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Trump JR woos Sportsmen, covets Interior Secretary job

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Trump's son woos sportsmen, covets top job at Interior

Phil Taylor, E&E reporter
Published: Thursday, May 12, 2016
image_asset_11518.jpg
Donald Trump Jr., greeting voters at a New Hampshire diner in February, is an avid sportsman and could help his father craft a public lands agenda. Photo courtesy of AP Images.
As Donald Trump seeks to win over skeptical Republicans on Capitol Hill and fence-sitting voters, he seems to have wooed one important voting bloc: sportsmen.
With the help of his son, Donald Jr., an avid sportsman and ambassador for the campaign, Trump Sr. is saying all the right things to America's hunters and anglers. He's capturing endorsements and positive reviews from sportsmen's trade publications -- hook, line and sinker.
The Trump campaign has pledged to nominate a hunter to lead the Fish and Wildlife Service, aggressively fight lawsuits by anti-hunting groups, make wildlife habitat more productive, and control predators like wolves that prey on game species like elk.
Most notably, Trump in January broke from the GOP establishment by pledging to oppose efforts to transfer federal lands to states, gaining plaudits from sportsmen across the political spectrum who oppose the privatization of federal lands, fearing it would reduce places to hunt and fish.
"It says he is smart," wrote editor Mike Schoby in a Jan. 31 article in Petersen's Hunting endorsing Trump for president. "It says he realizes that 13 million hunters and 80 million gun owners represent a large voting block, one that will likely agree with his policies on hunting and protection of Second Amendment rights."
Yet some Republicans say Trump's public lands platform is alienating potential allies, particularly those in Congress and industry who oppose the federal government's massive landholdings and believe states could better manage them for activities like drilling, mining and logging. By catering heavily to hunters and anglers, Trump may be shooting himself in the foot.
"They have made the calculation that the hook-and-bullet crowd is the relevant demographic here, but the reality is the professional hook-and-bullet crowd is a small group compared to [those who care] about federal land management in the West," said Mike McKenna, a GOP strategist and energy lobbyist. "I can't think of a single issue other than this one where he's so far out over his skis."
Key questions remain over how Trump would manage the roughly 640 million acres under the control of the executive branch primarily through the Bureau of Land Management, the Forest Service, FWS and the National Park Service.

Interior Secretary Trump?

Trump doesn't claim to know much about public lands, much less hunting and angling. On those issues, he has largely deferred to Donald Jr., the 38-year-old executive vice president of the Trump Organization, who has hunted all over the world.
Sportsmen advocates say the younger Trump is the real deal.
Trump Jr. said he's a board member of the Boone and Crockett Club and a member of Ducks Unlimited and Trout Unlimited. He's a lifetime member of the National Rifle Association and Backcountry Hunters and Anglers, groups that at times have been polar opposites on the public lands policy spectrum.
After graduating from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, the alma mater of his father, Trump Jr. moved to Colorado to bartend so he could hunt and fish; he once spent 28 days in the mountains chasing elk with a bow, he has told multiple news outlets. He said he makes delicious venison meat sauce for his wife and kids.
In his interview with Petersen's, Trump Jr. said he'd like to be the next secretary of the Interior Department, the agency that controls one-fifth of the nation's landmass and almost all of the oceans. Trump Sr. said his sons (Eric Trump is also an experienced hunter) are already helping shape his platform.
"You can be assured that if I'm not directly involved, I'm going to be that very, very loud voice in his ear," Trump Jr. told Petersen's. "Between my brother and myself, no one understands the issues better than us. No one in politics lives the lifestyle more than us."
The younger Trump has waged a media blitz to get that message to American hunters. He shared a pheasant hunt in January with reporters from The Washington Post, The New York Times and CNN, and spoke with The New Yorker. He has aggressively courted the hunting and angling trade publications, giving exclusive interviews to Field & Stream, Bowhunter Magazine and Deer & Deer Hunting and the websites Bowsite.com and Wide Open Spaces.
In January, Trump Sr. was the only presidential candidate to speak at the National Shooting Sports Foundation's annual Shooting, Hunting, and Outdoor Trade Show in Las Vegas. On May 20, Trump will speak at NRA's Institute for Legislative Action Leadership Forum in Louisville, Ky.

