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The latest on the Key Bridge collapse, New York puts forth legislation to get clean energy projects on the grid and Wisconsin and other states join a federal summer food program to help feed kids across the country.

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Republicans float conspiracy theories on the collapse of Baltimore's Key Bridge, South Carolina's congressional elections will use a map ruled unconstitutional, and the Senate schedules an impeachment trial for Homeland Secretary Mayorkas.

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Historic wildfires could create housing and health issues for rural Texans, a Kentucky program helps prison parolees start a new life, and descendants of Nicodemus, Kansas celebrate the Black settlers who journeyed across the 1870s plains seeking self-governance.

National Park Advisory Board Members Depart After DOI Disregard

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Friday, January 19, 2018   

CHEYENNE, Wyo. — After nine of the twelve members of the National Park Service Advisory Board resigned this week, public lands supporters are noticing what they say is a pattern of indifference from Secretary Ryan Zinke's Interior Department.

In a resignation letter unveiled this week by the Washington Post, board chairman Tony Knowles said repeated requests to meet with Zinke have been ignored. He also expressed concern that stewardship and protection of national parks have been "set aside."

Phil Francis, chair of the Coalition to Protect America's National Parks, said he agrees, and called the agency's actions over the past year - from reducing the size of national monuments to opening up lands to energy development - discouraging.

"I spent 41 years in the National Park Service trying to protect and preserve these natural and cultural resources for future generations,” Francis said. “And many of the actions taken, in our view, are sort of an assault on our mission."

Interior spokeswoman Heather Swift said the agency denies that it refused to meet with the board.

The National Park System Advisory Board was created in 1935 and designates national historic or natural landmarks. The terms of most of the nine members who quit were set to expire in May.

Recently, the advisory board has focused on climate change and how to encourage younger and more diverse visitors to national parks. But they said these items aren't part of Interior's agenda.

Francis called the agency's treatment of the board disrespectful. He said Interior is holding some hypocritical positions. For instance, the department has expressed concern for national parks' $11 billion maintenance backlog even though it also supports a 13 percent budget cut to the Park Service.

"It just seems like instead of being supportive of our national park and its values - which to me represent the really important places in our country's history and wonderful natural resources - just the opposite is happening,” Francis said.

He said he is hopeful people will stand up for national parks, and that he gets emails from people every day expressing support for public lands.


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