A new ad from the Pew Environment Group taglined “Don’t Undermine the Grand Canyon” calls on President Barack Obama to extend a one-million-acre mining ban around Grand Canyon National Park for the next 20 years.

Robert Redford

A moratorium on mining within a million acres of the iconic Grand Canyon was imposed by current Interior Secretary and former Colorado Sen. Ken Salazar in 2009, but that ban is set to expire in July. The Obama administration is expected to make a decision on extending the ban this month.

“This is an important opportunity for President Obama to exercise visionary leadership in the tradition of Theodore Roosevelt,” said Jane Danowitz, the Pew Environment Group’s director of U.S. public lands. “At this defining moment, we urge the president to make no further delays and to stand by his administration’s initial recommendation to give this special place the full protection it deserves.”

A Pew Environment report issued last month found that mining claims around Grand Canyon National Park increased 2,000 percent between 2005 and 2010. Many of the claims – mostly for uranium mining – were made by foreign firms, including Russia’s state atomic energy corporation, Rosatom.

Critics claim foreign companies are taking advantage of the antiquated 1872 Mining Law, which provides for no royalty payments to federal or state governments for mining on public lands despite major taxpayer exposure in cleanup operations. Sen. Mark Udall, D-Colo., has previously floated legislation to require royalties, and a bill was introduced this session in the House.

Redford says Ritter is legitimately green and is cutting a path toward lasting prosperity. Hart highlights the growing image Bennet is shaping as a non-politician Jimmy Stewart figure among Washington’s career politicians.

Redford clearly isn’t going to bring over any Tea Partiers to Ritter’s side. His value is in spurring lefties and environmentalists to spend against a Scott McInnis rollback to the 1970s, when a state economy soaked in oil and gas profits looked like it would last a thousand years.

I’m writing to you on behalf of someone I know and admire, Colorado Governor Bill Ritter, as he faces a tough re-election campaign against folks who don’t understand that the New Energy Economy is our surest path to long-term growth and prosperity.

Please join me and support one of America’s “Greenest Governors,” Bill Ritter, by contributing to his campaign today.

Bill Ritter is proving that governments can’t just sit idly and wait for the green economy to arrive at their doorsteps. Governments must play an active role, developing the incentives and public-private partnerships clean energy firms need to get off the ground and flourish.

[...]

Building a more sustainable future and curbing climate change can’t happen without leaders like Bill Ritter. And it certainly can’t happen if his opponents, who boast they’d dismantle Colorado’s burgeoning New Energy Economy, start calling the shots.

Writing in support of Bennet, Hart is hammering at the increasing number of nails ringing the Andrew Romanoff candidacy coffin. But who are Hart’s “fellow supporters” willing to double your donations?

My twelve years serving Colorado in the U.S. Senate provides a unique perspective in defining an effective senator. Like most Coloradans, I take very seriously who represents us in Washington, D.C.

I strongly support Senator Michael Bennet. And I feel so strongly about keeping him in the Senate that I’m organizing a group of fellow supporters to match your contributions to his campaign before the end of the year.

Contribute today to Michael’s 2010 campaign, and we’ll pitch in to double it.

The best indicator of an effective Senator isn’t merely a media-created image. It is the actual work they’ve done, and the accomplishments they’ve achieved.

[...]

We are living in an age of ideology and careerism; those who pander to extreme groups or who search for a vague center in order to stay in office for life.

Michael Bennet is neither. He is among the best of true public servants.

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Federal judge Dee Benson was having none of that, according to the Associated Press, denying a motion by DeChristopher’s lawyers and essentially rejecting his defense that he jacked up the bids at a chaotic BLM auction last December in order to curtail climate change by blocking drilling near iconic national parks like Canyonlands and Arches.

Tim DeChristopher

“Unlike a person demolishing a home to create a firebreak, DeChristopher’s actions were more akin to placing a small pile of dirt in the fire’s path,” Benson reportedly wrote in his ruling – a statement that hopefully at least made sense to the judge.

Benson said DeChristopher should have demonstrated outside the auction, where he could have rubbed elbows with protesting luminaries like Robert Redford, or sued along with other conservationists who ultimately succeeded in getting much of the acreage removed from drilling consideration.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar just last month blocked the most critical acreage near national parks from drilling. The legal system apparently works, is the message there, with a Colorado auction just last week underscoring the point.

The BLM in Colorado auctioned approximately 6,000 acres for $112,969 on Thursday, according to AP, the third smallest amount of leased acres since the late 70s. Exxon Mobil was the big spender, paying a mere $215 an acre for an 81-acre parcel in Rio Blanco County, but clearly the economy and depressed gas prices are still impacting the industry.

Before the Colorado auction, Western Resource Advocates praised a BLM decision to remove from the sale 907 acres adjacent to the Black Mountain Inventoried Roadless Area on the Routt National Forest in Moffat County. WRA filed a protest on behalf of the Colorado Environmental Coalition because the land is critical deer, elk, cutthroat trout and sandhill crane habitat.

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A favorite desert recreation haven for Coloradans and tourists from around the world, the Moab area immortalized by Edward Abbey in “Desert Solitaire” was in the crosshairs of energy development following a December auction in Salt Lake City marked by protests from conservationists such as movie producer and actor Robert Redford and infiltration by a bogus bidder.

On Thursday, Salazar, a former Colorado senator who previously suspended drilling on the 77 leases on more than 100,000 acres sold in that auction, took the advice of an 11-member team comprised of officials from the National Park Service, U.S. Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service.

The team reportedly looked at all the leases and recommended making eight near Canyonlands and Arches off limits due to concerns about sage grouse habitat, 17 available for drilling at future auctions and the other 52 the subject of further study. Oil and gas backers, predictably, were dismayed by what the deemed an ongoing Obama administration assault on domestic energy production.

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Project New West President Jill Hanauer explained today that “by any measure—political, economic, demographic—the region we live in today is a far different place than it was thirty years ago, or even ten years ago. Our goal is to understand these changes and give progressives the tools they need to shape the debate, control the agenda, and achieve lasting success in this changing environment.”

With the West increasing as a key battleground in national elections, attendees will be instructed on what makes it tick. Hanauer, who was not available for comment today, told the Denver Post that attendees would receive comprehensive instruction, everything from how to tell the difference between environmentalism and environmental conservation to how to say “Nevada.”

The Post reports the summit attendees will include Robert Redford, T. Boone Pickens, and U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Project New West’s website notes that Gov. Bill Ritter will also be attending.

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