With the general public becoming enraged about Giant Sequoia logging scenarios, here is a picture of some Bigtrees in what used to be the Sequoia National Forest. Chances are, the review will recommend keeping all groves within the Monument, adding some buffer zones and connectivity, then returning a large portion, including logging roads, skid trails, plantations and stumps, back to the National Forest.
The ‘Trumpspiracies’ abound on the Sierra Club’s Facebook fundraising content comments. They make up these elaborate and unlikely situations where the “logging companies” would come in and make wild profits off of cutting Giant Sequoias. Some think that they would be cut to burn for power. More were sure that oil wells and mining would happen once the trees were gone. One insisted that the wood could be exported, milled and made into tables, “destined for the Arabian Peninsula”. Many are comparing this National Monument review to the destruction of historical sites by radical Islam. If you’re going to oppose actual Trump era actions, maybe, just maybe, one should actually use facts?
With Sequoias being a rather sensitive issue, what shall we do, when very soon we will need to thin some of these Giant Sequoia plantations, scattered throughout the Sierra Nevada? Here’s a sample of one on the Eldorado.
This is an AP story from the Colorado Springs Gazette here:
Zinke, a former Republican congressman from Montana, said he wants to make sure Native American culture is preserved and said Congress should approve legislation granting tribes legal authority to “co-manage” some of the Bears Ears site.
“I have enormous respect for tribes,” Zinke said, adding that he supports Native American efforts to restore “sovereignty, respect and self-determination.”
Instead of the monument designation, which prevents a range of development, Zinke said some of the sprawling, 1.3 million acre site should be designated for conservation or recreation. He called on Congress to approve a land-management bill for Bears Ears and other federal lands.
In the Gazette printed edition, it showed more of the AP story. So I tried to find that at the AP site (had to sign up but free) and found this.
Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke’s recommendation to downsize the new Bears Ears National Monument in Utah was applauded by the state’s top Republican leaders.
However, it marked a stinging setback for a coalition of Western tribes that pushed for protection of lands they consider sacred.
Zinke, a former Republican congressman from Montana, said Monday he’s committed to make sure Native American culture is preserved and vowed to push for Congress to approve legislation granting tribes legal authority to co-manage some of the Bears Ears site.
He said he discussed the idea with the tribes and that they came away happy with the plan.
Several tribal leaders balked at that characterization, saying they weren’t briefed on the plan and consider the idea to be an attempt to temper their criticism.
They joined environmental groups in vowing to file lawsuits if President Donald Trump accepts the recommendation and shrinks the monument.
If I were reporting this, I might call around to different Tribes and find out with whom Zinke had spoken. As reported here, it makes you wonder why the cited Tribes would rather have the Monument as designated, than co-management. I wonder if the reporter spoke with the Inter-Tribal Coalition (they were “several Tribal leaders”). In a wonky way, I also wonder exactly what Zinke means by “co-management,” but agree that it’s an idea worth exploring.
In this more detailed story, by Amy Joi O’Donoghue for the Deseret News, you can see some of the complexities and controversy that may be missing from the AP story.
Many Utah Navajo are against a monument designation for Bears Ears, but the out-of-state tribal leaders behind the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition who support it insist the effort is one that is locally driven, locally supported and grass-roots in nature.
I’d also add that members of this blog community with direct experience have also said that there are Tribes and people in Tribes who have different ideas about the Monument. So it seems as if once again, in the interests of space (?), real-world complexities have been shaded to fit a simpler, and less accurate, narrative in the national press story.
Ravell Call, Deseret News San Juan ATV Safari riders navigate the Piute Pass trail south of Hanksville and west of Blanding, Utah. Two weeks too late…
I think that this is a sad story. I understand both sides of “not wanting more ATV trails” and “wanting to connect existing trails” and especially “getting ATV’s off other roads.” I get that “if there are hundreds of miles already within the monument, what’s six more?” and “if there are already hundreds of miles, why do you need six more?”. In short, I get how people can disagree about this specific trail. But really, they’ve been working on this six miles for 12 years and they missed the window by two weeks? Can federal land management get any sillier? If it were up to me, I would take existing projects and have a separate process for determining whether to “grandfather” them in or not. This article by Amy Joi O’Donoghue of the Deseret News is worth a read in its entirety..be ready to laugh, cry or both.
The new Bears Ears National Monument is already impacting land use in the region after a judge said an 12-year-old proposal to build an off-road trail is contrary to the presidential proclamation.
A judge with the Interior Board of Land Appeals ruled this week that no work can begin on the 6.4 mile ATV loop the Bureau of Land Management approved for the Indian Creek area until an appeal brought by environmental groups is settled.
