our Wilderness

By Roberto Lovato, AlterNet. Posted December 6, 2008.

Anyone who has visited a national park or traversed the country's diverse wilderness comes home with gorgeous, yet distressing images of it; those returning from a visit to one of the more than 562 tribes the federal government recognizes and is supposed to assist also bring back sad stories about it; and those of us who enjoy camping or fishing or hunting inevitably return home talking about it. "It" is the scenery and life found on the millions of acres of federal land left blemished and vulnerable by the Bush administration's Department of the Interior.

As urbanization, economic restructuring and the insatiable lust for land and natural resources continue to threaten the still-astonishingly beautiful and rich land of this country, we should all care about whom President-elect Barack Obama chooses to lead the DOI. The urgency of these issues came home twice this week as the Bush administration delivered two parting gifts to big mining interests by rescinding two important regulations -- one requiring the DOI to prevent mining companies from dumping waste near public streams, and another protecting federal land near the Grand Canyon from mining and oil and gas development.

In order to deal with such challenges to the land and people under the purview of the department, which is charged with managing most federally owned land as well as with managing relationships with Native American peoples, the Obama administration must appoint someone with the experience, expertise and political sophistication to lead nothing less than a New Deal for the land and people our government deals with.

Of all the candidates being vetted by the Obama transition team for this complex and challenging responsibility, none can match the unique qualifications of Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz. Grijalva, who was the leading voice denouncing this week's most recent giveaway to mining companies by the Bush administration, will bring urgently needed balance and poise to a federal land management bureaucracy that has pushed we the people into dangerous disequilibrium with the land we live on -- and love. Appointing Grijalva, who was elected co-chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, will also bring much-needed political balance to the Obama cabinet than some of the Republican-lite Democrats also being considered for the DOI post, like California Blue Dog Democrat Mike Thompson.

Like almost all of the previous secretaries of the interior, Grijalva hails from the West, more specifically Arizona, where his 7th Congressional District seat has provided him with the kind of experience and leadership we will need in a DOI secretary.

Grijalva's willingness to reverse the values and practices instituted by the Bush administration's Department of the Interior are well-illustrated by his leadership of the National Parks, Forests and Public Lands Subcommittee of the 110th Congress. Most recently, he spearheaded efforts to stop the planned re-mining of the Black Mesa, in northern Arizona.

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Roberto Lovat is a New York-based writer with New America Media.

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