A monumental flight over Mojave Trails

Mojave Desert Land Trust aerial tour shows splendor of national monument whose status could be reassessed

Amboy Crater is a significant geological feature of the Mojave Trails National Monument. Last week, the Mojave Desert Land Trust hosted an aerial tour as part of the third anniversary of the monument. [James Quigg, Daily Press]

By Matthew Cabe
Victor Valley Daily News

PALM SPRINGS — Storm clouds hovered over the city and patches of rain fell from above the nearby San Jacinto Mountains, but two Mojave Desert Land Trust officials arrived at the international airport here last week ready for a celebration.

Staff at the Joshua Tree-based nonprofit recently completed plans to commemorate the upcoming third anniversary of Mojave Trails, Sand to Snow and Castle Mountains national monuments.

All three were established Feb. 12, 2016, by former President Barack Obama through use of the Antiquities Act. Combined, they encompass nearly 1.8 million acres in the Mojave, Colorado and Sonoran deserts.

To offer a comprehensive view, MDLT partnered with the nonprofit EcoFlight for a series of flyovers within the Mojave Trails National Monument, which boasts 1.6 million acres and is the largest national monument in the 48 contiguous states, according to MDLT Communications Director Jessica Dacey.

Shortly before 10 a.m. Tuesday, Dacey and MDLT Education Coordinator Adam Henne briefed a group of passengers that included a Daily Press reporter and photographer.

“You get a bit of a buzz when you go up there,” Dacey said. “Especially coming from this angle ... you start to understand the seamlessness between the parks.”

Tuesday’s flight traveled first above Joshua Tree National Park, then over Sheep Hole Pass, which served as the Cessna 210′s entrance into Mojave Trails.

For Dacey and others, part of the monument’s importance is its function as a wildlife corridor connecting the national park and the Mojave National Preserve, the more than 1.5-million-acre swath of National Park Service land between interstates 15 and 40.

Within the monument, the Cady Mountains serve as one of the best areas in the Mojave Desert to see bighorn sheep, according to MDLT.

The North American population of the muscular animal with curved horns was once estimated in the millions. By 1900, human encroachment diminished bighorn sheep numbers to several thousand, National Wildlife Federation statistics show. Conservation efforts have since brought those numbers up to nearly 8,000.

Bonanza Spring, located near the monument’s northern border, is the only wetland for 1,000 square miles. Like the Cady Mountains, the spring is also home to bighorns and 70 bird species.

Dacey said the habitat connectivity created with the monument’s establishment allows many animals to roam, helps increase their populations and protects plant life they need to survive.

There are also unique historical and cultural aspects to the monument’s significance, she said.

Mojave Trails is home to the longest undeveloped section of U.S. Route 66. Preservation of the “Mother Road,” according to the World Monuments Fund, would equal positive economic effects like “sustainable tourism.”

The monument also includes some of the best-preserved sites from the World War II-era Desert Training Center where, under the command of Gen. George S. Patton, more than a million troops were trained on 18,000 square miles for desert combat in North Africa.

Deep within the vast expanse visible through the Cessna’s starboard-side windows, another geographical feature appeared, albeit inconspicuously from 2,500 feet above the desert floor.

The Cadiz Dunes Wilderness spans nearly 20,000 acres in the heart of the monument. The dunes appear to “hum in the wind,” Dacey told passengers.

“I think they’re more majestic than the Kelso Dunes in the Preserve,” she said.

Bruce Gordon, who piloted the Cessna, nodded in agreement from behind his aviators. Gordon founded EcoFlight in 2002 to advocate for environmental protection via programs and aerial visuals that expand public awareness of wild lands.

He couldn’t help but take his hands off the Cessna’s yoke to capture photographs of the pristine topography below. He used the 80-minute flight to share his own knowledge of the region.

Several concerns were noted, as well.

One, MDLT contends, is Cadiz Inc.’s planned water project, which would pull 50,000-acre-feet of water a year from an ancient aquifer beneath the Mojave Desert. The water would later be sold in Southern California.

Cadiz owns roughly 34,000 acres within Mojave Trails, Dacey said. Company officials have said the pumping would not harm the environment. Rather, the project would conserve surplus water lost to evaporation at nearby dry lakes.

Cadiz’s research maintains that Bonanza Spring would not be impacted by pumping. Other research published in 2018 called the company’s findings into question and said the project would threaten Bonanza Spring, according to MDLT, which funded some of the research.

Cadiz CEO and President Scott Slater has stated the company is confident of no interconnection between groundwater and water levels in Bonanza Spring, the company’s website shows.

MDLT officials say the project could harm the bighorns that use Bonanza Spring. Dacey said a pipeline for the project has not yet been constructed.

Gordon navigated the plane toward Amboy Crater, situated about three miles southwest of Roy’s Motel and Cafe. At 80,000 years old, Amboy is “North America’s youngest volcano,” Dacey said.

MDLT is one of several environmental groups working to secure Mojave Trails’ status, which Dacey said is “in limbo.”

In April 2017, President Donald Trump issued an executive order directing Interior Department Secretary Ryan Zinke — who resigned his post last month — to review national monuments of at least 100,000 acres that have been designated since 1996.

Trump’s goal was to determine whether the monuments needed reduction or elimination. Mojave Trails was subsequently included for review. Trump called the monuments, particularly Bear Ears National Monument in Utah, a “massive federal land grab.”

An initial report released in December 2017 included changes to 10 monuments. That same month, Trump signed proclamations that scaled back Bear Ears, as well as Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. In doing so, he declared, “Public lands will once again be for public use.”

Mojave Trails has not been altered, but Dacey said it’s never officially been declared safe.

When the monument was established, a management plan had to be drawn up by this month. That process was halted amid the Interior Department’s review. MDLT is part of a coalition working on a community proposal for a management plan. Dacey said the expectation is for it to guide future planning for Mojave Trails.

In 2016, visitors to Joshua Tree National Park more than doubled to over 2.5 million, prompting Park Superintendent David Smith to declare it was being “loved to death.” Dacey said attendance now is well over 3 million per year.

Amid the rise in popularity, as well as a massive clean-up effort underway in the damaged park following the partial federal government shutdown, groups are hoping to increase awareness of places like Mojave Trails as alternative destinations.

The question MDLT wants people to ask is, “What do these other public lands have to offer?” Dacey said.

From overhead, the answer seems simple enough.

Trump administration hints at changes to California desert's smallest national monument

President Barack Obama used his executive authority under the Antiquities Act to protect this lush expanse of Joshua trees in the Castle Mountains. Obama designated the Castle Mountains National Monument in 2016. (Jay Calderon/The Desert Sun)

Sammy Roth
The Desert Sun

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke isn't recommending any changes to Sand to Snow or Mojave Trails, two national monuments in the California desert that were established by then-President Barack Obama last year.

But Zinke's review of 27 national monuments, which was released to the public on Tuesday, hints at the possibility of allowing hunting in Castle Mountains National Monument, a pocket of California desert tucked between Mojave National Preserve and the Nevada border, where jutting mountains that look like the ramparts of a castle loom over Joshua trees, bighorn sheep, abundant grasses and a gold-mining ghost town.

The desert's bighorn sheep are protected by the Endangered Species Act, so any hunting would be extremely limited. But the Castle Mountains area is also home to mule deer, bobcats, quail, cottontail rabbits and other species sought by hunters.

President Donald Trump ordered Zinke earlier this year to review all monuments larger than 100,000 acres that have been established by presidential decree since 1996. That appeared to exclude Castle Mountains, which was designated by Obama alongside Sand to Snow and Mojave Trails but encompasses just 21,000 acres. But Trump also told Zinke to review any monuments Zinke determined were established "without adequate public outreach and coordination with relevant stakeholders." Rep. Paul Cook, a Republican who represents the High Desert, wrote a letter to Zinke arguing that Castle Mountains was "created without any local outreach or input," and that Obama had created the monument for the sole purpose of preventing the reopening of a gold mine.

In a brief section of Zinke's report labeled "other monuments," the Interior secretary lists just one example of a monument he believes was established without adequate public outreach: Castle Mountains. Zinke said his review process "uncovered inadequate communication with the sportsmen community." According to his report, hunting is prohibited in Castle Mountains because Obama's monument proclamation didn't explicitly say it's allowed, even though hunting is permitted next door in the 1.6-million acre Mojave National Preserve. Both sites are managed by the National Park Service.

