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Letter Documents How Interior Secretary Has Failed the Nation
Contact: Nicole Rosmarino (505) 699-7404

DENVER – WildEarth Guardians sent a letter to President Obama today, calling for the resignation of Interior Secretary Ken Salazar. A total of 101 scientists and conservation groups signed the letter, representing states across the nation.

“Mr. Salazar’s failure to clean up Interior is why we’re seeing the mess in the Gulf. We need serious mopping up within this department, and it should start with Salazar leaving,” said Nicole Rosmarino of WildEarth Guardians.

The letter details how, although he’s pledged to confront the climate crisis and despite rampant scandals within multiple agencies of the Interior Department, Secretary Salazar has failed to live up to his tough talk about being the “new sheriff in town.”

“The Interior Department is one of the most critical departments in confronting the myriad of crises confronting us: the economy, peak oil, climate disruption, resource depletion, species extirpation, water shortages… the list goes on. We are now facing the consequences of our choices. As evidenced by the horrifying disaster in the Gulf, we’ve taken increasingly greater risks for the sake of oil and profit, putting frightening events into motion that we can’t control. We need decisive leadership now to respond to these multiple and compounding crises like the true emergencies that they are, and with innovative solutions not by repeating past mistakes,” stated Gloria Flora, Executive Director of Sustainable Obtainable Solutions and former Forest Supervisor of two national forests. Ms. Flora is one of the signatories to the letter.

Two key agencies within Interior that were racked by scandal when the Obama administration took office – the Minerals Management Service (MMS) and the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) – continue to fall down on the job. Despite Mr. Salazar’s pledge in January 2009 to clean up MMS, the agency has shown a reckless lack of oversight of the oil and gas industry, leading up to and even after the disastrous collapse of BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico.

In addition, FWS and Secretary Salazar continue to delay endangered species protection for 300 species that await listing under the Endangered Species Act, some of which have been waiting for federal safeguards for decades. Secretary Salazar has also come under fire for his approval of the Bush administration’s decision to remove protections for gray wolves in much of the Northern Rockies. Since their legal protections were stripped away a year ago, more than 400 wolves have been killed in Idaho and Montana.

The letter discusses a gap between the words and actions of Secretary Salazar. While Mr. Salazar has named climate change, fueled by greenhouse gas emissions, as a crisis that needs to be confronted, he has allowed massive coal leasing in the Powder River Basin in Wyoming and Montana. Coal production and use in coal-fired power plants is the largest source of greenhouse gases in the U.S. In court filings, Mr. Salazar disputes both the climate and extinction crises.

This gap between Mr. Salazar’s talk and actions is most vivid right now in the Gulf of Mexico. Despite his criticism of British Petroleum after the April 22, 2010 oil spill began, Secretary Salazar’s own department granted at least 27 exemptions from federal laws for oil drillers in the Gulf after the explosion and collapse of Deepwater Horizon.

View the Letter sent to Obama here(PDF)