Zinke recommends shrinking 3 monuments

Grand Staircase-Escalante, Bear’s Ears included in proposed cuts

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Last Thursday, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke recommended to President Trump that he alter three national monuments. The three monuments he is proposing be shrunk are the Grand Staircase-Escalante, Oregon’s Cascade-Siskiyou, and the newly-created Bears Ears.
President Bill Clinton declared the 1.9 million-acre Grand Staircase-Escalante in 1996, while President Barack Obama designated the 1.35 million-acre Bears Ears last year. Cascade-Siskiyou, which now encompasses more than 113,000 acres, was established by Clinton shortly before leaving office and expanded by Obama in January.
Zinke has not released details regarding how drastically the monuments may be reduced.
Zinke and the Trump administration had been considering completely rescinding Bears Ears National Monument. The white house reported Friday that Trump had received Zinke’s recommendations but would not say when the president planned to act on them.
Trump had ordered Zinke to examine more than 20 sites which had been established by Presidents Clinton, Obama and George W. Bush under the 1906 Antiquities Act. The monument review process, which lasted four months, pitted those who have felt marginalized by federal actions over the past 20 years against backers who see the sites as bolstering tourism and recreation while safeguarding important relics, environments and species.
“No president should use the authority under the Antiquities Act to restrict public access, prevent hunting and fishing, burden private land or eliminate traditional land uses, unless such action is needed to protect the object,” Zinke said in a statement last week.

“The recommendations I sent to the president on national monuments will maintain federal ownership of all federal land and protect the land under federal environmental regulations and also provide a much needed change for the local communities who border and rely on these lands for hunting and fishing, economic development, traditional uses and recreation.”
The decision to shrink the monuments came in spite of the fact that of the more than 2.8 million people who submitted comments to the Department of the Interior during the public comment period, 99.2 percent of them opposed Trump’s decision to rescind or reduce any current national monuments.
Kane County Commission Chairman Dirk Clayson approves of Zinke’s recommendation regarding the Grand Staircase-Escalante, saying that too much profitable land was locked up inside of it.
“Too much of it has been designated as primitive, and you can’t promote visitation, create trail heads or restrooms for a safe, comfortable visitor experience,” he said. “Extreme conservation groups want to protect and tie up the land.”
Nicole Croft, executive director for Grand Staircase-Escalante Partners, believes that shrinking the borders of the monument will have a negative impact on the economies of numerous towns that border it.
“I am very concerned about the impact from a recommendation to reduce the Grand Staircase-Escalante on the businesses that have been the real anchor for the economic progress of this community for the last 21 years,” she said. “Rural communities have a lot of challenges, especially in these frontier rural communities like Escalante and Boulder. Why on Earth would someone recommend gutting what’s working well?”
When it comes to the riches contained inside the borders of the Grand Staircase, the economies of the local towns is just one piece of a much larger puzzle, said Croft.
“In addition to the geologic wonders that nearly 1 million people a year travel great distances to experience in this frontier setting, the Grand Staircase was also designated a monument to protect world-famous paleontology,” she said. “In the 21 years since designation, 12 new species of dinosaurs have been identified, and only six percent of the monument has been surveyed.
“There are also 100,000 archaeological sites from three distinct pre-historic cultures who were ancestors of the Zuni, Hopi, Paiute and Ute nations. [The monument] holds 85 percent of the biodiversity of the state and over 650 bee species have been identified here. The rationale for using the Antiquities Act to protect this landscape has only grown stronger since its designation.”
So far Zinke and the Interior Department haven’t specified how much they want to shrink the monuments, but Zinke’s report says he is “recommending a significant reduction in its size.”
Several environmental organizations have stated they will bring lawsuits against the Interior Department before they begin downsizing.