The Center for Western Priorities had piece in their newsletter that I think is worthy of discussion.
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“Protected” seems to be a code word used by certain interests. Is standard BLM and FS management not “protected”? On The Smokey Wire, we spend many, many electrons on various facets of protective designations and regulations. I’d like to substitute for “protected” in this discussion “not protected enough for us” which would encourage them to tell us to learn exactly what the land is to be protected from. If there is some looming threat out there, what is it?
I’ve seen maps in which Roadless doesn’t count as “protected” because to some folks’ way of thinking, it’s not “permanent.” In real life, though, Roadless has stood the test of time. Using the Antiquities Act to make land management decisions actually may not stand the test of time.
Again, we hear the argument “your access won’t change” but that’s not folks’ experience. Maybe another option to Monumentizing would be to restrict future mining and oil and gas via a withdrawal.. if that’s really the point. but maybe withdrawals don’t count in meeting the “protected” target.
This is what the FS and BLM are doing with the Thompson Divide:
The USFS and BLM requested 224,713 acres of lands be withdrawn from all forms of entry, appropriation, and disposal under the public land laws, mining laws, and mineral and geothermal leasing laws, subject to valid existing rights
Apparently this is for 20 years, according to the Center for American Progress.
To ensure these values are lasting, in October 2022, the Biden administration announced it would protect the area from new oil and gas drilling. This move, formally known as a “mineral withdrawal,” would take more than 225,000 acres off the table for oil, gas, and mining development, protecting an area long known to be too special to drill.
Just an aside, when I worked on Colorado Roadless, some groups did not want leasing even with NSO stipulations (no surface occupancy), which means that it could be drilled only from structures outside the “protected” area. I asked them why this mattered since there is no environmental impacts to the protected area (other than carbon, but that’s another story). All I can figure is that there is a deeply imbedded form of “oil and gas” hate in some folks, which I would like to understand better. Or perhaps I should say a “domestic oil and gas hate”. Which may remind us a bit of the wood products industry.
But what I think is most interesting is the economic argument. What happened to Edward Abbey’s thinking? I thought that that was part of the western US environmental movement.
“Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.”
― The Journey Home: Some Words in Defense of the American West
There is certainly a counterargument from the quality of life perspective. First, “economic growth” doesn’t help everyone equally. Trails become more crowded. You can’t find a place to park at the trailhead. Camping needs to be restricted to campgrounds due to overuse. Then you have to make reservations through recreation.gov and a large corporation gets its take. And more than likely you won’t be able to get a reservation at all. Tourists need housing, they use water and sewage and electricity. Rentals become too expensive for workers in comparison to tourists. Life is just not as good for people who live there, especially for those who are at the lower economic rungs.
Let’s go to a Headwaters analysis.
Headwaters Economics, a non-partisan, non-profit economic research institute conducted three studies covering 17 national monuments designated between 1982 and 2001. They have released new numbers for 2017, and those numbers are exciting. According to Headwaters: “…trends in important economic indicators either continued or improved in each of the regions surrounding the 17 national monuments studied. Data for per capita income, a widely accepted measure of prosperity, show that this measurement increased for the studied counties adjacent to every national monument in the years following establishment. This rise in personal wealth is significant, particularly in rural areas where average earnings per job are often declining.”
With all due respect to our Headwaters friends, and given that some of my favorite people are economists, per capita income may be greater because more well-off people moved there. Or some people are making more money from tourists. What if we interviewed people (not in the tourism industry) about their quality of life and how it has changed? How is this process different from gentrification in cities, which everyone acknowledges has a good and a bad side?
Anyway, it just seems odd to me that an Admin who cares about the marginalized and lower income folks may be acting in ways that are counter to their interest. I wonder whether this point of view is expressed in WH discussions about Monumentization. And if the communities are not as well off, shouldn’t their voices be heard more or less as preferentially as other less-well-off communities? If Monumentizing is about what Western Priorities says it is.. then why not do a mineral withdrawal? If not, what is it about? Other than meeting someone’s protection targets.
Yes, “protected” is an anesthetizing adjective long used to make people think that an area isn’t already protected. It really means that there’s more public access than the “protected” advocates like.
And, invariably, the degree of access they claim will conserve the land corresponds to permit what they like to do on that land, as opposed to what other people like to do.
