If confirmed, Timothy Egan argues plainspoken and directly in the New York Times, Sally Jewell would be an unusual secretary of the interior. She’d be one of us. As Egan says, “For all the ranchers and wildcatters, the loggers and right-wing county commissioners who clamor for control of the nation’s public lands, the dominant user is an urbanite, who bikes, skis, rafts, climbs, hunts, fishes, watches birds, waits for sunsets with a camera or finds an antidote for ‘nature deficit disorder’ in a weekend on a high plateau.” Jewell, the former head of REI, is the antidote to secretaries past who know “the interior” but don’t live for it. He calls the tribe a “silent majority,” the true major stakeholders in America’s open spaces, spending more on experiencing the outdoors than Americans do each year on gasoline. If Jewell is confirmed, who knows if her personal outdoor-playing priorities will have any sway over policy. But Egan stresses that given where we’ve been with this office, they sure can’t hurt. Via New York Times.

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