U.S. monuments hold artifacts, key habitat
SALT LAKE CITY – Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke’s recommendation to shrink four sprawling national monuments in the U.S. West jeopardizes protections for ancient cliff dwellings, scenic canyons and habitat for endangered fish and threatened Mojave desert tortoises.
The recommendations, revealed in a leaked memo submitted to the White House, would scale back two huge Utah monuments – Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante – along with Nevada’s Gold Butte and Oregon’s Cascade-Siskiyou.
The monuments encompass an area larger than Connecticut and were created by Democratic presidents under a century-old law. Three were created or expanded in President Barack Obama’s final weeks in office.
President Donald Trump and other critics say presidents have lost sight of the original purpose of the law created by President Theodore Roosevelt, which was designed to protect particular historical or archaeological sites rather than wide expanses.
Environmental groups have vowed to take Trump to court if he approves Zinke’s recommendations.
A closer look at three of the four monuments set to be downsized:
Creation of the 2,100-square-mile monument at the end of Obama’s tenure marked a victory for Native Americans and conservationists. It was a blow to Republican leaders who campaigned to prevent what they call a layer of unnecessary federal control that hurts local economies by closing the area to new energy development.
Tucked between existing national parks and the Navajo Nation, the monument is on land considered sacred to a coalition of tribes and is home to an estimated 100,000 archaeological sites. Tribal members visit the area to perform ceremonies, collect herbs and wood for medicinal and spiritual purposes and do healing rituals.
The monument features a mix of cliffs, plateaus, towering rock formations, rivers and canyons. In the memo, Zinke highlights the hiking, backpacking, canyoneering, mountain biking and rock climbing.
Utah’s congressional delegation and top state leaders vowed to work to get the monument repealed. Zinke’s recommendation to downsize it to a yet-to-be-determined size came after he toured Bears Ears in May and met with Gov. Gary Herbert and others who oppose the designation.
The Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument, covering 175 square miles of mountains, forests and rivers along Oregon’s border with California, was expanded by then Obama in his last days. The new areas include habitat for endangered fish such as the shortnose sucker and Lost River sucker.
In a July visit, Zinke expressed doubts that much scientific study went behind the drawing of its boundaries. He stressed that the Antiquities Act of 1906, which authorizes a president to create a monument, limits their size “to the smallest area compatible with proper care and management of the objects to be protected.”
“Nobody knows how exactly the boundaries were made,” Zinke said. “Going back, were the boundaries made on the basis of science, best guess? And so those are the things I’m reviewing.”
In a 2011 report, a group of scientists said many of the region’s species relied on habitat outside the monument’s then-boundaries, where they faced threats from logging, grazing and development. The smaller monument also didn’t provide continuous protection across different elevations, which is important for migration, especially amid global warming, said the scientists, who supported the expansion.
Named for a ghost-town mining site near the confluence of the Colorado and Virgin rivers, the monument covers 464 square miles of scenic land northeast of Lake Mead.
Dirt roads cross gold grasslands to rugged black mountains, red sandstone formations, Joshua tree forests and sites rich with Native American rock art and artifacts.
It is about 80 miles northeast of Las Vegas in the remote rangeland over which rancher Cliven Bundy let cows graze for decades before an armed standoff in 2014 with federal land agents.
Efforts began decades ago to protect and preserve Gold Butte as critical habitat for the threatened Mojave desert tortoise and rare local species of buckwheat and bear poppy plants.
Proponents, including former Democratic U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, tried for years to have it designated as a national conservation area before Obama made it a monument in December.