Checking In On Old Friends

There’s so much evil in the Trump administration that sometimes, really awful people can be forgotten about when the next scandal hits. So what has our old friend Ryan Zinke been up to lately?

The Trump administration could harm the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument, a protected area of the Atlantic Ocean about 130 miles southeast of Cape Cod, Mass., by allowing commercial fishing.

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke has recommended that commercial fishing resume in the 4,913-square-mile Atlantic Ocean monument, home to the endangered sperm whale and 9-foot-tall cold-water corals, and two protected areas in the Pacific Ocean.

“With the removal of fishing restrictions, a lot of the benefits of having this undisturbed area go away,” said Peter Auster, senior research scientist at the Mystic Aquarium in Connecticut.

Seth Horstmeyer of the conservation nonprofit Oceans 5 said monuments could become monuments in name alone or “paper monuments.”

Former President Barack Obama designated the area a marine monument in September 2016, prohibiting commercial fishing except for lobster and red crab which were supposed to be phased out within seven years. About one-third larger than Yellowstone National Park, the 4,900 square-mile marine monument has three underwater canyons and four extinct undersea volcanoes, or seamounts, that rise up to 7,000 feet above the ocean floor, higher than any mountain east of the Rockies.

With all the overfishing in the world, marine monuments are really necessary to keep species alive. It’s not an all-encompassing solution because fish move a lot and will leave the protected area, but it’s a good start. But since extinction is an actual goal of the Republican Party so long as anyone can make money off it, we can’t even have that.

In conclusion, both parties are the same except that the Democrats are more neoliberal.