U.S. Bureau of Land Management changes website photo from family visiting park to a giant pile of coal

Desdemona Despair

[UPDATE: This has been changed to a photo of a guy fishing. Des suspects a provocateur at work in the BLM.]

By Andrew Freedman
6 April 2017

(Mashable) – Even the smallest of symbolic details can’t escape the changes of life in Trump’s America. The government agency responsible for overseeing a staggering 258 million acres of land, including ecologically vital conservation areas, has changed the image on its homepage from a scenic park vista to a massive, tall pile of coal.

The website change, which happened in the past 24 hours, is in keeping with the Trump administration’s push to drill for oil, natural gas, and minerals on public lands.

The new picture at the top of the site appears to be from Peabody Energy, via Wikimedia Commons. This page identifies it as “an 80 foot coal seam at the North Antelope Rochelle open cut coal mine,” and was taken in 2004.

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM), which is part of the Interior Department, is the lesser-known conservation agency whose vast land holdings take up about one-eighth of the United States, particularly across the West. When most people think about conservation areas, they think of national parks, which are also housed within the same cabinet agency. [more]

Interior Dept. agency changes website from family visiting park to a giant pile of coal

By Paul Rauber
6 April 2017

(Sierra Club) – Anyone logging into the home page of the Bureau of the Land Management is in for a surprise. Instead of the scenic vistas of the past, the greeting image is brutal: A massive coal seam at Peabody Energy’s North Antelope Rochelle open pit mine in Wyoming, the largest in the world. (The image was apparently sourced from Wikimedia Commons.) Here’s what the page used to look like:

Obviously, the Trump administration is moving rapidly to put its stamp on the federal agency that administers nearly 250 million acres of public land, mostly in the Western United States. The agency’s mission is “to sustain the health, diversity, and productivity of the public lands for the use and enjoyment of present and future generations,” but the Trump administration has made it clear that it intends to focus on the “productivity” part. [more]

Meet Your New Bureau of Land Management: A Giant Coal Seam