The loop, sought by San Juan County since 2005, was approved by the BLM in December, just a little under two weeks before then-President Barack Obama made the 1.35 million-acre monument designation in southeast Utah.
Judge Silvia M. Riechel noted the proclamation states that any additional roads or trails designated for motorized use are restricted to those necessary for public safety or protection of objects covered by the proclamation.
Even though the BLM approved the trail prior to the monument designation, Riechel said the agency’s decision was not yet in effect because of an automatic 30-day appeal period.
“This is an exciting victory for wilderness, and is the first time an administrative body or court has addressed the legal effect of the Bears Ears National Monument proclamation, which calls for careful consideration and analysis when managing the spectacular and irreplaceable resources within its boundaries,” wrote Kya Marienfeld in a blog posted by the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance.
Apparently there’s a 30 day wait period for ordinary BLM decisions, but not for extraordinary decisions like Monument designations.
Nobody knows at this point what kind of restrictions are actually going to be employed on the monument. It’s all up in the air,” Rampton said.
He added that the delay, too, marks another setback in what has been a long, drawn out battle.
“The plaintiffs in the case, the environmental groups, just don’t want ATVs anywhere. They certainly don’t want ATVs in any area that has wilderness characteristics. That is what their primary objective is, to keep ATVs out of the public lands to the greatest degree possible. They are very dogged and determined, and they are having some success,” Rampton said.
The environmental groups successfully argued that granting a delay in the construction of the trail prevents unnecessary environmental degradation to lands that would remain damaged long after the appeal is resolved.
The decision concluded that public interest was best served by preventing environmental degradation and preserving the status quo.
The BLM had argued that the 65-inch wide trail did serve a public safety purpose by routing ATVs off an existing trail frequently traveled by full-sized vehicles.
It’s also interesting that “the BLM argued” and apparently the BLM was on the side of the trail.. yet the BLM supported the Monument designation also. Perhaps the court case was unable to shift gears that fast? It would certainly appear that elements of the BLM (and the Justice Department) did in fact support something (at least until mid-December) that was contrary to the designation.
By WillMcC – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4379199
It’s interesting to see how folks outside the Interior West see things, as per this New York Times story. I think there are some gaps which we can try to fill in as this unfolds.
Mr. Trump, signing the order at the Interior Department, described the designations as a “massive federal land grab” and ordered the agency to review and reverse some of them.
“It’s time to end these abuses and return control to the people, the people of Utah, the people of all of the states, the people of the United States,” the president said…
Notice that this quote specifically states “Utah”. We can see that the President’s interest could be more about the larger. more controversial and recent (December 28, 2016) ones. You can see that in this Denver Post story also, in which Zinke met with Colorado, Wyoming and Nevada governors. Also you can read about a Governor asking President Obama not to designate in this story, and asking President Trump to rescind in this story.
It was in the news at the end of the Obama administration after President Barack Obama created several national monuments, setting aside millions of acres on land and sea. At the time, some Republicans in Congress said they wanted to reform the act, which they said encouraged federal government overreach, a claim that has dogged the law since it was adopted.
It’s interesting that the writer said simply “Republicans”.. I bet they were from the area. An R from, say, Florida is unlikely to care much. The write could have said “local and state elected officials, mostly Republican, from Utah and other western states, have questioned these large designations.” Otherwise it sounds like a partisan issue, which it is not, or not entirely, at the local scale.
The president can make national monuments only from land already controlled by the federal government, and the act generally does not change how the land is used, said Lisa Dale, the associate director of the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy. If leases for mining, ranching, drilling or logging already exist on land to be made into a national monument, they can continue, but new leases probably won’t be allowed, she said.
It’s interesting that the Times asks Lisa Dale, from a university in Connecticut (yes, I graduated from there but a long time ago), instead of someone from the Interior West. Both of the experts chosen by the Times are on the coasts, including our sometime contributor Char Miller.
Who could be hurt by possible changes?
Most Americans support protection of public lands. According to a 2016 study from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, more than 93 percent of respondents said that historical sites, public lands and national parks should be protected for current and future generations.
Char Miller, an environmental historian at Pomona College, said that if national monuments were diminished by the review process, it would actually hurt the people opponents of the law are claiming to protect.
Some designations are controversial, as was Mr. Obama’s designation of the Bears Ears National Monument in Utah in December. Republicans argued that it would hurt the local economy, but Mr. Miller said wilderness areas can bring in tourists who support local businesses.