Zinke didn't explicitly call for changes to the management of Castle Mountains National Monument. But in the paragraph immediately after his mention of Castle Mountains, he recommended "ongoing review of monuments to ensure that while continuing to protect objects, the proclamations prioritize public access; infrastructure upgrades, repair, and maintenance; traditional use; tribal cultural use; and hunting and fishing rights."

An Interior Department spokesperson didn't respond to an emailed question about whether Zinke intends to recommended changes to Castle Mountains. A spokesperson for Cook, the GOP member of Congress, also didn't respond to a request for comment.

David Lamfrom, director of national wildlife programs for the nonprofit National Parks Conservation Association, rejected the idea that there wasn't adequate public outreach before the Castle Mountains monument designation. Separate pieces of legislation proposed by Cook and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat, would have added the area to Mojave National Preserve, but those bills were bogged down by the more contentious politics of the proposed Mojave Trails monument. Only after several failed legislative efforts did Obama use the Antiquities Act to make Castle Mountains a national monument, since it could only be added to the national preserve by Congress.

"There's been decades of work of vetting related to Castle Mountains," Lamfrom said.

Still, Lamfrom said he thinks it's "reasonable to have a conversation" about allowing hunting in Castle Mountains, especially considering it's allowed in Mojave National Preserve, which surrounds the monument on three sides. He said Congress could vote to allow hunting, or the National Park Service could initiate a rule-making process.

"That should be locally driven and include local management and local stakeholders. So I think that having that conversation is OK, in terms of that larger management, in terms of consistency of management over these larger landscapes," Lamfrom said. He added that enforcing a prohibition on hunting within the 21,000-acre monument may be difficult, considering it's surrounded by the much larger preserve, where hunting is allowed.

Zinke recommended shrinking six national monuments: Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante in Utah, Cascade-Siskiyou in Oregon and California, Gold Butte in Nevada, and Rose Atoll and Pacific Remote Islands in the Pacific Ocean. Trump got a head start on those recommendations on Monday, traveling to Salt Lake City to sign orders dramatically reducing the size of Bears Ears and Grand-Staircase-Escalante, both of which were hated by the state's all-Republican congressional delegation.

Zinke also advised changes to the way four other monuments are managed: Katahdin Woods and Waters in Maine, Northeast Canyons and Seamounts in the Atlantic Ocean, and Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks and Rio Grande del Norte in New Mexico.

Collectively, the changes envisioned by Zinke could open more of America's public lands and waters to oil and gas drilling, mining, timber harvesting and commercial fishing.

Conservationists, outdoors enthusiasts and recreation companies have slammed Zinke's monuments review as a sham designed to allow private companies to exploit public resources. They've also argued Trump doesn't have the legal authority to make such sweeping changes to monuments designated by his predecessors under the Antiquities Act, although several presidents have reduced the size of such monuments.

More than a dozen environmental groups and Native American tribes have already filed lawsuits challenging Trump's proclamation shrinking Bears Ears and Grand Staircase. The outdoor clothing company Patagonia, which is based in Ventura, California, has also threatened to sue. The company protested Trump's actions Monday by briefly replacing its online homepage with the message, "The president stole your land."

Zinke responded to Patagonia's criticism on Tuesday, telling reporters that it's "shameful and appalling to blatantly lie in order to get money in their coffers." He said any land removed from a national monument would still be owned by the federal government.

"Not one square inch was stolen," Zinke said.

Trump shrinks Utah monuments created by Obama, Clinton

Vice President Al Gore applauds after President Bill Clinton signs a bill designating about 1.7 million acres of land in southern Utah's red-rock cliff as the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, at the Grand Canyon National Park, in Arizona In this Sept. 18, 1996. (AP Photo/Doug Mills, File)

By Barnini Chakraborty
Fox News

Capping months of speculation, President Trump on Monday signed a pair of executive orders to significantly shrink two of Utah’s national monuments – Bears Ears and the Grand Staircase-Escalante – that were created by his Democratic predecessors.

The controversial move was pitched by Trump as a win for states' rights and follows an April review conducted by Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke on the boundaries of large national monuments. The review initially looked at more than two dozen sites designated by presidential decree since the 1990s.

“I know you love this land the best and you know how to protect it and you know how to conserve this land for many, many generations to come,” Trump told a group of people at Utah’s Capitol in Salt Lake City. “They don’t know your land. They don’t care for your land like you do.”

Trump’s presidential proclamations cut Bears Ears by 85 percent and Grand Staircase-Escalante in half. The action is also likely to trigger a legal battle that could alter the government’s approach to conservation.

Utah’s congressional and state leaders lobbied the president to reduce the size of the monuments so the state would have more control on what can be done on the land.

Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah praised the announcement and said Trump was giving the people of Utah “a voice in the process.”

Zinke maintained Monday that the move should be seen as correcting an overreach by the federal government.

“We’re not taking one square inch of federal land and transferring it or selling it. It is still federal land, with all the protections of federal land,” Zinke said, adding that the biggest change is that the government is “allowing greater use on the areas that were previously in the monument.”

Opponents, however, see it as the latest example of the government breaking promises to Native American tribes and eroding protections for public land.

In 2016, former President Barack Obama proclaimed Bears Ears a national monument dedicated to Native American culture.

Former Interior Secretary Sally Jewell, who was instrumental in designating Bears Ears monument, tweeted Trump’s actions “will make him the most anti-conservation president in our history. He will be challenged by tribes and thoughtful citizens that recognize that some places are too special to develop.”

About 2,000 people lined up near Utah’s capitol on Monday, holding signs like “Keep your tiny hands off our public lands” and chanting “lock him up!” at Trump.

There were also protests held over the weekend at Utah’s snowy capital.

“I think it’s important to have natural places that are untouched and not modified,” demonstrator Valerie Huitzul told Fox News.

Huitzul was among the 5,000 protesters who showed up over the weekend.

The decision to shrink the state’s sprawling wilderness shrines has prompted fierce backlash by environmental groups as well.

Ahead of Monday’s visit, 146 scientists, researchers and academic organizations from 19 states sent a letter to the Trump administration calling the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument “an important living laboratory” to scientific research.

The Center for Western Priorities described Monday’s event as the largest rollback of protections for lands and wildlife in U.S. history.

Arnold Miller, president of the Paleontological Society and Senior Associate Dean and Professor of Geology at the University of Cincinnati, said the Grand Staircase-Escalante “contains a trove of scientifically-valuable fossils and strata from boundary to boundary, and the excising of portions of this national monument for mining or other commercial activities will tragically compromise its integrity.”

Trump said Monday while leaving the White House that the monument announcement is "something that the state of Utah and others have wanted to be done for many, many years." He said it is "so important for states' rights and so important for the people of Utah."

In December, shortly before leaving office, Obama irritated Utah Republicans by creating the Bears Ears National Monument on land sacred to Native Americans.

Trump signed an executive order in April directing Zinke to review the protections. Trump is able to upend the protections under the 1906 Antiquities Act, which gives the president broad authority to declare federal lands as monuments and restrict their use.

Trump said at the time that he had spoken to state and local leaders "who are gravely concerned about this massive federal land grab. And it's gotten worse and worse and worse, and now we're going to free it up, which is what should have happened in the first place. This should never have happened."

The move marks the first time in a half century that a president has undone these types of land protections. And it could be the first of many changes to come.

Zinke has also recommended that Nevada's Gold Butte and Oregon's Cascade-Siskiyou monuments be reduced in size, though details remain unclear. The former Montana congressman's plan would allow logging at a newly designated monument in Maine and more grazing, hunting and fishing at two sites in New Mexico.

Under Obama, a gold mining firm was fine with a Mojave Desert monument. Under Trump, an about-face

Aren Hall, environmental manager of the open-pit Newcastle mining operation, surveys the eastern Mojave Desert site. (Louis Sahagun / Los Angeles Times)

by Louis Sahagun
Los Angeles Times

Less than a year ago, President Obama’s designation of a new national monument in the eastern Mojave Desert — featuring a row of jagged peaks rising above native grasslands and Joshua trees — was hailed as a compromise that served the goals of conservationists and the mining industry.

The 20,920-acre monument surrounded, but did not include, an open-pit gold mining operation at the southern end of the Castle Mountains. That allowed Newcastle Gold Ltd. of Canada to proceed with plans to excavate 10 million tons of ore from its 8,300-acre parcel through 2025.

“The company appreciates that it has been consulted throughout this process,” Newcastle said at the time. “The new land designation reflects a compromise position that meets our needs as well as respecting the interests of other stakeholders in the area.”

So, conservationists said, they were caught off guard to learn Newcastle’s position shifted after the Trump administration moved to roll back federal protections on many of the monuments created by previous administrations.

