<\/p>\n
In late August, Interior Department Secretary Ryan Zinke submitted a report detailing the results of his review of 27 national monuments to the White House. Zinke\u2019s suggestions, kept secret at the time, were recently made public by the Washington Post.<\/p>\n
The report calls for boundary changes at Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments in Utah, Gold Butte National Monument in Nevada, and Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument, which straddles the border between Oregon and California; and looser restrictions on activities at Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks and Rio Grande Del Norte National Monuments, both in New Mexico.<\/p>\n
It also proposes trims or changes to allowed activities at three marine monuments and one monument in Maine.<\/p>\n
Monuments are intended to protect significant landmarks, structures, or \u201cobjects of historic or scientific interest\u201d on federal land under the 1906 Antiquities Act.<\/p>\n
The leaked report, however, says that recent monument proclamations have gone too far in defining things like ecosystems and biodiversity as \u201cobjects.\u201d But a century-old Supreme Court ruling shows that judges have long recognized that the definition of an \u201cobject\u201d in this context is expansive \u2013 large enough, in fact, to encompass the Grand Canyon itself.<\/p>\n
Despite the rhetoric of the report, there\u2019s legal and historical support for a broad definition of what constitutes an object in need of protection. \u201cIt\u2019s clear from the very beginning of the act that it doesn\u2019t mean an object you can hold in your hand,\u201d says Kristen Boyles, an attorney with Earthjustice based in Seattle. \u201cIt has always meant something broader.\u201d<\/p>\n
Several areas that are now national parks were first protected as national monuments, including the Grand Canyon; the landscapes themselves were the objects protected. In 1920, the Supreme Court explicitly stated that the Grand Canyon qualifies as \u201can object of unusual scientific interest.\u201d<\/p>\n
The report says that decisions to shelter certain \u201cobjects\u201d in some modern monuments were \u201clikely politically motivated.\u201d<\/p>\n
Later, it states that \u201cthe Secretary has concerns that in modern uses of the act, objects are not consistently and clearly defined.\u201d But the argument for a narrower definition, implying \u201cthat Congress really intended just to protect small areas, or objects that are relatively limited, is just wrong,\u201d says Heidi McIntosh, the managing attorney of the Rocky Mountain regional Earthjustice office.<\/p>\n
Objects that have been protected in recent designations include biodiversity at Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument \u2013 the \u201cspectacular variety of rare and beautiful species of plants and animals\u201d that live there, according to the proclamation that established the monument in 2000. Cascade-Siskiyou is also a \u201cbiological crossroads,\u201d an area that links several rich ecosystems.<\/p>\n
\u201cBy protecting that bridge itself, you\u2019re benefiting much more area than just the bridge,\u201d says Dave Willis, the chair of environmental group Soda Mountain Wilderness Council.<\/p>\n
To safeguard that biodiversity, the original proclamation included a rule against driving motor vehicles off-road; the leaked report incorrectly states that all motorized transportation was prohibited. That error is emblematic of the report, which discounts years of scientific and public support, Willis says. \u201cTo have (that support) dismissed with such a slapdash, error-filled report is extremely frustrating,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
The report argues for shrinking or changing monuments, in part to bolster mining, timber production, grazing and other natural resource-dependent industries. That focus has environmental groups concerned that Zinke is more interested in exploiting the landscapes than protecting them. Despite evidence that the economies of counties bordering national monuments are not negatively impacted by protections, the report repeatedly links monuments to financial hardship and calls for opening up protected areas to extractive activities.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is all political posturing,\u201d McIntosh says, of the review process. \u201cThis is not about doing right by the land or the majority of people who cherish these places.\u201d<\/p>\n
And a lot of people do cherish national monuments. More than 2.8 million comments on the monument review were submitted to the Department of the Interior, the vast majority of which were in favor of keeping the monuments intact. The report, however, states that most of those were form comments originating from a handful of non-profit campaigns, rather than unique comments.<\/p>\n
Earthjustice and several other environmental organizations plan to sue the federal government if Trump follows the recommendations outlined in Zinke\u2019s report and shrinks any of the national monuments. \u201cThese are national treasures,\u201d says McIntosh. \u201cThey deserve a vigorous defense, and that\u2019s what they\u2019re going to get.\u201d<\/p>\n
This article was first published by High Country News.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Antiquities Act, landscapes like Grand Canyon count as \u2018objects\u2019 that can be protected<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":103469,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[21,738,13,122,561,547],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-103468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-cortez","tag-environmental-issue","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-monument-and-heritage-site","tag-native-american","tag-ute-mountain-ute-indian-tribe"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103468"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103468\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/103469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103468"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=103468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}