Thus Wilderness, in which the pack outfitter industry is quite sure that their large mammals and intrusive multiday camps have no material environmental impact, whereas two-hour visits by those pesky mountain bikers on 25-pound bikes would ruin everything. The dovetailing is quite remarkable.
Today is Super Tuesday. I suppose the congressional partisan divide will remain in place after the results emerge, with the Martin Heinrich absolutists continuing to be arrayed against the frustrated Steve Daineses.
In this day and age, I feel we all should be protecting rural communities. Growth has become a cancer everywhere. All the new designations, whether Wilderness, National Parks, Monuments, do is attract hordes of people who are looking to relocate. These people drive up prices and taxes for longtime locals who have adapted to these little towns over the decades. These places are quickly ruined by the hordes, who also ruin the natural amenities by being everywhere all the time. The best way to protect an area is to keep it off the map, off of the tourist radar. Once an area gets a special designation, Ironically its not protected any longer.
I agree. I’ve seen that aplenty, and I hope that inspiring areas I’ve discovered remain mere public land and don’t become “protected,” because here come Mr. and Mrs. Winnebago by the tens of thousands and dozens of motels spring up and hordes of the Patagonia-clad tread everywhere with their Vibram soles and REI backpacks and it’s all over.
These types of things are always a win for senators and congressmen. Politicians are able to say it is supported by the locals, like the owners of hotels and restaurants and investment real estate. Gas stations, auto repair, grocery, etc.
Americans vacationing on the other side of the world also support it via donations to non profit environmental groups. If you are a mega donor to a congressman he picks up the phone when you call even if you are calling from your house in Chile or the south of France.
Presidents support these kinds of thing, it cements their environmental legacy.
The right kinds of user groups support it. Keep the loud rednecks that shoot guns and ride ATVs out.
Who objects, no one with the least little bit of power or leverage. Objectors won’t make it to the hearings, they are at work, not Denver mid day mid week.
Same ol same ol. Oh, and I’d hardly call headwaters non partisan. Maybe not R or D, but certainly big E as in Environmentalists.
According to voters in the Rocky Mountain West President Joe Biden’s 30×30 Initiative is popular even among Republicans. In July, 2023 the Center for Western Priorites found 92% of 10,000 comments encouraged the Interior Department to adopt the US Bureau of Land Management’s Public Lands Rule as written or even strengthen its conservation measures.
Under provisions of the 1906 Antiquities Act President Joe Biden’s America the Beautiful initiative includes protecting some 245,000 acres of Chihuahuan Desert and Florida Mountains in Luna County, New Mexico.
Most of the proposed Mimbres Peaks National Monument is on US Bureau of Land Management ground and could provide nearly $12 million in new economic activity, support over eighty new jobs and generate thousands of dollars in new state, county, and local revenues.
But of course Republicans like Yvette Herrell and the American Farm Bureau Federation are leading opposition to the plan. AFBF is notorious for conflicts of interest and denying the human effects on a warming climate while lobbying extensively for crop insurance in the federal farm bill and against Waters of the United States or WOTUS rules.
Margaret Byfield is the daughter of a couple with ties to the so-called Sagebrush Rebellion and in Nevada they grazed their cattle without permits on federal land. In 2022 her group, American Stewards of Liberty presented anti-Earth resolutions to a receptive Otero County Commission and the San Juan County Commission heard two resolutions dealing with land use issues after watching Byfield’s dog and pony show. Her husband, Dan has been a lobbyist for the Texas Farm Bureau.
Here in New Mexico, Republican ideologues who poke at competitors and declare their derision for those in public service simply reinforce my quest to move the Forest Service into Interior as a sister agency or even married to the Bureau of Land Management in cooperation with the Bureau of Indian Affairs and local tribal governments.
Nevertheless, Republican ranchers ginned up by the likes of South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, Wyoming’s US Representative Harriet Hageman, disgraced former Otero County Commissioner Couy Griffin, rabble-rouser Byfield and others are plotting violence against public land managers in the West.
I’m curious why a national monument would be more likely to be shrunk or de-monumentized than a mineral withdrawal be canceled by, say, a President with a different set of values?
