PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — Maine’s governor has asked Republican President Donald Trump to undo Democratic former President Barack Obama’s designation of a national monument.
Republican Gov. Paul LePage asked Trump to take the unprecedented step of returning land in the northern part of the state to private ownership in a Feb. 14 letter. Burt’s Bees co-founder Roxanne Quimby’s foundation donated the land in hopes of revitalizing a struggling rural area.
The governor says if the land remains a federal monument the state should manage it to avoid economic damage. He says he wants to “make the Maine woods great again.”
LePage says he’s hopeful Trump will heed opponents of the monument in Maine’s 2nd Congressional District, which sent Trump an electoral college vote.
Republican U.S. Sen. Susan Collins says it’s a “real legal question” whether Trump can undo the designation.
Quimby’s son calls LePage’s letter disappointing.
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“How am I supposed to get Eric the Impaler and Don Jr. up here for a hunting trip and sleazy business deal if we can’t slaughter everything we come across in the woods?”
On the other hand, LePage understands Trump well: anything to piss on Obama’s legacy.
LePage is right to want the state to manage the privately donated woods. It’s been accepted scientific fact that “Trees cause more pollution than automobiles do” ever since noted arborist Ronald Reagan released his groundbreaking in-depth study in 1981.
This would also dovetail nicely with extensive studies by another noted arborist, George W. Bush, who signed the Clean Air Act of 2003 into law, allowing expanded logging operations of pollution-spewing trees on federal lands.
If we can’t trust a blimp, a saint and a shrub to oversee the protection the environment who can we trust?