National Parks employees openly tells Utah local “your food and heat do not matter”

August 25, 2016, “Again, your food and heat do not matter more than our children’s views. Flat out.”

Jeremy Matthew Childs works for the National Parks Service, the federal agency currently in the middle of a human rights struggle over who controls the lands and resources of the ‘Bears Ears’ region in southeastern Utah.

As outdoor gear corporations, and environmentalist groups join forces with President Obama and his Interior Secretary Sally Jewell against the interests of Natives and locals who live in the actual Bears Ears region–1.9 million acres in San Juan County–the curtains are being pulled back to reveal the ugly agendas behind a potential new national monument. Jeremy Matthew Childs is the poster child for that ugly agenda, which is, in a nutshell; “The less people the better, even if it means you go without.”

Kara Lews, a resident of San Juan County, had the following Facebook conversation with Jeremy Matthew Childs. The Department of Interior, and its chief, Sally Jewell, control the numerous national parks and monuments in Utah, which in recent years have become the source of painful conflict and economic devastation.

In the following conversation about trails which were apparently blocked by one of the numerous federal land management agencies in San Juan County, Childs seems to take a position that domesticated dogs and their human owners are bad for nature.

With astounding arrogance he infers that locals have no place on the lands upon which they live and depend. In his replay to Kara he says: “I am also guessing they deal with the locals who are acting as if the land is their own personal playground and riding their ATVs and horses wherever they please…”

Childs’ response, revealing what appears to be an ugly, anti-human use agenda follows, “The people on the land will come second, as it should be. People come and go, the land is forever.”

Kara Lewis goes on to explain to the federal employee that many people in San Juan County–which is Utah’s most economically distressed county–especially those belonging to local Native tribes, must have access to areas that are, or will be closed off, to gather the resources upon which they depend for their subsistence lifestyles.

His reply is chilling, “Again, your food and heat do not matter more than our children’s views. Flat out.”

Shockingly, and tragically, his attitude is not unique among many federal employees working for land management agencies who view locals; those who depend upon the resources which just happen to exist in a unique location with a pretty ‘view,’ are a nuisance to be driven off whatever region is coveted by corporatists, environmentalist special interests, and bureaucrats.

In was Jeremy Matthew Childs probably regards as a ‘moral’ answer to the needs of locals, he essentially tells Kara that they must leave because the land will not be ‘habitable’–ignoring the fact that local tribal chapters have ancestors who have lived on and ‘managed’ the land for centuries–but it is ‘visitable.’ Then Childs insists that he is an ‘ally’ to Kara and other locals whose livelihoods and cultures are threatened by bureaucratic overreach and land grabs.

Childs, unfortunately, is a symptom of a widespread, institutionalized anti-human philosophy in federal land management agencies.

by Reagangirl.com  8/25/16