John Curtis

The repeal of this designation is critical to proper management of these lands.

The best environmentalists in the world--by the way, they hate to be called environmentalists, our farmers and ranchers are the best environmentalists in the world--have been taking care of and preserving and protecting these lands.

In the West we know far better how to manage these lands, and have done better for decades and decades, than any bureaucrat in the East Coast could ever imagine or ever dream of managing these lands.

We have bureaucrats on the East Coast who have never been to my district, who have hardly been to the West, other than to fly over it on their way to California, tell us that they know better than we do how to manage these lands.

Nothing good has come out of that designation for the land in Utah, for the local tribes, and for the people who participate in this land.

Let me state clearly for the record that for decades, and decades, and decades, the good people of Utah have managed these lands in a responsible way.

This rule undermines the work of real conservatives, conservationists like farmers and ranchers who have kept the land in good health.

We are writing in support of S. 1435/H.R. 3397, legislation that would require the Director of the Bureau of Land Management to withdraw a proposed rule entitled 'Conservation and Landscape Health'.

Fire is an all-hands issue, and wildland fires don't respect boundaries, right?

I would love to join my colleague, Mr. Neguse, in a bipartisan manner to deal with these preventative issues.

It does give us an opportunity and a platform to talk about some of these issues on a really bipartisan level.

How is that acceptable? These--remember these chemicals are critical for many things in the healthcare industry...

Just for the sake of time, I am just going to leave that footnote with you that, of course, the state of Utah would love to be deeply involved in both identifying and managing those areas.

We feel very good about the relationship.

Our relationship with you is just critical.

I appreciate your professionalism.

My colleague Rep McClintock and I sent a letter to you last year urging you to end the Let Burn policies.

I am going to make you a proposal that we would love to host you in Utah.

I think we as lawmakers and policy makers need to understand it is not as easy as waving a wand and protecting all of this area because we have designated it.

It's a great bill. It actually passed on a bipartisan basis in the 115th Congress, and I'd to commend this bill to my colleagues as one possible solution to help us move through this.

When we talk about these delays, 90 percent of this property, you--it takes years and years and years to permit.

My district is not only rural, half of it is classified as frontier. Now layer over top of that that the vast majority of it, 90 percent of the land, is owned by the Federal Government.

Almost 20 years after the passage of the Energy Policy Act in 2005, we still do not have enough petroleum engineers, geologists, and staff within the Bureau of Indian Affairs to support development of Indian energy resources.

We are taking that responsibility away from the state, and we are going to take that, and I think when we make these decisions, we have to step up for that.

We feel like we preserve and protect that area in a magnificent way, and now the Federal Government has taken it over without adding any resources.