Andy Kerr

Conservationist, Writer, Analyst, Operative, Agitator, Strategist, Tactitian, Schmoozer, Raconteur

Courts

Book Review: Our Common Ground: A History of America’s Public Lands

Book Review: Our Common Ground: A History of America’s Public Lands

Understanding the history of public lands is useful if one is to be the best advocate for the conservation of public lands.

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Clinton and Obama Giveth, Trump Taketh, and Biden Restoreth: Two National Monuments in the State of Utah

Clinton and Obama Giveth, Trump Taketh, and Biden Restoreth: Two National Monuments in the State of Utah

Two national monuments in Utah have been restored, but it isn’t over.

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Another Northwest Forest War in the Offing? Part 1: A Sordid Tale of Environmental Destruction, Greed, and Political Malfeasance

Another Northwest Forest War in the Offing? Part 1: A Sordid Tale of Environmental Destruction, Greed, and Political Malfeasance

There may (or may not) soon be an existential threat to over two million acres of federal public forestlands in western Oregon administered (for now, at least) by the Bureau of Land Management. Northwest Forest War III may be in the offing, and such would be a good thing.

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As the Courts Change, So Must Public Lands Conservation Look More to Congress (Part 2)

As the Courts Change, So Must Public Lands Conservation Look More to Congress (Part 2)

What is necessary is nothing less than a near-total reinvention of the environmental movement—not in what we stand for but in how we work.

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Using the Bundys for Good: Finding the Silver Lining for Public Lands

Using the Bundys for Good: Finding the Silver Lining for Public Lands

Don’t tell anyone, but the more the Bundys—especially the patriarch, Cliven—talk, the better off are America’s public lands. This is true even if Cliven doesn’t again go off-script and full-on racist...

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Abuse of Process by the Bundys: Trying to Make the Law Fit Their Beliefs

Abuse of Process by the Bundys: Trying to Make the Law Fit Their Beliefs

Fresh on the heels of the dismissal of federal charges, Cliven Bundy has filed a new lawsuit against the federal government. The suit was filed on January 25, 2018, in the eighth judicial district in and for Clark County, Nevada.

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Bungling of the Bundys: A Postmortem Analysis of Government Incompetence

Bungling of the Bundys: A Postmortem Analysis of Government Incompetence

The bands of bozos that joined Cliven Bundy and his four sons in legally questionable escapades on federal public lands have mostly gotten away with it.... And now the conservation community has a chance to make sweet, sweet lemonade out of the Bundy lemons.

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The Westerman Bill: The Timber Industry’s Wet Dream

The Westerman Bill: The Timber Industry’s Wet Dream

Who wouldn’t want “resilient” (“able to withstand or recover quickly from difficult conditions”) forests? With the name Resilient Federal Forests Act of 2017 (H.R.2936, 115th Congress), what could possibly be wrong with this bill?

Everything. Judge neither a book by its cover nor a bill by its name.

Introduced by Representative Bruce Westerman (R-4th-AR), the bill is the timber industry’s wet dream legislation. In only his second term in Congress, Westerman has received more campaign contributions from Big Timber than any other industry.

The Westerman bill would legislate horrifically harmful public forest policy into law. 

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Will Trump Dump National Monuments?

President Trump signed an executive order on April 26, 2017, that directs Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke to review sixty-two of the last three presidents’ national monument proclamations, dating back to 1996. The review will result in a final report in four months that “shall include recommendations, Presidential actions, legislative proposals, or other actions consistent with law.”

The administration is interested in either totally abolishing, reducing in size, and/or weakening the protections for national monuments. Those prerogatives belong to Congress. If Trump tries, he’ll get a multitude of tweets saying, “See you in court!”

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Preremembering Bob Packwood, Oregon Conservationist

Preremembering Bob Packwood, Oregon Conservationist

The Snake River in Hells Canyon would be dammed today if not for former Senator Bob Packwood (R-OR). The French Pete watershed would not have been returned to its rightful place in the Three Sisters Wilderness if not for Packwood.

No, Packwood is not dead yet, but he is in his ninth decade (and with all his marbles, the last time I saw him). I am implementing a new policy to remember some Oregon public lands conservation greats before they, in words from Hamlet’s "To be, or not to be" soliloquy, “have shuffled off this mortal coil mortal coil.” It is an interesting exercise and a challenge to write a remembrance of someone not yet passed. I’ll call it a premembrance.

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