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Letter: The world and its treasures do not belong to us

(Brian Maffly | The Salt Lake Tribune) Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, left, and Rep. Rob Bishop toured Zion National Park's campgrounds on Monday, Sept. 24, 2018. Zinke was in Utah promoting bipartisan legislation sponsored by Bishop addressing the National Park Service's $12 billion maintenance backlog.

I am concerned about the implications of Rob Bishop’s Restore Our Parks and Public Lands Act, which was touted during Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke’s recent visit to Utah. It proposes to pay for national park infrastructure through energy development within the parks themselves.

What it will inevitably do is open up these lands for gas, oil and coal extraction, which is something that seems to be an undying obsession with our representatives.

I hold no illusions as to whether or not it will pass, but I simply ask if the ugly and defiled world a few of us seem bent on creating is what we truly want as Utahns and as stewards. The world and its treasures do not belong to us, for our time here is short. A few may sit on piles of money as a result of these legislative crusades, but once it succeeds can it ever restore the beauties of creation that surround us?

After too long, just how much of the land will warrant infrastructure maintenance once more and more of it is pillaged?

Wesley Long, Murray

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