Castle Mountains National Monument was not on the list of 27 sites proposed for status modification or elimination. In a plan delivered Thursday to the White House, but not released to the public, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said he has suggested the president make changes at “a handful” of those monuments.

Yet letters obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request show that Newcastle and Rep. Paul Cook (R-Yucca Valley) have told Zinke the designation was made without adequate public outreach or input from the company.

The firm’s recommended solution: Reduce the size of Castle Mountains National Monument by 50%.

“The company gave its word that the deal we struck nearly a year ago was good,” David Lamfrom, director of California and desert wildlife programs for the National Parks Conservation Assn., said last week. “So we’re … furious to learn that the company and its supporters have been secretly complaining that the process was unjust.”

In an interview, Gerald Panneton, chief executive of Newcastle, confirmed that the company met with Interior Department officials in June to discuss shrinking the monument. He dismissed the company’s initial cheery assessment of Obama’s designation as “words used to calm investors.”

“There were never adequate consultations with us,” said Panneton, who joined the company after the designation was made. “That’s a problem because we need room to explore and grow.”

In an opinion piece published Wednesday in the Desert Dispatch newspaper, Cook accused Obama of creating the Castle Mountains monument under the Antiquities Act “without a public meeting or public comment” as part of a “backroom deal” with conservationists. He also said Trump has specifically asked Zinke to modify the monument.

Alex Hinson, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of the Interior, declined to comment.

The area where the monument is located, about 100 miles south of Las Vegas, has a long history of battles pitting preservationists against mining, grazing and recreational interests.

In the late 1980s, plans to use a controversial gold-mining technology came under attack by environmentalists, who claimed it would dry up a perennial spring and attract wildlife to cyanide-laced water.

In 1994, the mineral-rich portion of land was carved out of the adjacent Mojave National Preserve at the request of Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who recognized the economic value of its gold mining operations. The then-Viceroy Mine produced more than 1 million ounces of gold by the time its main pits — dubbed Leslie Ann, Oro Bell and Jumbo — were shuttered in 2001 due to low gold prices.

Standing one recent day at the edge of a mining pit dug into the mountains, Newcastle environmental manager Aren Hall smiled and said, “Impressive, isn’t it?”

Panneton said Newcastle aims to resume production next year.

“We’re more than happy to sit down with environmental groups and work out our differences,” he said. “For example, the mine could help subsidize the monument and Mojave National Preserve once it’s up and running and making a profit.”

Lamfrom, however, has his doubts.

“The company’s word is not as good as gold,” he said.

Review of monuments’ designation justified

Rep. Paul Cook, R-Apple Valley,
represents the High Desert in
the House of Representatives.

OPINION

By Rep. Paul Cook
Desert Dispatch

As you might recall, former President Obama unilaterally designated two monuments in our area despite significant local opposition, doing so through misuse of the Antiquities Act. The creation of a Mojave Trails monument has been debated for some time, and a local consensus was reached on its boundary. Still, after colluding with special interest groups and performing a single fly-over in an airplane, Obama created a much larger monument and did so without a public meeting or public comment. He created another monument, Castle Mountains, out of thin air by that same abusive process.

You might also have heard attack ads against me and President Trump, implying that we seek to destroy these monuments. (They neglect to mention that I support fully a third monument, Sand to Snow.) If you’re skeptical of their message, you should be. It’s a complete lie on multiple levels. My position on Mojave Trails has never changed: The President should abide by the bipartisan boundaries established in my desert bill and Senator Feinstein’s desert bill. My position on Castle Mountains has never changed: no monument should be created without public input.

Anyone or any entity supporting Obama’s abuse of the Antiquities Act is supporting the dirty closed-door politics that Washington, D.C. has given us for too long. We shouldn’t accept the absurd notion that a single politician should determine the fate of your livelihood, community, and region without your input — that somehow he knows best. Furthermore, opposing Obama’s abuse of the Antiquities Act does not mean opposition to protecting public lands.

I support smart conservation, with monuments created through a thorough public vetting process. That’s why I introduced desert legislation in 2015 (HR 3668) and again in 2017 (HR 857), because we deserve a sensible approach to conservation that includes input from Congress and the public. While drafting these bills, I’ve worked with countless stakeholders — including the aforementioned environmental groups and other environmental groups with better integrity — to ensure that land protections meet the demands of local economies, recreationalists, and conservationists. This resulted in significant support locally.

The county of Inyo and cities of Apple Valley, Banning, Barstow, Big Bear Lake, Hesperia, Twentynine Palms, and Yucca Valley endorsed my proposal because it protected public access to Mojave Trails. I even mailed a survey to tens of thousands of households in my district to see if a monument or a less restrictive designation was preferred for Mojave Trails. A plurality of the 2,500 survey responses supported a less restrictive designation (47% to 44%).

Instead of protecting the 965,000 acres of Mojave Trails as addressed in Feinstein’s legislation and my own, Obama drew a staggering 1.6 million-acre boundary. To make matters worse, Obama created the Castle Mountains National Monument to stop a mining project that environmental extremists have long despised. In fact, the actual Castle Mountains — an interesting topographical feature — could have been protected without drawing the boundary so large as to prevent the mining operation. In both cases, Obama used the Antiquities Act to circumvent public scrutiny.

That’s why President Trump asked Department of the Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to issue recommendations on modifying Mojave Trails and Castle Mountains national monuments. It’s ironic that these extreme environmental groups and their Congressional advocates claim there was a “backroom” deal between Trump and mining companies in determining the fate of these monuments — ironic because a backroom deal occurred between these environmental groups and Obama in creating the monuments. I believe a Freedom of Information Act request would prove my statement true, because some members of these same groups insinuated such collusion in speaking to my staff. Moreover, Zinke’s review allowed for public comment; Obama’s actions did not.

No one side should have free reign in the discussion of public land use, but we haven’t seen a balanced approach in decades. Had Obama and his special-interest supporters chosen good public process in determining these monuments, the Trump administration would not be reviewing their misdeeds. Obama threw 553.5 million acres of public land into national monuments, nearly twice as much as all previous presidents combined. We should never assume one person in government, given that much power, has acted properly in every case. No presidential action is above review.

5 California National Monuments Are Among 27 Up For Axing

Snow on the Providence Mountains can happen a few times every winter, Mojave National Preserve, Mojave Desert of San Bernardino County, California. (COURTESY OF THE NATIONAL PARK SERVICE)

KPBS
Associated Press

Five California national monument areas may be axed or downsized by the Trump Administration on Thursday. They are among 27 national monuments established or expanded by presidents since 1996 that Trump in an executive order asked Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to review. Here's a quick look at the state's areas that could lose some or all of their protected status.

Mojave Trails National Monument

This huge swath of Mojave Desert north of Joshua Tree National Park is by far the largest of California's six national monuments up for elimination, and also the most recently designated. President Barack Obama gave the status to 1.6 million acres of desert land in February, 2016. it contains ancient lava flows, spectacular sand dunes, ancient Native American trading routes and World War II-era training camps. It also contains the largest remaining undeveloped stretch of historic Route 66.

San Gabriel Mountains National Monument

The 346,000-acre mountain area is some of the nation's most visited wilderness. More than 15 million people live within a 90-minute drive of the mountains northeast of Los Angeles. It was designated by Obama in person in October, 2014 and came in a wave of similar moves by the president, who would use national-monument status to protect millions of acres of public lands around the country in his last years in office. The move brought criticism from California Congressmen and others who said the president was overstepping his authority.

Giant Sequoia National Monument

President Bill Clinton created this national monument in 2000, setting aside 328,000 acres of land in Tulare County where the giant sequoia grows naturally. The move added to the areas already safeguarded in Sequoia, Kings Canyon and Yosemite national parks. The decision was praised by environmentalists but scorned by loggers. In announcing his decision, Clinton marveled at the resilience of a partially charred tree that had been struck by lightning decades ago. "Look how deep the burn goes," he said. "These giant sequoias clearly are the work of the ages. They grow taller than the Statue of Liberty, broader than a bus."

Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monument

This area 50 miles west of Sacramento was given national monument status by Obama just over two years ago. The monument, consisting of 330,000 acres of public lands, extends from Berryessa Peak and other areas in Napa, Yolo, and Solano counties through Lake, Colusa, and Glenn counties to the eastern boundary of the Yuki Wilderness in Mendocino County. It is home to threatened and endangered plant and wildlife species including northern spotted owls.

