Ashe Takes Oath as Fish & Wildlife Director

Dan Ashe was sworn in as the 16th director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on June 30. President Obama had nominated Ashe to head up the nation’s principal federal agency dedicated to the conservation of fish and wildlife and their habitats last December. Thanks to his father’s 37-year career at Fish and Wildlife, Ashe is in fact a lifelong veteran of the service. After receiving his Master’s degree from the University of Washington, the Atlanta native spent 13 years working on Capitol Hill before joining Fish and Wildlife. He subsequently served as the service’s assistant director for external affairs from 1995 to 1998, as the chief of the National Wildlife Refuge System from 1998 to 2003, as science advisor to the director of the service from 2003 to 2009, and, most recently, as the service’s deputy director for policy.

Said Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, “Dan Ashe has served with distinction and integrity in the Fish and Wildlife Service for more than 15 years. He has worked tirelessly to prepare the Service to meet the resource challenges of the 21st century, and his leadership and vision have never been more necessary. I’m excited to work with him to foster innovative science-driven conservation programs and policies to benefit our nation’s fish and wildlife and its habitat.”

Said Ashe, “I’m humbled by the trust that the Secretary and the President have placed in me, and most of all, by the responsibility of leading the finest wildlife conservation organization in the world. As director, I will strive to create an atmosphere where we can bring to bear our collective imagination, our tenacity, and our commitment to public service to address today’s challenges to the future of our nation’s fish and wildlife heritage.”

Read more HERE.

 

Adults Only – The New Interior Department Reality Show

Update: In a report to Congress on September 24, the Department of the Interior confirmed that the controversial Royalty in Kind Program will be phased out this Thursday, September 30. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation, and Enforcement (BOEM) announced that the agency is successfully completing the orderly close-out of the Royalty in Kind Program, which accepted oil and gas in lieu of cash as royalty payments on federal energy resources. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar (shown here with BOEM Director Michael Bromwich) stated that all existing contracts would be allowed to expire and no further Royalty in Kind sales would take place.

Download the complete report to Congress HERE.

Originally posted September 12, 2008: The fine folks who gave America the Teapot Dome Scandal are pleased to bring their fellow citizens a sizzling new take on government outreach, including sex, drugs, and lucrative consulting contracts. The lurid scandal, which centers on Interior’s Royalty in Kind program, was co-produced by Chevron, Shell, Gary Williams Energy, and Hess Corporation. Hundreds of articles covering this topic are available via Google News, but consider this post at SLATE, which has hyperlinks to the internal investigations by Interior’s Office of Inspector General.

The Land Report Looks at the Obama Cabinet

While a few of President Obama’s cabinet nominees remain to be confirmed, others — such as Ken Salazar (pictured) — will exert enormous influence on landowners and have been hard at work since hours after the inauguration. Read more

Obama to Nominate Salazar for Interior

Landowners in the West will have one of their own heading up the Interior Department in the new Obama Administration. According to published reports, Sen. Ken Salazar (D-CO) will be named the 50th Secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior later this week by President-elect Barack Obama. Read more

Interior Department to Allow Firearms in Parks and Refuges

On Friday the Interior Department ruled that Americans will be able to carry concealed weapons in some federal parks and wildlife refuges. The announcement overturns a decades-old Reagan Administration regulation that required all guns brought into national parks and wildlife refuges be unloaded and kept in an out-of-the-way place such as the trunk of the car.

Read more

BLM Makes Push to Buy Western Land

BY JOSEPH GUINTO
PUBLISHED NOVEMBER 2007

Under a federal law, the BLM, an arm of the Department of the Interior, has begun buying private properties that carve into federal wildlife refuges, national parks, national forests, and their ilk, making those lands difficult to access or manage. Though the law—the Federal Land Transaction Facilitation Act—was passed in 2000, federal agencies had not used it to make a land acquisition until this fall. In September, the BLM, working with the Forest Service, the National Park Service, and the Fish and Wildlife Service, offered $18 million to snap up 19 parcels of private land in seven states. Overall, some 9,000 acres of land were acquired in New Mexico, Idaho, Arizona, Colorado, Wyoming, Oregon, and California.

The last of those states provides a good example of the law’s intent. The BLM and other agencies spent $850,000 to buy 321 acres near the Coachella Valley Fringe-toed Lizard Preserve, a tongue-twisting federal wildlife refuge near Palm Springs. The preserve features both sand dunes and rocky hills and is home to the threatened fringe-toed lizard, which is found nowhere else in the world. The reason the BLM wanted the land was that it separated the preserve from the Joshua Tree National Park.

The equally tongue-twisting Federal Land Transaction Facilitation Act can also work the other way around. In cases where federal lands are isolated by surrounding private properties, making them of little value to the government, the BLM can offer those parcels for sale. It can also sell off lands that have clear residential or commercial worth. The BLM has made $95 million from such sales so far.

Most of that money is required to go to further land acquisitions, like the purchases the BLM made in September. “These purchases promote conservation while helping ensure efficient and effective public lands management,” said Lynn Scarlett, deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior, during the dedication ceremony for the Coachella Valley property.

And if you’re wondering: No, this is not eminent domain. The act stipulates that government agencies only buy property from willing sellers.