Yet Trump's rejection of federal land transfers is a sign that the issue will not be a partisan wedge in the election. It's forced some tough conversations within sportsmen's groups whose policy platforms have historically aligned with Democrats.
"To his credit, he was willing to be very vocal about [land transfers] in the primaries," said Whit Fosburgh, CEO of the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, which does not endorse presidential candidates. "The Republican primaries were a repudiation of that nonsensical thinking that we need to get rid of public lands. We consider ourselves the victors of that primary."
Unanswered questions

Yet like other Trump policies, his natural resources platform has been criticized as vague and fluid.
On Jan. 21, Trump told Field & Stream he opposed federal land transfers "because I want to keep the lands great."
"You don't know what the state is going to do," he said. "I mean, are they going to sell if they get into a little bit of trouble?"
Yet in an op-ed that month in the Reno Gazette-Journal, the candidate slammed the "draconian rule of the BLM" in a piece clearly aimed at courting Nevada voters who bristle at the federal government's 85 percent ownership of the Silver State.
"In the rural areas, those who for decades have had access to public lands for ranching, mining, logging and energy development are forced to deal with arbitrary and capricious rules that are influenced by special interests that profit from the D.C. rule-making and who fill the campaign coffers of Washington politicians," Trump wrote. "Because the BLM is so reluctant to release land to local disposition in Nevada, the cost of land has skyrocketed and the cost of living has become an impediment to growth."
Sam Clovis, a Trump policy adviser, told the Associated Press this month that Trump supports "shared governance" of federal lands between federal agencies and state and local governments and backs transfers of federal lands near cities that are not prime hunting or fishing grounds.
It's a more nuanced position that could appease sportsmen and anti-federal lands lawmakers alike.
In his interview with Petersen's, Trump Jr. said his father's administration would use the proceeds of some land sales to promote wildlife and conservation, such as by purchasing private ranches to open access. It would use the money it spends defending lawsuits filed by "radical environmental groups" to increase the size of game herds.
"I want to change some laws and better invest current money to make our lands more productive, while having fewer wildfires," he said. "Well-managed lands, with thinned timber, food plots and habitat improvements that help animals would be the goal."
On other issues -- particularly Trump Sr.'s dismissal of human-caused climate change and his pledge to eliminate U.S. EPA -- sportsmen are scratching their heads, Fosburgh said.
"It's not like Donald Trump is a dream conservation candidate," he said.
Trump's support of federal lands is merely the start of a "much deeper conversation we need to have about how we balance competing uses," Fosburgh said.
While Trump told Field & Stream he's "very much into energy, and I'm very much into going and fracking and drilling" and believes new technologies can facilitate oil and gas production with a smaller footprint, industry heads are not champing at the bit to support him.
"The general pitch of the Trump crowd is the public lands policy of the United States is fine as it is," said McKenna, the energy lobbyist. "I'm assuming he's serious that he's going to be every bit as bad on federal land management as the Obama guys."
More details on Trump's energy policy may be revealed on May 26, when he's scheduled to deliver a keynote address to the Williston Basin Petroleum Conference in Bismarck, N.D., which focuses heavily on drilling in the Bakken region.
Western Republicans on Capitol Hill are hoping for a Trump energy platform they can rally around.

House Natural Resources Chairman Rob Bishop (R-Utah), who initially backed Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) in the presidential nominating race, said he has no clue how Trump would handle energy development on federal lands and waters, but "I hope to find out."
"I do know what the alternative is," he said. "That's horrific."
Environmentalists see a Trump presidency as a disaster for public lands and the climate.
"Donald Trump's policy positions on public lands, as with most environmental issues, are inconsistent at best and cast serious doubt that he has the knowledge, common sense and good judgement to be president,' said Seth Stein, a spokesman for the League of Conservation Voters. "He has made it clear he would double down on fossil fuel extraction from our public lands, at a time when we need to continue transitioning to a clean energy economy. Combined with his continued insistence that climate change is a hoax, we should rightly fear what a Trump presidency means for America's public lands."
Don Barry, a former Interior Department official during the Clinton administration and a longtime conservationist, said Trump's pledge to retain public lands raises another question: How would he pay to maintain them?
Barry, who recently retired from Defenders of Wildlife, said there are hundreds of national wildlife refuge units that have no on-the-ground staff to manage them.
"They're kind of mothballed," he said. "The refuge system is starving at this point already."
Barry noted that appropriations for the Land and Water Conservation Fund, a major priority of sportsmen, spiked in fiscal 2001, the final year of Clinton's presidency, but fell for the first seven years of President George W. Bush's two terms, except for a small $4 million bump in 2007.
Even if Trump wants to keep federal lands, it's unclear how much political capital he would spend to achieve that, Barry said. The tradition of presidents of both parties has been to select Interior secretaries from the West, where the crop of available conservative candidates are generally pro-transfer, Barry said.
"My experience over 41 years in this business is to forget who is in the White House," Barry said. "Who you need to worry about is who is in the Cabinet."
Reporters Corbin Hiar and Geof Koss contributed.
 
