Utah's hero environmentalist, Tim DeChristopher
via Democracy Now!
In an effort to disrupt a controversial last-minute move by the Bush administration to auction off nearly 150,000 acres of wilderness in southern Utah for oil and gas drilling, including areas located near Canyonlands, Arches, and Dinosaur National parks, Tim DeChristopher a 27-year-old economic student at the university of Utah, posed as a bidder and bought up 22,000 aches of public land, worth 1.8 million dollars, with money he didn’t have. As you can imagine the FBI didn’t like that too much and he was arrested days later.
“I’ve seen the need for more serious action by the environmental movement to protect a livable future for all of us. I’ve seen that need for a long time. And frankly, I’ve been hoping that someone would step up and someone would come out and be the leader and someone would put themselves on the line and make the sacrifices necessary to get us on a path to a more livable future. And I guess I just couldn’t wait any longer for that someone to come out there and had to accept the fact that that someone might be me.”-Tim DeChristopher
Charges have yet to be filed against DeChristopher, but on Wednesday a major development occurred in the story. President Obama’s Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, the former senator from Colorado, canceled the leases to drill for gas and oil on seventy-seven parcels of public land in Utah put up for auction in December by Bush. Salazar made the announcement in a phone call with reporters.
“In its last weeks in office, the Bush administration rushed ahead to sell oil and gas leases at the doorstep of some of our nation’s icons, some of our nation’s most treasured landscapes, and did so particularly in Utah. In a December 19, 2008 lease sale, they offered 130 parcels for oil and gas development, seventy-seven parcels of which are close in proximity to Arches and Canyonlands National Parks, Dinosaur National Monument and Nine Mile Canyon. The seventy-seven parcels in total contain about 130,000 acres. President Obama and I believe strongly that we need to responsibly develop our oil and gas supplies to help reduce our dependence on foreign oil, but we must do so in a thoughtful and balanced way.” -Ken Salaza
Agreed!
Thank you Tim and Ken, from all of us who enjoy these areas.
Canyonlands National Park
Arches National Park
Dinosaur National Monument
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