Carrizo Plain National Monument

Far less visited is this area in San Luis Obispo County, which is known for its remoteness and silence. The national monument created by Clinton in 2001 consists of 204,000 acres of grasslands between San Luis Obispo and Bakersfield. It includes Painted Rock, a horseshoe-shaped sandstone monolith with red ocher etchings of horned figures and geometric shapes drawn by American Indians.

Tommy Hough, president of San Diego County Democrats for Environmental Action, said that if this protected land is removed, other monuments could be targeted.

“The precedent that could be set here is terrible, and it doesn’t just potentially affect Cabrillo National Monument,” Hough said. “These are some of the most special places in the U.S., these have been identified in some cases decades ago, to be preserved as is.”

Lawmaker wants to shrink Castle Mountains monument to make more room for a gold mine

Castle Mountains National Monument surrounds the Castle Mountain gold mine which a Canadian company is looking to reopen. (Photo: Jay Calderon/The Desert Sun)

Ian James
The Desert Sun

In May, when the Trump administration announced its list of national monuments that would fall under an unprecedented nationwide review, California’s Castle Mountains National Monument wasn’t among them.

But if Rep. Paul Cook has his way, President Donald Trump will reexamine this newly created monument in the Mojave Desert and carve out more space for a gold mine.

Castle Mountains was the smallest of three monuments that President Barack Obama established last year across the California desert. The 21,000-acre monument includes jagged peaks, Joshua trees and grasslands in the desert between Mojave National Preserve and the Nevada state line.

The monument also surrounds the Castle Mountain gold mine, which the Canadian company NewCastle Gold is looking to reopen more than a decade after it was shut down due to low gold prices.

The company has recently urged the Trump administration to reduce the size of the monument to free up more land around the mine – and Cook seconded that request in a June 8 letter to Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke.

“Although this is the smallest of the four monuments in my district, it is also the most problematic,” Cook said in the letter. “This monument was created without any local outreach or input. It was designated for one purpose: to prevent the reopening of the Castle Mountain Mine.”

Obama’s decision to designate new monuments using his authority under the 1906 Antiquities Act has drawn criticism from Cook and other Republicans. By the time he left office, Obama had created or expanded 34 monuments, more than any other president.

Trump launched the review of national monuments in April, accusing Obama of an "egregious abuse use of power."

In his executive order, Trump instructed Zinke to review any national monument of at least 100,000 acres created since 1996. The order included a loophole allowing for smaller monuments in cases where Zinke determines that a designation “was made without adequate public outreach and coordination with relevant stakeholders.”

But when the Trump administration came out with its list of 27 land and marine monuments that would be reexamined, Castle Mountains appeared to be off the hook. The only monument on the list below the 100,000-acre threshold was Katahdin Woods and Waters in Maine.

Zinke is due to announce his recommendations by Aug. 24 for six national monuments in California, including Mojave Trails, Giant Sequoia, Carrizo Plain, San Gabriel Mountains and Berryessa Snow Mountain. He announced this week that the administration won’t shrink or eliminate Sand to Snow National Monument.

It’s not clear whether or how Zinke might take up Cook’s suggestion to include Castle Mountains in the review.

In his letter, Cook pointed out that when Mojave National Preserve was created in 1994 under legislation introduced by Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the Castle Mountains area was excluded to allow mining to continue.

He said there were later proposals in Congress to add parts of the area that weren’t needed for mining to the Mojave National Preserve, but never to establish Castle Mountains as its own monument. Cook said the first time the proposal was announced came just months before Obama designated the monument.

Cook said “there was no real public outreach or coordination” in that process. A single public meeting was held on the proposal in October 2015, he said, and it occurred outside San Bernardino County, more than 200 miles away from the Castle Mountains.

Cook told Zinke that even though the national monument is smaller than 100,000 acres, it’s “worthy of the utmost scrutiny by your department.”

Cook’s suggestions came to light this month after The Wilderness Society, a nonprofit conservation group, obtained his letter through a request under the Freedom of Information Act.

With his letter, Cook included a map showing his proposed changes to the monument, which would open up more areas around the mine. He also included letters to Zinke from NewCastle Gold and San Bernardino County.

Robert Lovingood, chair of the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors, said in his letter to Zinke that if he decides to review Castle Mountains, the county wants to see the government address “issues of access through the monument to the mine and access to water needed to service the mine” and accommodate future expansion.

Kerry Shapiro, a lawyer representing NewCastle Gold, requested in a June 1 letter to Zinke that the national monument be reduced by roughly 50 percent and that the government amend a proclamation to allow the company “the flexibility it needs to explore for and develop new mining claims, water resources” and other facilities.

The company said in the letter that Castle Mountains is much larger than it needs to be to protect wildlife, habitats and natural springs, and that the national monument “could be cut in half and still protect those resources most deserving of long-term conservation.”

If the monument remains unchanged, the company said that would “constrain or end” the mining project.

The company's concerns contrast with the stance it took publicly when the monument was created in February 2016. At the time, NewCastle Gold said in a press release that the company was pleased its claim and private lands weren’t affected, that some adjacent federal lands weren’t included and that Obama’s proclamation said its existing rights would be maintained.

David Adamson, who was then NewCastle’s CEO, said in the statement that the federal land not included in the monument “extends well beyond our resource limits and claim boundaries and includes ample land for potential project development.”

Adamson also said NewCastle appreciated “that it has been consulted throughout this process and that the new land designation reflects a compromise position that meets our needs as well as respecting the interests of other stakeholders and the public in the area.”

Adamson left the company last year. The current president and CEO is Gerald Panneton, who has said that the company is looking to get the mine operating again soon and that he sees great potential for the operation to get bigger.

NewCastle said in a statement this month that it drilled a second well as part of a study to identify additional water sources. The company said the well was drilled to a depth of nearly 1,600 feet and reached the water table 570 feet underground. NewCastle said it also has three other wells at the site.

In addition to suggesting that Trump shrink Castle Mountains, Cook has also called for redrawing the boundaries of Mojave Trails National Monument to remove a vast southern portion that connects the monument to Joshua Tree National Park.

Conservation groups criticized Cook’s efforts to eliminate parts of the monuments.

Danielle Segura, executive director of the Mojave Desert Land Trust, said the proposed changes to Castle Mountains and Mojave Trails are “a direct affront to the will of our community.” She said in a statement that Cook’s recommendations “are not in the best interest of the diverse desert communities who have fought for, and benefit from, these public lands.”

David Lamfrom, director of the National Parks Conservation Association’s California desert program, said he was taken aback by Cook’s requests.

“To ask for Castle Mountains to be put under review is really surprising because an agreement was hammered out,” Lamfrom said. “The public has weighed in and said they want these places to be protected.”

Segura and Lamfrom wrote to Zinke last month arguing there’s no need to put Castle Mountains under review. They said the national monument doesn’t inhibit current or future mining, and doesn’t put jobs or government revenues in jeopardy.

Segura and Lamfrom signed the letter together with representatives of two other groups – the California Wilderness Coalition and the Center for Biological Diversity. They said the monument’s creation wasn’t a last-minute deal but rather a “diligent effort spanning several years” and involving the company.

“Throughout this process, especially leading up to the monument designation, NewCastle Gold was engaged, consulted and apprised,” they said in the letter.

Obama established the national monuments in the California desert after separate monument bills introduced by Feinstein and Cook failed in Congress.

Lamfrom said he knows Cook is someone who cares about public lands, but “that letter really seems to be taking actions that side with furthering the interests of industrial projects and threats to the California desert.”

Cook was unavailable for an interview and responded to questions from The Desert Sun by email. He said NewCastle Gold has made clear its opposition to the monument’s current boundaries.

“The primary concern of the mine operators is that the Castle Mountains National Monument eliminates the buffer zone that was purposely created between the project area and the Mojave National Preserve in Sen. Feinstein’s 1994 Desert Protection Act,” Cook said. “Any inability to access the buffer zone for ancillary facilities and future operational expansion would render the project unviable.”

Cook said when the mine is fully operating, it’s expected to generate more than 200 jobs and over $7 million in revenue for the county and state – which the county sorely needs to pay for the work of restoring lands that have been mined across the desert.

His complaints about the monument go beyond his concerns about the mine needing more space.

When the monument was created, land that previously fell under the Bureau of Land Management’s jurisdiction was handed over to the National Park Service to manage.

The new national monument immediately banned hunting, Cook said in his letter, despite the fact that hunting – for animals such as bobcats and mule deer – is allowed nearby in the Mojave National Preserve and had been permitted in the Castle Mountain area before the monument was created.

He asked Zinke to assign the monument’s lands back to the Bureau of Land Management and to allow hunting again.

