A new leader is settling in at the U.S. House Natural Resources Committee: U.S. Rep. Raul Grijalva.

“I’m from the West,” said the Arizona Democrat. “I grew up — born-and-raised in Arizona, grew up on a ranch. My daddy was a cowboy and he worked construction. So that runs through me.”

Grijalva says his Natural Resources Committee will operate differently than the committee did during the past four years, when U.S. Rep. Rob Bishop was chairman. Bishop, a Utah Republican, supported the Trump administration’s “energy dominance” agenda and the downsizing of two national monuments in southern Utah’s redrock country, Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante.

By contrast Grijalva’s already planning to investigate those monument decisions. And the committee has already fielded a bill to restore the original boundaries of the Bears Ears. Next week the committee’s first hearing is expected to focus on climate change.

KUER’s Judy Fahys talked with the new Natural Resources chairman in his Capitol Hill office, where Grijalva said Congress needs to hear from monument supporters who say they were snubbed by former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, who advised President Donald Trump to shrink the Utah monuments.

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Source: KUER 90.1 NPR Utah – Feb 1, 2019
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