I agree that creating new national monuments puts these areas on the map and probably attracts more people, but there are a lot of other forces doing that in the rural West too. For example, I lived just outside Del Norte, Colorado for more than 30 years. We used to call the town Dull Norte. Then, the historic Windsor Hotel was fixed up complete with a high quality restaurant, a decent microbrew and wood fire pizza restaurant was added down the street and the BLM created a new mountain bike trail system in the foothills just outside of town. Add to that high speed fiber internet installed by our local rural electric cooperative and Del Norte is on the map.
Del Norte is going through a rural gentrification process and housing prices are skyrocketing. The value of my house – that I sold to my daughter for what she called the “special daughter discount rate” – increased 80% in four years.
Now I live west of Creede, Colorado. I had my first Forest Service seasonal job here in 1978, so I have come full circle. Back then, the local silver mine was the primary economic driver (I worked there one winter between seasonal gigs). Housing was affordable. The mine closed in 1985 and there were a lot of bargains for buying houses. There are no national monuments or national parks in the area, but it is in the heart of the San Juan Mountains and a long day’s drive from Texas and Oklahoma. Add to that relatively newly designed motorized recreational vehicles and now sedentary urbanites from hot climates with a fair amount of discretionary money have a cool climate playground. I can say with certainty, that the amount of noise and dust in the area has increased substantially since my first years here.
Another thing going on in attractive rural towns is semi-wealthy people are purchasing or building second homes, staying in them for two weeks a year (to be fair, some stay all summer) and then put them up as short-term rentals on VRBO. I would guess that 75% of the homes in Mineral County (where I now live) are second homes. As in many mountain towns, there is a serious affordable housing shortage for service workers.
So, what I am saying is it doesn’t take the designation of a national monument to totally change a rural town, but certainly such a designation can also do that by attracting people to a beautiful place that was overlooked.
Didn’t the Trump Admin roll back the area of a bunch of Monuments? maybe that got held up in court? Can’t remember. I’d feel more confident about the permanency if the Supreme Court had ruled on whether these large Monuments meet the requirements of the Antiquities Act.
https://apnews.com/article/biden-bears-ears-lawsuit-dismissed-0e3e0805ba3fe5756c32a944bd7d29bb
“Utah Gov. Spencer Cox and the office of Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes said the state would begin work immediately on an appeal. The Republican governor predicted that the issue would ultimately be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.”
Yes, and that is the point of my question. It was never determined in court if it was legal because it became moot when Biden expanded them. But, if Trump felt like he could roll back the area of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase – Escalante, why wouldn’t he or another president feel like they could cancel, or maybe reduce the area of, a mineral withdrawal, especially with a stacked SCOTUS.
I agree with much of the discussion of the optics of the politics and the potential impacts/changes that may occur when an area receives monument designation. But, I also think it is important to look beyond those issues and dig into whether an area deserves national monument status.
Additionally, I think it is disingenuous for supporters to argue that management won’t change in order to soften objections made by those against designation. It would seem like that is one of the primary purposes of creating a national monument – it is to highlight and protect the qualities that make the area worthy of national monument status.
Tell the truth and listen to the arguments for and against. Unfortunately, that isn’t a popular process in the federal government or among special interest groups on all sides.
Maybe this is semantics, but I think it is not inconsistent to say that current management will not change, but future management could. As in that mine that isn’t there now, but could be in the future, but would be prohibited by monument designation. True that future planning could change some existing management, but that is true with or without a monument. That said, I agree that this is all discussed rather loosely to advance particular arguments.
Semantics are important, of course, since semantics are the meaning of words, but I think when someone says, “management won’t change” there is an inference of future management. When an area is designated as a national monument there is generally direction to develop a new management plan.
And I’d add, if management won’t change at all, what’s the point of making the public and employees engage in another laborious planning process?
Well, in theory (and I think that means legally), neither the agency nor outside proponents/opponents know if management will change until they go through that planning process. (If there is something in the proclamation that clearly requires a change in management and puts sideboards on the planning process, then statements that there would not be a change as a result of the monument would not be true.)
And now this from the BLM:
“The Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service are seeking public input on a draft plan to guide management of the Bears Ears National Monument, incorporating considerable input from the Bears Ears Commission, the State of Utah, other cooperating agencies, and the public. The agencies are committed to ensuring that existing uses of cattle grazing, recreation and traditional gathering of firewood and plants continues as part of the monument’s management.”
https://www.blm.gov/announcement/blm-usda-forest-service-invite-input-bears-ears-national-monument-draft-plan