Land seizure leader invited to Trump’s anti-monuments announcement

A top leader in the land seizure movement was invited to the White House for the announcement of President Trump’s sham review of national monument designations, according to the Elko Daily Free Press:

After the signing ceremony Wednesday, [Demar Dahl] was invited to the Eisenhower Office Building to meet with administration officials to discuss his thoughts on transferring public lands to the states. He said he really stressed the importance of arranging a meeting with Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke, and the White House officials assured him they would pass the word along.

The news that Dahl, who is the chairman of the Nevada Lands Council, got a receptive audience from Secretary Zinke on the issue of seizing and selling national public lands is concerning to say the least, and it’s against Zinke’s purported opposition to selling off public lands.

Dahl supports privatizing public lands to make them easier to develop: “If it were up to me, [Nevada] wouldn’t be a public lands state because of all of the production that could come out of our state if it weren’t a public lands state.”

If that’s the kind of person the Trump administration wants present for its anti-monuments announcement, then their intentions with this “review” should be clear: They want to make iconic landscapes like Bears Ears easier to drill.

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