Unfortunately for Jr, federal anti-nepotism laws would preclude him from serving as Secretary of the Interior.

I like most of what he says. A little alarmed to see that "food plots" are his idea of better management on public lands though.
Just fund the agencies, let the scientists do the science, and run interference on the baseless lawsuits. That would go a long way towards getting better work done on the ground.
 
Hunting wife,

Just a quick question. How did JFK have Bobby Kennedy as his attorney general if there are anti-nepotism laws in place. I am not questioning your statement, you tend to be right on all. Just curious.
 
Just the fact that he says "I'm very much going into fracking and drilling" should immediately disqualify him. Fracking is one of the worst things to ever happen in our environment. The devastation resulting from fracking is horrific. The pollution and ruin of the water table is criminal. It also takes millions of gallons of water for each well and that should also be a mafor concern fpr those of us in the arrid west.
This is a pic of the Jonah field of western Wyoming.
jonah_oil_fields_456.jpg
 
Just the fact that he says "I'm very much going into fracking and drilling" should immediately disqualify him. Fracking is one of the worst things to ever happen in our environment. The devastation resulting from fracking is horrific. The pollution and ruin of the water table is criminal. It also takes millions of gallons of water for each well and that should also be a mafor concern fpr those of us in the arrid west.
This is a pic of the Jonah field of western Wyoming.
View attachment 57750

I hate to again have to bring facts into an issue that can only be won by the left if the discussion remains in the emotional realm where misinformation is spread, but here we go...

I can tell by the well-spacing that the picture you show is of a field that was originally vertically drilled and probably didn't utilize fracking. The absence of prior utilization of fracking/horizontal drilling are exactly why these wells in the pic are so close together. Atleast that's how the 70s-80s fields in North dak that came before the shale revolution look. very different from the 2007-now wells.

Regardless, MOST IMPORTANTLY, fracking has contributed greatly to the decline in CO2 emissions in the last 10 years, and is putting coal out of business. Natural gas is hands down, the cleanest, most affordable and logical energy source in the world. The environmental destruction of wind and solar is exponential compared to that of modern natural gas wells.
If you don't know what a rare earth mineral is, you should look it up, find out what it is used in, and then do some research on how (and where) it is mined. Talk about criminal.

The Obama Administration's EPA has issued report after report on shale development, none of which support your claim about the water table.

Fracking should not be done everywhere. O+G companies should not get a free pass to drill any piece of public ground they want. Some places are too special for fracking, or for any other type of energy development. Including subsidy dependent bird choppers. Regardless of any of this, solar and wind only create energy. They don't make the 10's of thousands of products that the world uses, that petro-chemicals do.
Water use is definitely an issue in more arid areas. Efficiency/technique is improving, but it will always remain an issue, no doubt about that.
There will always be give and take to support your luxurious 1st world lifestyle that you enjoy.

I'm having trouble getting on the 'Trump Train' but it isn't because he'd rather produce our energy at home, employing my neighbors with six figure salaries, under some of the strictest environmental regulations in the world, instead of importing it from people who hate us.

If you love coal and barbaric Islamic theocracy, by all means stop domestic fracking.
 
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Pinedale Anticline & Jonah field were both fracked from the beginning. The Jonah had a 5 acre well spacing applied not because of directional, but because the resource could support it. It's a moonscape out there now, and according to science funded by industry, the Pinedale Anticline field is the largest reason for a 60% drop in the mule deer herd.

Both fields had multiple restrictions waived that would have protected wildlife in winter and in terms spacing.