Cook opposed Obama’s designation of the monument from the beginning. He said the monument never appeared in any legislation and “directly violates the legislative intent” of the 1994 law, which established the zone around the mine.

“We can discuss whether portions of the buffer zone should be incorporated into the Mojave National Preserve, but that discussion must be facilitated through legislation and public outreach, not behind closed doors, such as it did during the Obama administration,” Cook said.

Cook said he’s convinced that Castle Mountains, even though it’s smaller than the 100,000-acre threshold, fits with Trump’s order to reevaluate monuments that were created “without adequate public outreach and coordination” with stakeholders.

“It clearly qualifies for review,” Cook said.

Zinke and Trump could say any day now whether they agree with him.

One California desert national monument is safe — but another is still in jeopardy

Sand to Snow National Monument includes the Devil's Playground area just west of Highway 62, which is populated by many species of cacti. (Photo: Jay Calderon/The Desert Sun)

Sammy Roth
The Desert Sun

The Trump administration won't shrink or eliminate Sand to Snow National Monument near Palm Springs, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said Wednesday — but elsewhere in the California desert, Mojave Trails National Monument may still be on the chopping block.

Zinke has been reviewing 22 national monuments created or expanded by presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, with plans to submit final recommendations to President Donald Trump by next week. Sand to Snow is the sixth monument for which Zinke has said he'll recommend no changes, following Canyons of the Ancients in Colorado, Craters of the Moon in Idaho, Grand Canyon-Parashant in Arizona, Hanford Reach in Washington and Upper Missouri River Banks in Zinke's home state of Montana.

"The land of Sand to Snow National Monument is some of the most diverse terrain in the West, and the monument is home to incredible geographic, biologic and archaeological history of our nation," Zinke said in a statement.

President Obama created Sand to Snow National Monument using his authority under the Antiquities Act in early 2016, protecting 154,000 acres that stretch from the desert floor near Palm Springs to the peak of Mount San Gorgonio. The monument helps link San Bernardino National Forest, the San Jacinto Mountains and Joshua Tree National Park, connecting a diverse array of ecosystems and protecting a wildlife corridor traversed by mountain lions, bighorn sheep and desert tortoises, among other species.

Obama designated two other monuments in the California desert at the same time as Sand to Snow: the 1.6-million-acre Mojave Trails monument, which surrounds historic Route 66 between Mojave National Preserve and Joshua Tree National Park, and Castle Mountains National Monument, which fills in a 21,000-acre gap in the preserve.

Obama established the three monuments to protect those places from mining, solar and wind farms and others forms of development, after legislative efforts in Congress failed.

Monument bills introduced by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat, never reached a vote. Neither did legislation written by GOP Rep. Paul Cook, which would have created the Sand to Snow monument and offered a lesser level of protection to Mojave Trails.

Both monuments were swept up by Trump's April 2017 executive order, which called for Zinke to make recommendations to Trump on 22 land-based monuments by August 24. But Sand to Snow has been relatively non-controversial, even among opponents of Obama's designation. In a letter to Zinke last month, 17 House Republicans — including Cook, who represents the High Desert — recommended no changes to Sand to Snow.

High Desert residents cheered Zinke's decision not to alter the national monument.

Real estate agent Karen Lowe, who serves as secretary of the Morongo Valley Chamber of Commerce, said local businesses and residents spent nearly a decade lobbying for Sand to Snow, which encircles Morongo Valley. Local leaders expect the monument to boost tourism as the National Park Service adds infrastructure and promotes the site.

"When we finally got the monument, we were so excited. And now to find out that it's going to remain unchanged — it's just great news for Morongo Valley," Lowe said.

April Sall lives in the tiny High Desert community of Pioneertown and is a member of the board of directors of the Wildlands Conservancy, a conservation group. She called Zinke's decision not to reduce Sand to Snow National Monument a "good start," but said Sand to Snow and Mojave Trails didn't need to be reviewed in the first place.

"Both the desert monuments were very strongly vetted, and we had a real groundswell of support. And it was a grassroots campaign that really started with the community members wanting to protect that landscape from industrial energy development," Sall said. "People were stoked that their voice mattered and they got to protect this place, so the fact that it went under review, with no justified reason...was a bit of a dark shadow."

Mojave Trails National Monument may have a different fate.

The 17 House Republicans who wrote to Zinke, including Cook and two other Californians, urged him to shrink Mojave Trails. In their letter, they said Obama's Mojave Trails designation could prevent future expansion of some mining operations, although they acknowledged it doesn't affect existing mining rights within the monument.

Mojave Trails supporters are worried changes to the monument's boundaries could clear the way for Cadiz Inc.'s controversial plan to pump groundwater from a Mojave Desert aquifer and sell it to Southern California cities. Cadiz's land is surrounded by the monument. Conservation groups say the project would remove more groundwater from the underground aquifer than nature puts back in, harming plants and animals in the monument and in nearby Mojave National Preserve — a claim the company disputes.

It's not clear Trump has the legal authority to eliminate monuments established by previous presidents, but several presidents have reduced the size of monuments. In their letter to Zinke, the 17 congressional Republicans called for Trump to eliminate nine monuments and shrink 14 others, arguing that previous presidents have overstepped their authority by using the 1906 Antiquities Act to protect huge swaths of federal land.

"No one person should be able to unilaterally lock up millions of acres of public land from multiple-use with the stroke of a pen. Local stakeholders deserve to have a voice on public land-use decisions that impact their livelihoods," they wrote to Zinke.

Critics, though, say Trump's monument review is designed to benefit oil and gas, mining, timber and other industries that hope to extract more resources from public lands. If Trump tries to revoke any monument protections, conservation groups are likely to sue.

Responding to Zinke's announcement Wednesday that he won't recommend changes to Sand to Snow, Aaron Weiss — a spokesperson for the Center for Western Priorities, a Denver-based conservation advocacy group — said Zinke's latest decision "makes it clear he is not using any legitimate criteria to evaluate our national monuments."

"This charade has gone on long enough," Weiss said in a statement. "The secretary himself admits Sand to Snow is 'home to [the] incredible geographic, biologic, and archaeological history of our nation,' which is true of every single monument he's threatening. Ryan Zinke needs to stop playing reality show games with our public lands."

Zinke caps review of Nevada monuments with Bunkerville visit

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke talks to the media on July 30, 2017 while visiting Southern Nevada.

By Keith Rogers
Las Vegas Review-Journal

BUNKERVILLE — Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke spoke to reporters early Sunday evening in this rural Clark County community as he wrapped up a much-anticipated visit to Southern Nevada that included a hike at Gold Butte National Monument and stops in Basin and Range National Monument to see American Indian rock art.

“As a steward of our greatest treasures, it’s good to get out,” Zinke said as he stood in the sun against a backdrop of the Gold Butte range. “As a former Navy SEAL, I think it’s important to go out on the front line and actually meet people because the view from the Potomac is a lot different than the Virgin River.”

The interior secretary visited the monuments as part of President Donald Trump’s executive order mandating a review of 22 national monuments and five marine national monuments created by presidential decree since Jan. 1, 1996, to determine whether the designations should be scaled back or eliminated.

“What I’ve learned in the monument review is every monument is unique,” said Zinke, who wore a cowboy hat as he answered reporters’ questions.

“In a lot of cases people are afraid public land is going to be sold so they feel like a monument is a tool to make sure that public land stays in public hands,” he said, adding, “Out front, I am an advocate to never sell or transfer public land. So is the president.”

Zinke is expected to present Trump with his final recommendations by the end of August.

Speaking outside Brian Haviland’s residence near Gold Butte, Zinke offered insight into criteria for downsizing.

“Again, the definition (of a national monument) is fairly loose so we’re going through and evaluating,” he said. “What’s the object? Is the protection in the smallest area compatible with protection of that object?”

And, he said, “If we’re going to protect those objects that the monument is intended to do, then you have to have things like a bathroom there so people hiking up a trail can use the restroom before they look at the petroglyphs or dwellings.”

Based on his tours Sunday, he said Nevada’s monuments need better road maintenance so public access is not interrupted.

“The good thing is, I haven’t met anybody on either side that doesn’t love the land,” and they agree it’s worth protecting, he said. “So there’s more in common on the monuments than there are opposites.”

Before Zinke’s arrival, Russ Graves voiced concern about the size of the Gold Butte monument.

“I’d just like to see the size reduced,” said Graves. 73, who owns an orchard that is part of a 220-acre ranch.

Whitney Pocket, the Devil’s Throat sinkhole and a few other locations on Gold Butte should be part of the monument, but other parts don’t have antiquities value, he said.