But public lands are already “protected” from many things.. not sure how that KSG study is relevant, except to paint a picture. Miller makes an interesting claim here that local people would be hurt by removing the designation. If the land is managed the same way as before, then how will they be hurt? By the lack of monument status on lands they already work and recreate on? Or the lack of money to their communities in the future by the designation? And it’s only been in place since December for Bears Ears, so how far down the path are they?
I don’t think that these quotes are fair to the complexity of the issue that is easy to unearth just by reading Stiles’ piece.
At three of the national monuments Mr. Obama created or expanded — Bears Ears, Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument in Maine, and Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument in Hawaii — special effort was made to include Indian tribes in the designation process and continuing management of these areas.
Ms. Dale said that reducing these monuments or changing them “would have a chilling effect on tribal federal relations when it comes to protecting landscapes.”
People already involve Tribes in BLM and FS planning (on those same acres). Conceivably, they could be involved to the same extent without Monument status. If there is some problem with the standard way of working with Tribes, it seems to me that it should be fixed for all FS and BLM plans, and not require a designation status. It’s also possible that different Tribes feel differently about the details and the process.. and if so, some might feel “chilled” and others, not so much.
Who would it help?
If existing national monuments are reduced in size, it could benefit extractive industries like oil and gas, mining, logging, as well as ranching, Mr. Miller said, because the government could grant more leases on federal land. Given the Trump administration’s recent actions — including lifting the moratorium on drilling on federal lands and the obligation to limit methane emissions on public lands — officials might be eyeing new fossil fuel leases on previously protected land, though Mr. Zinke said he was not predisposed to make any such recommendation about the monument land.
Mr. Zinke said that he has heard claims that some monument designations have ended in “lost wages, lost jobs and reduced public access.” But he added that he believed “some jobs probably have been created by recreational opportunities.”
Some of the opposition to the national monuments may be ideological. Western ranchers and sportsmen have long complained about what they see as federal land grabs that limit their access to millions of acres of public territory. However, a majority of Americans in Western states, home to vast tracts of federal land, support maintaining public land.
(my italics)
This last bit was a bit of a stretch IMHO. Ideological? Ranchers and sportsman have “limited access”?
What was missing from this story- the gaps? The views of people like Stiles. Questions about designation and the outdoor industry. Questions about the process of designation and how that compares to other land use planning exercises on federal land, in terms of public comment and environmental review. Designation’s potential impacts on motorized and mechanized recreation. Questions about the costs to the feds, and where the bucks for more planning and visitors’ centers and so on is going to come from- and what they won’t be doing instead. But we can take these up in later posts.
I’m glad they interviewed Zinke.
“No one loves their public lands more than I,” Mr. Zinke said. “You can love them as much, but not more than I do.”
Chimney Rock National Monument, San Juan National Forest, Colorado
I thought this was interesting in an NPR story here..
“More recently, with most large public lands protection bills stalled in Congress, presidents from Bill Clinton to George W. Bush and Barack Obama have used the act as a tool to protect sweeping amounts of federal land mostly in the West.
President Obama’s late hour designation of the Bears Ears National Monument in Utah, for instance, protects more than a million acres — even though the Antiquities Act specifies that monuments designated by a president “in all cases shall be confined to the smallest area compatible.”
It’s this perceived overreach that partly spurred Trump to sign his executive order.
But if, after the review, Trump also decides to bypass Congress and act by executive order to shrink or even nullify any of the monuments, a court challenge is all but guaranteed.
“The Antiquities Act expressly authorizes the President to create a national monument, but it does not authorize a later President to revoke or modify a national monument,” says Prof. Carl Tobias of the University of Richmond School of Law.”
Here’s what Char Miller said about the Antiquities Act here:
What makes the act (16 USC 431-433) so profound is that it grants the president discretionary power to set aside portions of our public lands as national monuments so as to protect those “historic landmarks, historic and prehistoric structures, and other objects of historic or scientific interest that are situated upon the lands owned or controlled by the Government of the United States….”
Its chief proponents in the late 19th century were historians, scientists, and archaeologists infuriated by the routine pillaging of ancient ruins across the southwest; the rampant desecration of sacred sites.
I’m with the idea that something like Chimney Rock fits this designation and Bears Ears not so much. But my legal question is 1) if someone takes the clause “shall be confined to the smallest area compatible” and makes the case that the designation is illegal itself as violating the Antiquities Act, could it still be “revoked” through the courts, just not through the executive branch(?). Legally, it would not be “revoking”, I guess. It does seem a little odd that one President can do something (at the last hour of his administration) that cannot be undone later by the executive branch. It’s kind of like transferring the decision authority from the executive to the judicial branch. I wonder how many other laws work that way? I’d be interested to see what our readers more familiar with the legal system have to say about this.
