Trump Administration Pushing to Hand Piece of Yosemite to Private Developer
New documents show Department of Interior is leaning on park staff to approve road access rejected by the Park Service and federal courts for 20 years
WASHINGTON – According to a report by NOTUS, the Trump administration has spent more than a year pressing the National Park Service to trade away a strip of land inside Yosemite National Park so a Nevada-based developer can build a private road into the park. The Park Service had rejected the same request for more than two decades, and federal courts twice ruled the property's previous owner had no claim to a new road.
Following is a statement from Bobby McEnaney, Director of Land Conservation at NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council):
“This is stunning, and validates all of our biggest fears regarding the Trump administration’s push to privatize our public lands. Yosemite belongs to every American, and no administration gets to carve off a piece of it for a politically connected developer. This is exactly what we warned would happen when this administration started treating our public lands as inventory to be sold off.”
NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council) is an international nonprofit environmental organization with more than 3 million members and online activists. Established in 1970, NRDC uses science, policy, law and people power to confront the climate crisis, protect public health and safeguard nature. NRDC has offices in New York City, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Beijing and Delhi (an office of NRDC India Pvt. Ltd).