This Week at Interior April 16, 2021

This Week, at Interior 

Secretary Haaland this week issued a new Secretarial Order establishing a Climate Task Force to coordinate work across the Department, including accelerating renewable energy development and identifying actions to foster investments in energy communities. 

I know that signing Secretarial Orders alone won’t address the urgency of the climate crisis – far from it. But I’m hopeful that these steps will help make clear that we, as a Department, have a mandate to act. With the vast experience, talent, and ingenuity of our public servants here at the Department of the Interior, I’m optimistic about what we can accomplish together to care for our land so that it is there for future generations to come.

Secretary Haaland will deliver a keynote address at the 20th Session of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues on April 19. Indigenous peoples around the world are disproportionally impacted by the ongoing health, economic, climate, and racial injustice crises.   

USGS teamed up with NASA this week for a virtual event announcing the global release of Google’s “Earth 3D Timelapse” visualization tool. That's an interactive 3D exploration layer on Google Earth from an in-orbit perspective. It uses nearly 40 years of Landsat Earth observation data. 

The National Park Service this week formally took over management of the National World War I Memorial from the World War I Centennial Commission. The memorial is currently under construction along Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington DC just one block east of the White House. It commemorates the service and sacrifice of the more than 116,000 Americans who died in that conflict, and the 4.7 million Americans who served in uniform from 1917 to 1918. The memorial is scheduled for completion in 2024. 

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management this week announced it's negotiated a lease with St. Johns County, Florida, to provide access to approximately 1.1 million cubic yards of sand and sediment. BOEM will use that to rebuild five miles of dunes on South Ponte Vedra Beach to help restore coastal resiliency. 

Thursday April 15th was World Art Day, an international celebration to promote creative activity around the globe. Interior manages one of the world's largest museum collections—over 73 million cultural artifacts and natural history specimens, including more than a hundred thousand works of art. Check out more on our blog at doi.gov. 

Just in time for National Park Week, the new National Park Service mobile app is now available across the country. Created by park rangers with visitors in mind, the NPS App gives the public up-to-date information about all 423 national parks in one easy-to-use app. National Park Week starts Saturday April 17th and runs through April 25th... the new app will help visitors discover their next national park adventure and learn more about these incredibly special places. Find out more at nps.gov. 

And our social media Picture of the Week comes from Yellowstone National Park, where each spring, the energetic and playful bison calves or "red dogs" join the herd. Here we see this newborn with mom...it's just minutes old, fighting against a slight breeze to balance and hold itself up for the very first time. 

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That's This Week, at Interior.