Earl Blumenauer: “Truly phenomenal resources for individual citizens or policy-makers that want to be able to understand what these…”

“Truly phenomenal resources for individual citizens or policy-makers that want to be able to understand what these challenges are. The approach is simple: Deal with the information that is available to us; change the philosophy from one of exploitation which, sadly, we have not been able for a variety of forces to do something on public lands in this country. Sadly, the Mining Act of 1872 exists virtually identically to the bill that was signed into law by President Ulysses S. Grant 131 years ago. This is an opportunity for us to move past that, changing the philosophy from one of exploitation to one of conservation and protection. To be able to reduce the pressures on fisheries and environment, these are things that are within our power. We do not have to wait. What just happened in Canada where the cod fisheries collapsed and they had to stop all fishing because it got to the point where they had verged on destroying the species. It does not have to get to that point.”