Bears Ears Reversal

Photo: Tim Peterson, Grand Canyon Trust

A week after insulting Navajo veterans of World War II -- the code talkers who helped to win the war in the Pacific -- under a portrait of the odious Andrew Jackson, the president of the United States announced the unprecedented removal of National Monument status from over 1,000,000 acres of land in Utah whose protection had been sought by Navajo and other tribes. Fortunately, the United States does still have three branches of government, and it is possible that a Federal court will agree that that the Antiquities Act does not give a president this authority.

Still, as widely reported yesterday, the president is asserting just such authority in Utah, and if successful he may try to do the same in many other states, though not in Montana.

In the NPR report above, Matt Anderson argues that President Obama's naming of the Bears Ears National Monument had itself been overreach, and that reverting to BLM status would keep "the areas open and accessible to locals who depend on this land for their daily lives." The image he hopes to convey is of family farmers grazing animals on highly-regulated rangelands, but it cannot be denied that coal, oil, and natural gas leases would also be made possible if yesterday's decision is upheld.

Without sensing the irony of their own claims, some opponents argue that indigenous opponents of the rollback are located far away, and that local, non-indigenous voices should have priority. The displacement of native people from their land is thus used as an argument against their standing to discuss it.

Later on Monday, All Things Considered host Mary Louise Kelly spoke with Ute Indian Shaun Chapoose about Native American responses to the announcement.

The reversal of federal protection is unprecedented -- with the 1,300,000-acre Monument reduced to just 228,000.

Map: State of Utah, by way of Grand Canyon Trust

Lagniappe: It Gets Worse

Immediately after seeing to the removal of 2,000,000 acres (an area bigger than Delaware) from these the National Monuments, Secretary Zinke urged the president to reduce the size of four more protected areas: Nevada's Gold Butte, the Cascade-Siskiyou of Oregon and California, the Pacific Remote Islands, and the Rose Atoll. The last of these is an area of protected marine resources covering an area larger than Massachusetts.

Next on the secretary's agenda: Cascade-Siskiyou.

In addition to unspecified reductions in the size of each of these monuments, the secretary recommends changing the way restrictions are enforced on all national monuments. Even if this attempt to rewrite of the Antiquities Act does not survive court challenges, it will waste countless hours of time -- and millions of dollars -- that environmental organizations and federal employees could be spending on actually protecting the environment.

Without any shame, the secretary declared that his recommendations reflect the will of the people, dismissing 2.8 million public comments that he admitted were mostly counter to his recommendation. By "the people" he meant those people he prefers to listen to, some of which are not actually people at all. He further continues to associate himself with the signer of the 1906 Act, Teddy Roosevelt. Again, without shame.

The same announcement includes expanded protection in Montana itself, where his political ambitions outweigh his general preference for environmental destruction.

UPDATE: Even Worse

It is with some hesitation I add even more bad news to this post, but new information about this decision is unsettling and needs to be shared. If the courts allow the executive order to stand, Bears Ears will be open not only to grazing, but also to the mining of uranium. This has nothing whatsoever to do with public use of the land; it has to do with pleasing political donors. A map of the uranium potential accompanies the story behind the president's decision.

Map: Washington Post

July 2018 further update

It is now clear that the documents used to justify the shrinking of Bears Ears National Monument were selectively censored to hide known benefits of the protection the area had been receiving. Someone should be going to jail for this, but will more likely be going to the bank.

Secretary NIMBY

The most important qualification for most Cabinet-level appointments in the current administration has been hostility toward the mission of the department or agency to be led, and to the implementation of policies that the Congress has assigned.

In most respects, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke has fit this mold. As the most anti-stewardship steward of public lands since James Watt, he has been good company for secretaries of State, Education, Environmental Protection who have a similar antipathy toward the programs with which they have been intrusted by an administration that values only chaos and a Senate that does not value its advisory duties.

This post, however, is not about Secretary Zinke's failures to protect Bears Ears, or whether he shares the libertarian fringe's fear of "massive federal land grabs." Rather, it is this counter-intuitive story about Sec. Zinke's support of a new National Monument that would provide added protection to federal lands in his home state of Montana.

Reporter Nate Hegyi sought further information on the various ways in which Zinke supports land protection in his home state, but could get a comment from the secretary or his spokesman. In the current administration, it seems, a cabinet secretary must be very careful to avoid seeming to support the work he or she was hired to undermine. If only we could get him interested in taking a similar position on the 96 percent of the United States that is not in Montana!

The story is an example of the well-known NIMBY phenomenon -- support for noxious facilities or damaging practices in the abstract evaporates when a proposal is close to home: "Not In My BackYard" is the hypocrite's refrain.

Despite the dubious personal ethics revealed by this story, it does provide a glimmer of hope for those who care about environmental protection. Although he will not yet say so, Secretary Zinke seems to understand that scorched-earth environmental policies -- if applied on Native American or other public lands inside Montana -- would reduce his chances of being elected governor of the Big Sky state in the future. Profiles in Courage this is not, but it does suggest that at some level, people in the West do still want land and water and sky protected.

Update: June 4

Daniel Wenk: Pushed aside

According to a June 1 Washington Post report, the superintendent of Yellowstone National Park -- considered by many to be the crown jewel of the system -- is retiring early. Daniel Wenk is highly respected by those across the political spectrum for his professionalism and his commitment to wildlife and public lands.

He has served the National Park Service for 43 years, so his retirement at age 66 is not necessarily surprising, but according to journalist Darryl Fears, the timing of his retirement has to do with a punitive reassignment to Washington, D.C.

As an individual, of course, Superintendent Wenk will be alright. He is presumably retiring with full benefits. But he is just one of 37 senior officials in the Department of Interior that the new secretary has rushed to reassign or remove. This of course belies the "drain the swamp" rhetoric that brought the current administration into Washington.