Zinke had planned to stay in Mesquite through Monday to meet with U.S. Rep. Dina Titus, D-Nev., and stakeholders there and in Overton on the last leg of a swing through the West. But he canceled those plans to return to Washington, D.C., for the first Cabinet meeting with new White House Chief of Staff John Kelly.

While the Monday meeting was scuttled, Zinke did meet with some stakeholders Sunday and has scheduled phone meetings with others, including the Moapa Band of Paiute Indians, according to his staff.

The Riverside Road location where Zinke spoke is within three miles of the April 2014 armed standoff on the Virgin River between federal agents from his department and militia supporters of defiant rancher Cliven Bundy — the subject of a high-visibility trial in federal court in Las Vegas.

Asked by the Las Vegas Review-Journal if the Interior Department plans to round up Bundy’s stray cattle from the Gold Butte monument, Zinke said: “I’m not going to address that issue.”

Regarding ranching on public land, he said, “As we look at the rancher, that’s as much a part of the culture of a lot of these monuments as some of the objects.”

Feeling forgotten

Bundy’s wife, Carol, said she was disappointed Zinke didn’t meet with her on his way to Gold Butte despite her efforts to reach him through emails, certified letters and phone calls to staff.

“We have not received one phone call back,” she said, sitting in the living room of the Bundy ranch house Sunday. “We feel like we’re forgotten. Yet my husband and four of our sons, a total of 19 men, sit in prison under the guise of charges of the Department of Interior, which Mr. Zinke is in control over, and they have committed no crime.

“Why would you come to my front yard and not reach out to my family and hear our pleas so that I could hear his as well?” she said.

Zinke said he’s trying to change the image of Interior Department agencies with heavy-handed law enforcement officers.
“We should be the happy department,” he said.

“When you see a BLM truck you should think land manager and not law enforcement, which we work with through our local sheriffs.”

Zinke’s visit to Nevada started early. After his flight landed in Las Vegas at about 7:30 a.m., Zinke flew by helicopter to Gold Butte’s Whitney Pocket, where he hiked with several local officials.

Other stops included White River Narrows, a Basin and Range petroglyph site; artist Michael Heiser’s “City” project where he met with Los Angeles County Museum of Art staff members; and the Mount Irish petroglyph site in Basin and Range, where he met with Friends of Gold Butte.

Earlier Sunday, U.S. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev., released a video of her support for the national monuments.

“Our outdoor recreation in Nevada is a boon to our economy, 148,000 jobs, billions of dollars in revenue to the economy,” she said in the video. “And that’s worth fighting for.”

About the monuments

In his proclamation designating Gold Butte National Monument, President Barack Obama called the region “a landscape of contrast and transition, where dramatically chiseled red sandstone, twisting canyons, and tree-clad mountains punctuate flat stretches of the Mojave Desert.”

Gold Butte encompasses nearly 300,000 and was created Dec. 28, 2016.

Basin and Range National Monument was designated in July 2015 and covers 704,000 acres in Lincoln and Nye counties.

Obama’s proclamation said, “The vast, rugged landscape redefines our notions of distance and space and brings into sharp focus the will and resolve of the people who have lived here. The unbroken expanse is an invaluable treasure for our Nation and will continue to serve as an irreplaceable resource for archaeologists, historians, and ecologists for generations to come.”

Rescind new monuments

Letters to the Editor

By Jim Bagley, Twentynine Palms
Hi-Desert Star

If I had told you 40 years ago that Joshua Tree National Monument would start charging fees to let you in, it would cost you $25 just to visit, and if you had an annual pass the Park Service would demand you show a valid photo ID to use it like some totalitarian country demanding “papers” from you to enter, you would’ve said that’s an outrageous concept. But in 2017 that is exactly the reality of where we are.

Most of the monument has been converted into wilderness, numerous roads open during my lifetime have all been closed, every road now has a lockable gate and any new lands that have added to the now “park” don’t include any new campgrounds or facilities, it just added more closed areas made inaccessible to historic, sensible public access.

Now we have the Mojave Trails National Monument and all the other political monuments across America that President Obama rushed to create before his administration was out of office. How is implementing a one-sided mandate without open participation and bipartisan consensus reflecting the fairness of the American character Mr. Obama so copiously lectured us about? The zealous environmentalist who called upon Obama to use his power to cut to the public out of any longterm management policies cheered him on and boisterously celebrated having their own way.

President Trump is now taking the initiative to include everybody in the discussion about our public lands by asking for a review and direct public input on all recent large-scale Antiquities Act orders. What a revolutionary concept, actually asking for public input instead dictating one party vision with executive action.

The same people who fought to cut the public out of the discussion and off the public lands are crying foul and organizing protests against the review. Wow, how shocking the elitists are self-righteously offended that other people (undoubtedly the deplorables) with another point of view should be heard.

The Secretary of the Interior should recommend these politically created monuments be rescinded in the interest of the highest and best use of our American public lands. We should have an inclusive honest, open discussion about the best long-range management for the Mojave Desert. Let’s include a re-examination of the political wilderness areas that were closed under the fervent parochial effort in 1994 of the California Desert Protection Act. If recreation as an economic goal is a part of the monument strategy, we should restore reasonable access to closed historic roads and campsites for tourism and let the locals enjoy these special places again.

Let’s start with absolute transparency. The folks who created the maps for the Obama monuments excluding the public should clearly identify themselves. Take ownership of your agenda and disclose to the public exactly who had influence in Obama administration. I want to have a say in what happens too! Obama did not ask for public participation.

If making “monuments for everyone” is truly the goal, then everyone should be included cooperatively in the formation of public lands policy. President Obama’s misuse of the Antiquities Act to exclude the public from an open, transparent process to make decisions on the American landscape is offensive. If there is legitimate widespread support for the monuments, why not the let the public democratic process work and send any new land use designations to Congress and get bipartisan consensus?

I have been locked out of too many wonderful places once open to everyone by intolerant, discriminatory, partisan land use policies. In the future I do not want to be forced to pay a government fee to visit Amboy, just because it is in one of Obama’s monuments.

Rep. Cook signs support of national monument reduction

By Charity Lindsey
Victorville Daily Press

Republican Congressman Paul Cook recently signed a letter to the Department of the Interior recommending the reduction of some national monuments, despite nonprofit efforts to preserve their boundaries and designations.

In a June 30 letter to DOI Secretary Zinke signed by Cook and 16 other members of congress from western states, lawmakers claim that the “misuse of this outdated 1906 Act has jeopardized the daily activities, livelihoods and traditions of local communities,” including energy development, wildfire prevention efforts and recreational activities like hunting and fishing.

The letter provides an analysis of the 27 monuments currently under the DOI’s review, recommending a reduction of the Mojave Trails National Monument and the San Gabriel Mountains National Monument, much to the discontent of the Mojave Desert Land Trust (MDLT), whose representatives claim Cook “has not communicated with his constituents” about the Executive Order.

“It is outrageous that Rep. Cook would go behind the backs of his constituents to argue that one of our Mojave Monuments be diminished,” MDLT Executive Director Danielle Segura said. “The Mojave Desert Land Trust has invested in this landscape for over a decade, and worked alongside many diverse local groups, to create this monument. Rep. Cook couldn’t even wait until the public had commented before trying to strip protections on land important to the local community.”

But in a statement to the Daily Press Tuesday, Cook said that as a government official, “I don’t submit public comments, as this is the domain of the public.”

″Once the letter was submitted, it was published on the Western Caucus website and made available for anyone to view,” Cook said. “To assert that this was done in secret is laughable at best. In fact, my staff sent a link to this letter directly to the staff of the Mojave Desert Land Trust the same day it was sent to Secretary Zinke.”

MDLT has collected more than 1,250 comments focused specifically on the importance of the monuments in the Mojave. The Desert Defenders campaign comment period began May 10, two weeks after the executive order, which impacts four sites affecting San Bernardino County: The San Gabriel Mountains, Mojave Trails, Castle Mountains and Sand to Snow national monuments.

Mojave Trails is located between interstates 15 and 40 and partially surrounds the Mojave National Preserve. While San Gabriel was designated in October 2014, the others were all established in February of last year.

Cook noted that the letter recognized the local support for the Sand to Snow National Monument, which the congress members requested no changes to.

“On the other hand, the former President nearly doubled the total size of the Mojave Trails National Monument from any of the previous proposals,” Cook said. “This was accomplished without any public comment. This letter simply recognizes the illegitimacy of this action and asks that President Trump follow the publicly debated boundaries while rolling back the former President’s overreach.”

