Red Tape Alert: Billionaire Interior Secretary Burgum Adds Roadblocks Limiting Public Access To Outdoors
Orwellian New Secretarial Order Undermines America’s Most Successful, Impactful, and Popular Outdoors Program
HELENA, MT – Trump’s billionaire diva Interior Secretary Doug Burgum issued a new directive undermining the Great Americans Outdoors Act (GAOA) yesterday. The Secretarial Order creates layers of additional red tape limiting and kneecapping popular park and public access projects that provide hunting, fishing, and outdoor recreation opportunities to millions of Americans through the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF).
In response, Save Our Parks Spokesperson Jayson O’Neill issued the following statement:
“Out-of-touch billionaire diva Doug Burgum just kneecapped America’s more successful and popular parks and public access program by instituting layers of bureaucratic procedures and red tape before any new projects expanding public access to our outdoors get off the ground. Not only is it costly, but it is a direct threat to our birthright — outdoor access to recreate, hunt, and fish.
“It’s clear billionaires like Trump and Burgum think our outdoors and natural heritage are only playgrounds for the wealthy. Every hunter, angler, and outdoor enthusiast should see right through this fake Orwellian rhetoric by Burgum and demand Congress put a stop to it and hold him accountable before public access is gone.”
Confirming that Trump and Burgum are openly attacking our nation’s parks and public lands with a plan to sell them off, he also installed a fellow greedy billionaire and criminal Michael Boren as his Policy, Management, and Budget Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary and secretly place Kevin Lilly, a wealthy Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley executive with no conservation experience, in charge of overseeing the nation’s most treasured natural resources and wildlife protection programs. Lilly has been tasked by Burgum with overseeing the new order kneecapping the GAOA and LWCF program.
Trump and Burgum’s effort to limit the LWCF and undermine the Great Americans Outdoors Act is running headlong into strong opposition from Congress, including Republican members of the Montana congressional delegation, who teamed up with every congressional Democrat to kill Republican Utah Senator Mike Lee’s public land sell-off proposal.
See More Below:
As Conservation Groups Brace for LWCF ‘Raid,’ Daines and Zinke Pledge to Oppose Changes
“Senator Daines strongly supports LWCF and fought hard for its permanent authorization and full funding,” according to the spokesperson. “He will oppose any changes that weaken the good work of the program to expand hunting, fishing and recreational access to our public lands.”
“Congressman Zinke’s record on LWCF and the Great American Outdoors Act has been crystal clear, and that of unwavering support,” according to the spokesperson. “In Montana, GAOA has helped Yellowstone recover from the historic 2022 flood and Glacier is rebuilding miles of roadways and bridges. LWCF has allowed Montanans to unlock isolated public lands and swap parcels to resolve checker-boarding. Zinke has long been an advocate of modernizing the program by diversifying the funding sources to include renewables and focusing acquisitions on improving access to high quality sportsmen and recreation areas.”
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