It's ironic that an administration that likes to quote Theodore Roosevelt as much as the Bush administration does would have spent 8 years actively undoing the protections of the National Park System that Teddy established. One key example here is the Tongass National Forest in southeastern Alaska. One of W.J. Clinton's final acts before leaving office was to extend protections to this nearly pristine wilderness, which was then the largest unlogged coastal temperate rainforest in the world. These protections were rolled back gradually when Bush 2.0 took office and since 2001 the Tongass has lost nearly 20% of it's old growth forest.
The Bush administration has been busy entrenching supporters in the EPA and The Federal Bureau of Land Management as well. According to the Washington Post, between March and November of 2008 the administration has made 20 political appointees in the Department of the Interior into career government bureaucrats protected from the 'whims' of the shifting political landscape. Simply put, agents of the Bush administration are being inserted into permanent positions to protect the interests of logging and mining industries in the Obama era. Still looking to make a buck for your friends at the cost of further rape of the earth, eh Georgie Boy?
Congressman Raul Grijalva (D) AZ, who is apparently under consideration for Secretary of the Interior, issued a letter on October 18, 2008 detailing many of Bush's sins against the land. This administration has ran roughshod over the Constitution, the people of several sovereign nations, and the planet. It's time for this reign of terror to end and to fade quietly into the annals of history.
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