No changes for Ariz. monuments in draft report of Interior review
WASHINGTON — A draft report from Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke recommends modifications to nearly a dozen national monuments, including shrinking the huge Bears Ears monument in Utah and permitting commercial fishing in protected waters in both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
The 19-page report, obtained by the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal, was delivered to the White House on Aug. 24 as directed by President Donald Trump’s executive order for a review of the national monuments created since 1996 that were larger than 100,000 acres.
The Wilderness Society President
Jamie Williams called the reported recommendations “an unprecedented assault on our parks and public lands” and said the Trump administration has no authority to alter existing designations.
On the latter point, Zinke notes that previous presidents have reduced the size of 16 monuments 18 times.
Zinke recommends alterations to Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalente in Utah; Cascade-Siskiyou on the California-Oregon border; Organ Mountain-Desert Peaks and Rio Grande del Norte in New Mexico; Gold Butte in Nevada; Katahdin Woods and Waters in Maine and two marine monuments in the Pacific and another one 130 miles southeast of Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
Four Arizona monuments were reviewed under Trump’s order, but the report recommends no changes to any of them.
Zinke had already dropped one from the review, declaring that the Grand Canyon-Parashant National Monument in northern Arizona merited preservation. Three others — Vermilion Cliffs, Sonoran Desert and Ironwood Forest — were not among those targeted for change in the draft report.
President Bill Clinton established five new monuments in Arizona during his presidency, the four that were reviewed and Agua Fria National Monument north of Phoenix, which fell below the acreage parameters set by Trump’s order.
Arizona has 18 national monuments, the most of any state.
The 1906 Antiquities Act permits presidents to declare national monuments without public input but limits the designation to “the smallest area compatible with proper care and management” of treasured objects, and currently protects almost 200 sites, Zinke noted.
“Adherence to the Act’s definition of an ‘object’ and ‘smallest area compatible’ clause on some monuments were either arbitrary or likely politically motivated or boundaries could not be supported by science or reasons of practical resource management,” Zinke found.
The entire Utah congressional delegation objected to the establishment of Bears Ears, designated just three weeks before President Barack Obama left office on 1.3 million acres of Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service land. Besides revising its boundaries “conducive to effective protection” of its archaeological and other features, Zinke recommended that Trump seek congressional authority for tribal co-management of its cultural areas.
Zinke noted that most public comment on the monuments review ”were overwhelmingly in favor of maintaining existing monuments” but were the result of “a well-orchestrated national campaign organized by multiple organizations.”
Opponents of the monuments tended to be local residents associated with grazing, timber production, mining, hunting and fishing and motorized recreation, he wrote.
“It appears that certain monuments were designated to prevent economic activity such as grazing, mining and timber production rather than to protect specific objects,” Zinke found. He said many also failed to adequately account for local opinion.
Zinke noted that areas protected by the 1.8 million acre Grand Staircase-Escalante, created in 1996, contain “several billion tons or coal and large oil deposits. In the case of Cascade-Siskikou, created by President Bill Clinton in 2000 and expanded by Obama eight days before he left office, there are 4- to 6 million board feet of lumber on 16,591 acres set aside by a 1937 federal law for sustainable timber production. Zinke recommended ending the prohibition on logging on that land.
Except for red crab and American lobster fisheries, commercial fishing is currently prohibited in the 3,972 square miles of the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts off Cape Cod.
Zinke recommended lifting the fishing ban there and at the Pacific Remote Islands and Rose Atoll monuments in the Pacific that have an economic impact on American Samoa.
Zinke also told the president that he recommends creating three new national monuments, including Camp Nelson in Kentucky, where African-American soldiers received training during the Civil War; the home of slain civil-rights leader Medgar Evers in Jackson, Mississippi.; and the Badger-Two Medicine area in the Lewis and Clark National Forest in his home state of Montana.
Zinke visited several of the monuments he was asked to review and announced in advance of the August report to Trump that some required no alterations.
Rep. Salud Carbajal, D-Calif., who led efforts to stop any adjustment to monuments on California’s coast, said he was relieved that Zinke’s leaked recommendations apparently spared them, but he urged the president to make the report public.
Other environmental organizations quickly weighed in Monday morning.
“Zinke claims he wants to perpetuate traditional uses, but he’s actually promoting traditional abuses,” said Randi Spivak, public-lands program director at the center for Biological Diversity. “Logging, mining, grazing, fracking and drilling destroy wildlife habitat and objects of scientific and cultural importance. Zinke and Trump are displaying their disdain for these magnificent public lands and the millions of people who demanded they remain protected. Trump has no authority to make any of the changes that Zinke’s recommending. If he tries to, we’ll see him in court.”
The Arizona Republic contributed to this article.