Alex Devoid
Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke will not recommend eliminating any national monuments, but indicated he will suggest downsizing some of the two dozen he reviewed. He would not disclose on Thursday which monuments would be affected.
Conservation groups remain opposed to reducing any of the national monuments in size.
"If Secretary Zinke expects Americans to be thankful because he wants to merely erase large chunks of national monuments instead of eliminating them entirely, he is badly mistaken,” said Jennifer Rokala, executive director of the Center for Western Priorities.
Zinke met the Aug. 24 deadline to submit his report to President Donald Trump, but did not make public his specific recommendations for the 21 national monuments under his review, including three in Arizona.
Trump ordered the review of 27 national monuments in April, all of them established by previous presidents. The review affected monuments of more than 100,000 acres established after Jan. 1, 1996, or individual monuments that Zinke determined were designated without enough public input.
Four of the monuments are in Arizona. Zinke had already removed one, Grand Canyon-Parashant, from the list, leaving it unchanged. The fate of the other three — Vermilion Cliffs, Sonoran Desert and Ironwood Forest — is in the report submitted Thursday.
In all, he had already decided to let six monuments stand.
Few details on proposed changes
Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke visits Bunkerville,
In an interview with the Associated Press, Zinke said he would seek boundary changes to a handful of the monuments, but would not disclose which ones until the White House had reviewed his report.
He also did not directly answer questions about whether any of the monuments would be opened to energy development or mining.
“There’s an expectation we need to look out 100 years from now to keep the public land experience alive in this country,” Zinke told the AP. “You can protect the monument by keeping public access to traditional uses.”
The Center for Biological Diversity requested the report in a Freedom of Information Act Request on Thursday, the group said in a statement.
"We're kind of afraid of what's in it," said Tom Hannagan, president of Friends of Ironwood Forest President. He said he'd like Ironwood Forest National Monument kept as is, unscathed by mining or drilling.
"Arizona has a lot of mines ... and that's fine," he said. "We think there's room for both mines and ... protected areas in the state."
Support for monuments acknowledged
Opponents of national monuments who took part in the review's public comment period "were often local residents associated with industries such as grazing, timber production, mining, hunting and fishing, and motorized recreation," Zinke wrote in his review summary.
He acknowledged that comments submitted during the review process were overwhelmingly in favor or maintaining the monuments, but suggested that was because of "a well orchestrated national campaign organized by multiple organizations."
He cited the concerns of monument critics, who believed past presidents had overstepped their authority and insisted "executive power under the (Antiquities) Act is not a substitute for a lack of congressional action on protective land designations."
Supporters of national monuments tout economic benefits protected lands bring to a region. While Zinke recognized such potential benefits, more visitation also places a "burden" on the federal government to maintain lands, Zinke said in his review summary.
"These visitors happen to be the American people," Hannagan said. "What do you want? Do you want to improve the local economy and jobs, or not?"
The review drew more than 2.7 million public comments, 98 percent of which supported the national monuments, according to an analysis by the Center for Western Priorities.
Hannagan felt Zinke downplayed support by omitting the percentage of supportive comments and attributing them to an orchestrated campaign.
Zinke's final decisions could lead to legal challenges that would test the authority of U.S. presidents and will likely deepen debate over the use or preservation of public lands across the West.
Legal challenges possible
The Ironwood Forest National Monument features 129,000
A host of conservationists, Indian tribes, businesses and state attorneys general say they are prepared to take swift legal action if Trump follows any recommendation to abolish or shrink monuments.
"We are taking very seriously these threats and have been preparing for whatever action could be taken depending on how the threat materializes," said Nada Culver, senior counsel for the Wilderness Society.
Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., had hoped Zinke would recommend cutting the size of Grand Canyon-Parashant by half, spokeswoman Faith Vander Voort said in a statement, but accepted the conclusion.
"The Zinke recommendation demonstrates he is doing an honest and fair review and is beholden to no one," she said.
But Rep. Raúl Grijalva, D-Ariz., said Zinke's review lacked transparency and was heavily influenced by industry interests.
“The public has spoken and these monuments should be left alone," Grijalva said in a statement. "If President Trump and Secretary Zinke don’t listen, then the courts and the voters will teach them that our public lands are not industry playthings to dispose of as they see fit.”
Conservation groups agree the review process has been arbitrary, said Melyssa Watson of the Wilderness Society.
“It is honestly a guessing game as to which monuments are most at risk and how the review is being conducted and whose voices are being heard to drive Secretary Zinke’s decision,” she said.
Clashing viewpoints in Arizona
In a July letter to Zinke, Arizona Republican Reps. Trent Franks and Andy Biggs, along with Gosar, called for "total rescission" of all four Arizona national monuments under review.
The letter included the signatures of 17 Republican lawmakers who are members of the Western Caucus and it called for Zinke to eliminate nine monuments nationwide and shrink 14 more.
Public opinion seemed to contradict the demands in the letter. In a recent poll of potential Arizona voters for the Nina Mason Pulliam Charitable Trust and The Arizona Republic, a wide majority, 97 percent, agreed that “Arizona’s parks, preserves, forests and open spaces are important."