These fields are the poster children for development done wrong.
 
Pinedale Anticline & Jonah field were both fracked from the beginning. The Jonah had a 5 acre well spacing applied not because of directional, but because the resource could support it. It's a moonscape out there now, and according to science funded by industry, the Pinedale Anticline field is the largest reason for a 60% drop in the mule deer herd.

Both fields had multiple restrictions waived that would have protected wildlife in winter and in terms spacing.

These fields are the poster children for development done wrong.

That's good to know. Thanks for the info. My experiences are mainly in other fields with half mile spacing, that were only developed recently, under the newest technologies.
I thought I'd share this..
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/11/opinion/can-liberals-frack.html?_r=0

Again, I'm not just all for blanket approval of fracking, especially this example that is harming mule deer.
On the contrary, a blanket rule of not fracking anywhere in the nation would be much more destructive, big picture.
 
That's good to know. Thanks for the info. My experiences are mainly in other fields with half mile spacing, that were only developed recently, under the newest technologies.
I thought I'd share this..
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/11/opinion/can-liberals-frack.html?_r=0

Again, I'm not just all for blanket approval of fracking, especially this example that is harming mule deer.
On the contrary, a blanket rule of not fracking anywhere in the nation would be much more destructive, big picture.

I agree. It's important to do it right. While I sympathize with the Keep it in the Ground folks, it's not a feasable strategy for maintaining energy production or ensuring we don't end up under-producing.
 
Gas wells certainly haven't done much destruction here in my state.They replant the roads with excellent forage for our animals.Not many sportsmen here complaining.There's always going to be biggest negative produced by the left to try and prove a point.Some of you on here take a page right out of an anti book,half truths and propaganda. You all vote for Hillary and tell me how much better off as sportsman or a nation we will be
 
As has been pointed out, Trump Jr. isn't gonna be Secretary. But let's not bury the lede...

"They have made the calculation that the hook-and-bullet crowd is the relevant demographic here, but the reality is the professional hook-and-bullet crowd is a small group compared to [those who care] about federal land management in the West," said Mike McKenna, a GOP strategist and energy lobbyist. "I can't think of a single issue other than this one where he's so far out over his skis."

Given Trump's history of wishy-washiness on public lands, and his kissing and making up with Speaker Ryan this morning, how long until "GOP strategists and energy lobbyists" have the presumptive nominee right where they want him on this issue?
 
. . . how long until "GOP strategists and energy lobbyists" have the presumptive nominee right where they want him on this issue?

That's the million dollar question. He might split a baby that's already been split. Especially if he thinks the way things are constitutes the base line. He is, after all, a wheeler and dealer.
 
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Gas wells certainly haven't done much destruction here in my state.They replant the roads with excellent forage for our animals.Not many sportsmen here complaining.There's always going to be biggest negative produced by the left to try and prove a point.Some of you on here take a page right out of an anti book,half truths and propaganda. You all vote for Hillary and tell me how much better off as sportsman or a nation we will be

..gottdangt breath of fresh air post right there.
 
Gas wells certainly haven't done much destruction here in my state.They replant the roads with excellent forage for our animals.Not many sportsmen here complaining.There's always going to be biggest negative produced by the left to try and prove a point.Some of you on here take a page right out of an anti book,half truths and propaganda. You all vote for Hillary and tell me how much better off as sportsman or a nation we will be

dag nab it. busted!

;)

Which state?
 
Some of you on here take a page right out of an anti book,half truths and propaganda.

Yeah, that's the sole province of the anti book. :rolleyes:

Every time I see one of those million dollar commercials with the woman (invariably) in hiking boots with back pack, marching through mountain wild flowers and telling us how she's a greenie working on the inside for oil, you know, to make sure they do it right and protect her children, I just know it's all truth and no propaganda.
 
Fracking is one of the worst things to ever happen in our environment. The devastation resulting from fracking is horrific. The pollution and ruin of the water table is criminal. It also takes millions of gallons of water for each well and that should also be a mafor concern fpr those of us in the arrid west.


clearly you have no idea what you are talking about....but that's cool.
 
clearly you have no idea what you are talking about....but that's cool.

Yes,and you are in the same boat I guess...but that's cool.
The damage in NW & SE NM is evident & everywhere.

Clean up your mess,I'm not your mother.
 
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