[env-trinity] Trump administration suspends citizen advisory group meetings

[Tom Stokely]

Trump administration suspends citizen advisory group meetings
Damon Arthur , Record Searchlighthttp://www.redding.com/story/news/local/2017/06/01/trump-administration-suspends-citizen-advisory-group-meetings/342513001/

Federal officials won’t be hearing from a group of North State residents, businesses and environmentalists about work going on in the Trinity River for the next several months.Meetings of the group, called the Trinity Adaptive Management Working Group, have been canceled, along with meetings of dozens of other citizen advisory panels across the country.The U.S. Department of the Interior, overseeing salmon and trout habitat restoration work in the Trinity River, has suspended activities of its advisory groups while the agency evaluates their effectiveness.Tom Stokely, chairman of the Trinity River advisory group, said because meetings have been suspended, the group will not be providing comment on such things as the Trinity River Restoration Program budget and providing recommendations on watershed projects.“The TAMWG members already feel our recommendations are largely rejected, so this will further some of the TAMWG members’ frustration with the TRRP,” Stokely said. “Overall, I think the delay will make the stakeholders feel more disenfranchised than they are already.”Paul R. Ross, a spokesman for the Department of the Interior, issued a statement that said a review of its advisory groups is common when a new presidential administration takes office. Suspending the meetings is only temporary, he said.“An initial roll call of the advisory committees revealed that many of the committees advising the department were not operating at their full potential, were not using taxpayer dollars efficiently, or were not meeting basic benchmarks of FACA (Federal Advisory Committee Act),” the statement said.“Many (panels) had several vacancies, making the board inoperable, and others simply hadn't met for some time during the previous administration,” the statement said.The Interior Department is the umbrella agency for nine other bureaus, including the Bureau of Land Management, Fish and Wildlife Service and the Bureau of Reclamation.Jeff Fontana, a spokesman for the Bureau of Land Management in Northern California, said meetings of the agency’s resource advisory committees also have been suspended during the review, expected to last through September.The 15-member councils are made up of people representing various interest groups, such as recreation, timber, livestock grazing, archaeology and the environment, he said.The group meets three or four times a year to advise the BLM on land-use planning issues in Northern California, Fontana said.A group of eight western Democratic legislators recently wrote a letter to Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke expressing concern over suspending meetings.Canceling meetings could result in loss of funding for local forest management projects paid for through the Secure Rural Schools Act, according to the letter.The letter, also signed by California Sen. Dianne Feinsten, says the committees are a useful tool for resolving thorny land-use issues in the West."By working through difficult land management issues and getting local input from the beginning, projects are more likely to succeed," the letter says. "Without this tool, many good land management projects would never be completed."The U.S. Department of Agriculture also has local resource advisory councils affiliated with the U.S. Forest Service’s national forests, including the Shasta-Trinity National Forest.However, the Department of Agriculture has not suspended meetings of its councils, a Shasta-Trinity National Forest official said.
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