The Department of the Interior has removed almost all mentions of climate change from an agency website documenting efforts to address the phenomenon within government programs for Native Americans.
BuzzFeed News first noticed a webpage for the Bureau of Indian Affairs’ Tribal Climate Resilience Program, originally tasked with “mainstreaming climate change considerations into all Bureau of Indian Affairs activities,” was changed sometime over the past month. The program is now called simply the Tribal Resilience Program and has a mission statement noticeably less science-forward.
“The BIA Tribal Resilience Program provides federal-wide resources to Tribes to build capacity and resilience through leadership engagement, delivery of data and tools, training and tribal capacity building,” the site now reads.
An archive of the webpage from May 13 shows the word “climate” appearing on the page 61 times. The new page lists the word once, in a website header.
The move is not a surprising one for the department, now under the stewardship of Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke.
It has made…
