Zinke: No changes for Arizona, Montana monuments
Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke has finished his review of two more national monuments with no recommended changes to their boundaries or management.
The secretary announced Friday that he sees no reason to shrink or eliminate Grand Canyon-parashant National Monument in northwestern Arizona, just across the border from Nevada.
Zinke reached a similar conclusion earlier in the week about Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument in Montana.
In April, President Donald Trump ordered his interior secretary to review 22 land-based monuments and five marine monuments established or expanded by presidential decree since 1996. ▶ reviewjournal.com/ monuments
Zinke toured Gold Butte and Basin and Range on Sunday but has yet to announce his findings on the two Obama-era monuments under review in Nevada.
Grand Canyon-parashant covers more than a million acres of federal land now jointly managed by the National Park Service and Bureau of Land Management just east of Gold Butte. Upper Missouri River Breaks covers almost 500,000 acres in central Montana. Both monuments were designated by President Bill Clinton.
In a written statement accompanying Friday’s announcement on Grand Canyon-parashant, Zinke said the monument preserves “some of the most pristine and undeformed geological formations in North America, which show the scientific history of our Earth while containing thousands of years of human relics and fossils.”
So far, Zinke has completed his review of six of the monuments on the administration’s list.
He previously recommended an as-yet-unspecified boundary reduction for Bears Ears in Utah and no changes for Canyons of the Ancients in Colorado, Craters of the Moon in Idaho and Hanford Reach in Washington.
Zinke is due to deliver his final recommendations to Trump by the end of the month.
Contact Henry Brean at hbrean@ reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0350. Follow @Refriedbrean on Twitter.