The San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors also sent a letter to the Department of the Interior on May 31, stating its position “that any national monument designations should go through the legislative process, rather than by Presidential Proclamation under The Antiquities Act.”

It's magical legal thinking to say Trump can't reverse Obama's national monuments

The northernmost boundary of the proposed Bears Ears region in Utah on May 23, 2016. President Donald Trump signed an executive order on April 26 directing his interior secretary to review the designation of dozens of national monuments on federal lands. (Francisco Kjolseth / Associated Press)

Opinion-Editorial

By Todd Gaziano and John Yoo
Los Angeles Times

Suppose President Trump declared much of California, Nevada and Oregon — states that just happened to vote against him — off-limits to economic development and recreational use. Suppose he barred all mining, grazing, agriculture and even camping from these states’ federal lands (roughly 46% of California, 85% of Nevada and 53% of Oregon) under a law to preserve national monuments of scientific and historical interest.

According to some environmentalists and legal scholars, we would have to live with this result. They believe a president can permanently designate federal land as a monument and restrict its uses — even if we’re talking about millions of acres (138 million acres in the example above), far removed from any real historical or scientific significance, and over the objections of the states involved.

But a presidential power to create permanent national monuments flies in the face of the plain text of federal law, the conventional relationship between presidents and Congress and historical understandings of executive power. Trump has the right to reverse the national monuments created by previous presidents without an act of Congress, but by the same token, the Constitution creates a check by allowing future presidents to reverse Trump too.

In late April, Trump announced a plan to reconsider the size of recently designated national monuments, principally those that withdrew vast amounts of land in the West and in the oceans near Hawaii and New England from some forms of economic development. His orders sparked a firestorm of criticism from environmentalists and sympathetic public officials, who have argued in these pages that Trump cannot undo a national monument once declared by a past president.

The power to create national monuments derives from the Antiquities Act of 1906. It’s a broad presidential power, although monuments must be limited to the smallest area necessary to preserve landmarks and other objects of interest. Like many federal laws, the Antiquities Act delegates authority to the executive branch but does not address how to undo the use of the power. Those who defend permanent, unchangeable national monuments argue that the act’s silence on reversal means reversal is impossible. But there is no reason to believe that the Antiquities Act can uniquely evade the fundamental principles that apply throughout our government and laws.

Almost every grant of power, by Constitution or statute, implicitly also includes the power of reversal. Congress has no express authority in the Constitution to repeal a law, but it does so by passing new laws. The Supreme Court doesn’t have express authority to overrule a past precedent, but it does so in a later decision. As the federal courts have recognized, the president can fire Cabinet officers or abrogate treaties (both of which require Senate advice and consent), even though the Constitution doesn’t mention it. No Congress, Supreme Court or president can bind their successors from using their branch’s constitutional powers.

The courts have applied the same legal principle of reversal when Congress delegates lawmaking power to the executive branch, as in the Antiquities Act. For example, agencies granted authority to issue regulations also can revoke or modify them, and presidents often repeal executive orders, many of which are based on statutory powers. The courts have never held that the underlying statutory authority once used cannot be revoked.

Indeed, those who claim that the Antiquities Act does not grant a reversal power cannot find a single case in another area of federal law that supports that contention. To override the norm, legislators have to clearly limit reversal powers in the original law; the plain text of the Antiquities Act includes no such limits.

Those who consider monument proclamations sacrosanct place most of their hopes in a cursory legal opinion issued by U.S. Atty. Gen. Homer Cummings in 1938. No court has ever approved of the Cummings opinion. Our research explains the many holes in its reasoning, including Cummings’ mistaken reliance on an 1862 attorney general opinion that interpreted a different law, with utterly different facts, and, in any case, reached a conclusion contrary to Cummings’ position.

In a letter to the Interior Department, California Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra asserts that Trump cannot legally revoke or reduce six national monuments in California. Besides his reliance on Cummings’ flawed opinion, Becerra’s statutory citations don’t help his case. He primarily cites ambiguous comments made in House committee deliberations related to the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976. But that is a separate statute, on a different subject, that did not alter the text or plain meaning of the Antiquities Act. If that’s the best that California officials have on their side in this debate, they should lose.

Californians and others who want to maintain national monuments without change should focus on the merits of the designations rather than magical legal thinking. No president is likely to significantly disturb a national monument that enjoys strong local support. The public comment period for land-based monuments, including all those in California identified for review, is open until July 10. Comments on marine monuments under review are due by July 26.

Prior presidents acted unilaterally to create or vastly expand several national monuments. It’s simply unrealistic to pretend that acts created by unilateral presidential decrees cannot be undone in the same manner.

Todd Gaziano is the executive director of the Pacific Legal Foundation’s D.C. Center and its senior fellow in constitutional law. John Yoo is a law professor at UC Berkeley and a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. They are the authors of an AEI paper on national monuments.

Trump executive order puts Sand to Snow, Mojave Trails national monuments in crosshairs

The Mojave Trails National Monument spans 1.6 million acres that offer a stunning mosaic of rugged mountain ranges, ancient lava flows and spectacular sand dunes. (Photo: Courtesy of Jack Thompson/The Wildlands Conservancy)

Sammy Roth
The Desert Sun

President Donald Trump has called for an unprecedented review of national monuments established by Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, calling into question the future of the Sand to Snow and Mojave Trails monuments in the California desert.

Obama designated those monuments last year, thrilling conservationists and outdoors enthusiasts who had long fought for the beloved landscapes to be protected from development. The Sand to Snow National Monument stretches from the desert floor near Palm Springs to the peak of Mount San Gorgonio, comprising 154,000 acres. The Mojave Trails monument is larger, spanning 1.6 million acres and surrounding historic Route 66, between Mojave National Preserve and Joshua Tree National Park.

Trump's executive order directs Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to review all monuments designated by presidents since 1996. Zinke said the review would be limited to monuments larger than 100,000 acres, but the text of the executive order creates an exception for cases "where the (Interior) Secretary determines that the designation or expansion was made without adequate public outreach." That broad loophole means the California desert's 21,000-acre Castle Mountains monument — designated by Obama at the same time as Sand to Snow and Mojave Trails — may also be vulnerable.

Republican politicians railed against Obama's liberal use of the 1906 Antiquities Act to set aside public lands and waters for conservation. Obama expanded or designated new monuments 34 times, more than any other president, protecting more than 5.7 million acres of land and nearly 550 million acres of water, most of it surrounding Hawaii and other Pacific Ocean islands, according to a Desert Sun tally.

In a signing ceremony Wednesday, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said no decisions have been made about specific monuments, emphasizing that Trump's executive order "does not remove any monuments... and does not weaken any environmental protections on any public lands." But Trump made clear he plans to shrink or eliminate some monuments. Speaking after Zinke, Trump slammed his predecessor for using the Antiquities Act so often, saying, "it’s time we ended this abusive practice."

"I've spoken with many state and local leaders… who are gravely concerned about this massive federal land grab, and it's gotten worse and worse and worse," Trump said. "And now we're going to free it up, which is what should have happened in the first place. This should never have happened."

It's far from clear Trump can eliminate monuments designated by a previous president. While Congress can abolish a national monument, the Antiquities Act doesn't explicitly give the president the authority to do so, and no president has ever tried.

But several presidents have reduced the size of national monuments, according to the Congressional Research Service. President John F. Kennedy, for instance, removed nearly 4,000 acres from the Bandelier National Monument in New Mexico.

Pumping groundwater near Mojave Trails

In the California desert, public-lands advocates were dismayed by Trump's order.

David Myers, executive director of the Wildlands Conservancy, said he thinks the Sand to Snow and Mojave Trails national monuments have enough local, bipartisan support that the Trump administration won't target them for elimination. But he's worried about possible carve-outs for mining, energy development and other industrial activities.

"Someone donates to a congressman, and all of a sudden a mining company from Canada, or Mitsubishi from Japan, trumps the American people," Myers said. "The people love these monuments, and they will show up and turn out to protect them."

Some conservationists fear Trump's executive order will be used to help Cadiz Inc., which wants to pump groundwater from a desert aquifer next to Mojave Trails and sell the water to Southern California cities. Frazier Haney, conservation director at Mojave Desert Land Trust, said federal officials could rewrite Obama's 2016 proclamation establishing the monument to make it easier for the groundwater project to go forward.

Obama’s proclamation referred to "the area’s scarce springs and riparian areas" as one of the reasons for designating the Mojave Trails monument, noting that underground aquifers "feed springs and seeps that are important for sensitive ecosystems and wildlife." If that language is scrapped, Haney said, it would remove a potential legal obstacle to Cadiz pumping groundwater just outside the national monument.