The poll, conducted by Arizona State University's Morrison Institute for Public Policy, also found that 68 percent of those surveyed agreed that “protecting the environment should be given priority, even at the risk of slowing economic growth.”
Grijalva said the Western Caucus and Gosar have long had an agenda driven by the resource extraction industry and they see opportunity with the Trump administration to push for access to these public lands. "We're talking about national treasures and state treasures that are on federal lands that are here for perpetuity."
The GOP lawmakers acknowledged the economic value of developing public lands. The letter asking Zinke to eliminate the Arizona national monuments emphasized the explicit restriction against "future mineral and geothermal energy production" and said national monument protections "more often than not severely impair energy development."
Gosar wants this type of energy production, including mining, on these national monument lands, because it will create jobs and boost the Arizona economy, Vander Voort said in a statement.
The mining company Asarco would likely invest hundreds of millions of dollars to expand onto Ironwood Forest National Monument land if given the chance, Vander Voort said, calling the monument a “political designation” to block mining. Asarco operates an open-pit copper mine by Ironwood Forest National Monument.
Monuments as economic benefits
But supporters of the monuments argue that there is economic value in preserving the land. The Arizona monuments bring economic benefits to the state, according to a report by Democrats on the congressional Joint Economic Committee.
Since Ironwood Forest was designated a national monument in 2000, the total employment in the surrounding counties has increased yearly by an average of 7,184 jobs, the report said. In 2015, travel and tourism jobs made up 20 percent of total private employment in the surrounding region, according to the report.
While Western counties containing public lands grow faster than others, according to Headwater Economics, a source the Democrats cited, their report did not directly connect these jobs to Ironwood Forest National Monument.
The monuments are important to Arizona’s economy, but they are also of deep historical and ecological importance, said Sandy Bahr, director of the Grand Canyon Sierra Club Chapter.
“The archaeological sites at Ironwood Forest host more than 8,000 years of human history and the monument hosts a rich diversity of plants and animals, including desert bighorn sheep,” Bahr said in a statement.
Bighorn sheep numbers “increased five-fold” at Ironwood Forest since the national monument designation, said Joe Sheehey, a former president of the Arizona Desert Bighorn Sheep Society, who participated in a telephone press briefing.
But the Republican lawmakers cited a decrease in bighorn sheep numbers at the Sonoran Desert National Monument in arguments to eliminate it. They noted a 2015 opinion article by the former chairman of the Arizona Game and Fish Commission, Robert Mansell, who said the monument’s designation was partially responsible because it restricted the Arizona Game and Fish Department’s access to bring in water to help the sheep.
Bahr said bighorn sheep populations declined for other reasons, including disease and habitat fragmentation.
“There’s no evidence, there’s no research, there’s nothing to indicate bighorn sheep have declined because they couldn’t build water catchments,” she said.
James Ammons, chairman of the state Game and Fish Commission, blamed recent monument designations for a decline in the department’s ability to “proactively manage wildlife.” It harms biodiversity and decreases hunting opportunities and revenue, he wrote in a letter to Zinke supporting the monument reviews.
Bahr called that an outrageous political argument, not a biological one: “They don’t have data to support this idea that biological diversity is decreased," she said. "They still can go in and manage wildlife. Hunting is still allowed on all of the monuments.”
Legal challenges possible
If Trump eliminates or downsizes national monuments, he will likely face challenges of his authority to do so under the Antiquities Act, the law past presidents used to establish the monuments.
Gosar and members of the Western Caucus argue that presidents have overreached their authority to designate national monuments under the Antiquities Act for years.
The exact authority of the president is not clear. Past presidents have downsized national monuments, but the power to eliminate a national monument designated by another president "has not been tested in courts," and may be constrained, a Congressional Research Service report said.
“Yes it’s untested,” said Culver of the Wilderness Society, “but we feel it’s very clear that that authority does not exist.”
Legal experts agree the president does not have the authority to eliminate national monuments, but the legal expert community is debating his ability to downsize monuments, Arizona State University Law Professor Karen Bradshaw said.
Downsizing won't hold up in courts, Culver said.
“The previous reductions that we saw were under very different factual circumstances and under completely different legal regime.”
Arizona monuments that were reviewed under Trump's order
Four national monuments in Arizona, covering almost 2 million acres, were reviewed under the executive order.
All four were created by President Bill Clinton in 2000 and 2001. Most are overseen by the Bureau of Land Management, except for Grand Canyon-Parashant National Monument, where the National Park Service works with the BLM.
A fifth monument created by Clinton, the Agua Fria National Monument north of Phoenix, is too small to fall under the Trump order. It covers just over 71,000 acres.
In all, there are 18 national monuments in Arizona, the most of any state. The four reviewed were:
Grand Canyon-Parashant National Monument, 1 million acres, north of the Grand Canyon, created by Clinton in 2000. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke decided on Aug. 4 he would recommend leaving the monument as is.
Ironwood Forest National Monument, 128,917 acres, northwest of Tucson, created by Clinton in 2000.
Vermilion Cliffs National Monument, 279,568 acres, north of the Grand Canyon, created by Clinton in 2000.
Sonoran Desert National Monument, southwest of Phoenix, 486,146 acres, created by Clinton in 2001.
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