A Step Toward True Tribal Sovereignty
Hannah DowneyAn unprecedented agreement grants five tribes authority to co-manage Bears Ears National Monument.
Policy Director
Hannah Downey is the policy director at PERC, helping to bring free market solutions to environmental policy challenges. Her work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, The Hill, The Salt Lake Tribune, and local papers. After being introduced to PERC in college, she pursued the ideas of free market environmentalism and became a PERC research assistant. She graduated from Montana State University with degrees in economics and political science in 2015.
Though she grew up in the Midwest, Hannah was lucky enough to spend her summers in Montana and worked as a backpacking guide in the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness throughout college. Hannah now calls Bozeman home and fills her spare moments coaching youth mountain biking, serving on the board of the local ski foundation, and enjoying the wonderful outdoors every way she can.
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An unprecedented agreement grants five tribes authority to co-manage Bears Ears National Monument.
Through Good Neighbor Authority, federal agencies are working with states and other western partners to mitigate wildfire risk.
Hannah Downey, PERC policy director, on Montana Talks radio program
There is some risk to prescribed fires, but that risk must be compared to the risk of not conducting fuel treatments and having the forest burn completely.
Ensuring that resources make it to the ground in a timely manner will require policy change.
Private partners are ready to act, and it’s time policymakers free them to start remediating abandoned mines.