Interior chief says lands to stay protected

Critics hope Trump overrules director’s recommendations.

BILLINGS, MONT. — Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke announced Thursday he won’t seek to rescind any national monuments carved from the wilderness and oceans by past presidents. But he said he will press for some boundary changes and left open the possibility of allowing drilling, mining or other industries on the sites.

Twenty-seven monuments were put under review in April by President Donald Trump, who has charged that the millions of acres designated for protection by President Barack Obama were part of a “massive federal land grab.”

If Trump adopts Zinke’s recommendations, it could ease some of the worst fears of his opponents, who warned that vast public lands and marine areas could be stripped of federal protection. But significant reductions in the size of the monuments or changes to what activities are allowed on them could trigger fierce resistance, too, including lawsuits.

Some critics of federal land ownership were also unhappy with Zinke’s conclusions, and said they hope Trump will overrule his recommendation and instead rescind the status of recently created national monuments.

In an interview, Zinke said he is recommending changes to a “handful” of sites, including unspecified boundary adjustments, and suggested some monuments are too large.

The White House said only that it had received Zinke’s recommendations and is reviewing them.

Conservationists and tribal leaders responded with alarm and distrust, demanding the full release of Zinke’s recommendations and vowing to challenge attempts to shrink any monuments.

Gene Karpinski, president of the League of Conservation Voters, called Zinke’s review a pretext for “selling out our public lands and waters” to the oil industry and others.

Jacqueline Savitz, senior vice president of Oceana, which has been pushing for preservation of five marine monuments included in the review, said that simply saying “changes” are coming doesn’t reveal any real information.

“A change can be a small tweak or near annihilation,” Savitz said. “The public has a right to know.”

A tribal coalition that pushed for the creation of the 2,100-square-mile Bears Ears National Monument on sacred tribal land in Utah said it is prepared to launch a legal fight against even a slight reduction in its size.

Zinke has previously said Bears Ears should be downsized. Republican Utah state Rep. Mike Noel, who has pushed to rescind the designation of Bears Ears as a monument, said he could live with a rollback of its boundaries.

He called that a good compromise that would enable continued tourism while still allowing activities that locals have pursued for generations — logging, livestock grazing and oil and gas drilling.

“The eco tourists basically say, ‘Throw out all the rubes and the locals and get rid of that mentality of grazing and utilizing these public lands for any kind of renewable resource such as timber harvesting and even some mineral production,’” Noel said. “That’s a very selfish attitude.”

But in Maine, where the Obama-designated Katahdin Woods and Waters monument was also a target of the review, Anne Mitchell of the Maine Woods Coalition said the federal government already owns enough land in the state and that her group continues to hope that the designation will be rescinded. Mitchell said the 137-square mile reserve could hurt the state’s multibillion-dollar forest products sector.

Other sites that might see changes include the Grand Staircase-Escalante monument in the Utah desert, consisting of cliffs, canyons, natural arches and archaeological sites.