Cadiz doesn't think the monument affects its project and hasn't advocated for any changes to the monument designation, spokesperson Courtney Degener said.

"Monuments cannot and do not impact private property or valid existing rights, including Cadiz’s water rights," she said.

Jim Conkle, a Route 66 historian, led the charge to create the Mother Road National Monument, which eventually became Mojave Trails. He leads tours of the historic highway — but it's really the untouched desert surrounding the roads that inspires him.

"Whenever I go into the Mojave Desert, I feel the weight of the world is off of me, and I'm in this gorgeous place that was made and is still the same," Conkle said. "You're actually seeing what the indigenous people of 1,000 years ago saw. That landscape has not changed, and I don’t want it to change."

A Coachella Valley 'gateway' to Sand to Snow

Conservationists spent years working with Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California, to create the Sand to Snow and Mojave Trails national monuments, in part to protect those areas from the boom in solar and wind development that started after Obama took office in 2009. But legislation introduced by Feinstein repeatedly failed to gain enough support, as did bills written by Rep. Paul Cook, R-Yucca Valley, which would have established the Sand to Snow monument and offered a lesser level of protection to the Mojave Trails.

With little chance of movement in Congress, Feinstein asked Obama to designate the monuments. He did so in February 2016, emphasizing that the monuments would help fortify the desert against the impacts of climate change by connecting millions of acres of already-protected lands, creating corridors through which at-risk species like bighorn sheep can travel as some areas become less habitable due to rising temperatures.

The Sand to Snow designation was relatively noncontroversial, since most of the monument was already congressionally designated wilderness. Sand to Snow helps link the San Bernardino National Forest, the San Jacinto Mountains and Joshua Tree National Park, connecting a diverse array of ecosystems and protecting a wildlife corridor traversed by mountain lions, bighorn sheep and desert tortoises, among other species. The monument also includes 30 miles of the Pacific Crest National Scenic Trail.

Leaders of Desert Hot Springs, the Coachella Valley's northwestern-most city, see Sand to Snow as a potential economic boon. The City Council passed a resolution last year declaring its intent to be a "gateway community" for the national monument.

"When President Obama signed the Sand to Snow act, it really opened up opportunities for us to capture a portion of those two million visitors to Joshua Tree (National Park) every year, to stop here in Desert Hot Springs and use us a a gateway to Sand to Snow," the city's mayor, Scott Matas, said in an interview Wednesday, after Trump signed his executive order. "It is an important piece of our tourism plan for the future."

Fighting over off-roading, rockhounding at Mojave Trails

Mojave Trails was more controversial. Miners, hunters, off-road vehicle enthusiasts and collectors of rocks and minerals opposed a presidential monument designation, fearing they would be shut out from enjoying the land. They preferred legislation, through which Congress could guarantee their favorite pastimes would continue to be allowed.

During an event hosted by Feinstein at the Whitewater Preserve in late 2015, John Sobel — chief of staff to Rep. Cook, who had his own desert lands legislation — said monuments designated using the Antiquities Act would be "second-rate monuments, because they lack the adequate support of locals and of Congress."

But now that the desert national monuments are in place, even some of those critics say Trump should leave them alone.

Randy Banis, a representative of the California Off-Road Vehicle Association, worked with Feinstein on her legislation. He opposed Obama's designation of the Sand to Snow and Mojave Trails monuments, but he doesn't think Trump should reverse that decision.

"I'm generally not one for going backward. I don't think it’s productive," Banis said.

Banis is working with other stakeholders to make sure the Mojave Trails monument stays open to recreational activity. As chair of the California Desert District Advisory Council — which gives input to the federal Bureau of Land Management — Banis is forming a group to advise BLM specifically on the management of Mojave Trails.

As an off-roader, Banis often explores the Mojave Trails area in his safari-style 1994 Land Rover Defender, driving east from the Cady Mountains toward Needles, along the Colorado River. While he's worried the monument's 1,400 miles of off-highway vehicle roads will be closed, he's optimistic federal officials will take local input into account.

"We can do that with the tools that we have on the table now," he said.

Two dozen monuments threatened by Trump's order

Trump said a main reason for his executive order is to re-examine monuments that were designated without sufficient local input, or over the objections of communities. But in the California desert, that rationale doesn't make much sense, monument supporters say. While Republican politicians and other local stakeholders criticized Obama's executive action, Obama only designated the monuments after six years of extensive public conversation, including three attempts by Feinstein to pass bills in Congress.

Conkle, the Route 66 historian, said it's possible other monuments were rammed through without public input — but not the one he worked so hard to create.

"We worked on it for 18 years, covered all our bases, included everybody we could. Everybody had a chance to come to the table and to be recognized," he said. If the Trump administration tries to revoke the Mojave Trails and Sand to Snow monument designations, he added, "They're going to have a battle on their hands."

The White House said Trump's executive order covered two dozen national monuments larger than 100,000 acres, including several in California. Besides Sand to Snow and Mojave Trails, the Interior Department will review California's Giant Sequoia and Carrizo Plain national monuments, which were established by Clinton, and the Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monument, which was designated by Obama. A spokesperson for Zinke said the San Gabriel Mountains National Monument outside Los Angeles, which Obama designated in 2014, may also be reviewed. Unlike all the other 100,000-acre monuments designated or expanded since 1996, it's managed by the U.S. Forest Service, an agency within the Department of Agriculture, rather than Interior.

The Trump administration reached back to 1996 in order to capture the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah, which Clinton created over strong objections from Utah's congressional representatives. Twenty years later, another monument designation angered Utah lawmakers even more: A few weeks before leaving office, Obama created the Bears Ears National Monument, protecting 1.35 million acres of sacred tribal lands in southeastern Utah. The area is rich with petroglyphs, remnants of ancient dwellings and other archaeological artifacts, but it's been plagued by looting.

Native American tribal leaders and conservationists cheered Obama's decision. But state lawmakers and some rural Utahns cried foul, saying a presidential designation would unduly restrict oil and gas development, recreation and other activities.

Trump's executive order calls for Zinke to bring him a report on national monuments within 120 days, but asks for an interim report on Bears Ears specifically within 45 days.

Outdoor recreation industry fights back

Some of the biggest supporters of Bears Ears and other monuments have been outdoor recreation companies like REI, Patagonia and The North Face, which see public lands as good for business. The Outdoor Industry Association released a report Tuesday estimating outdoor recreation to be a $887-billion business. The Interior Department, meanwhile, has estimated the lands under its management hosted 443 million visitors in 2015, supporting $45 billion in economic output and nearly 400,000 jobs.

A few months ago, the outdoor industry pulled its twice-yearly trade show from Salt Lake City after two decades in Utah, in response to a push by state lawmakers to rescind the Bears Ears designation. In a blog post Tuesday, after news broke of Trump's executive order, REI chief executive Jerry Stritzke vowed to fight for America's public lands.

"We believe there is a compelling case to maintain the integrity of our existing national monuments," he wrote. "Our 16 million members can be assured that we believe — as Teddy Roosevelt said — our public lands should be left stronger and healthier for future generations."

Utah Legislature votes to shed Bears Ears monument designation

By Amy Joi O'Donoghue
Deseret News

SALT LAKE CITY — An indignant Utah Senate voted 22-6 Friday to urge the unraveling of the Bears Ears National Monument designation in San Juan County, bristling at the process used under the Antiquities Act and what they say was indifference to a majority of statewide sentiment.

Sen. Wayne Niederhauser, R-Sandy, the Senate sponsor of HCR11, said if a monument designation had been made for the Bears Ears region via congressional legislation subsequently signed by the U.S. president, he wouldn't be arguing against the new monument.

"It's absolutely wrong," the Senate president said, asserting the legislative process was circumvented with one person's pen via presidential proclamation.

The 1.35 million-acre monument was created in late December by former President Barack Obama in the waning days of his administration and was largely seen as a poke in Utah's eye.

Obama was vacationing in Hawaii with his family over the holidays when the White House made the announcement on Dec. 28.

"I find it insulting that President Obama couldn't even interrupt his golfing in Hawaii" for the monument designation, said Sen. Todd Weiler, R-Woods Cross.

Democratic opponents to the resolution, which had already passed in the House and was signed Friday night by Gov. Gary Herbert, pointed to the failure of the Public Lands Initiative to gain any traction as the impetus for the monument's creation.

The massive public lands bill carried by Republican Utah Reps. Rob Bishop and Jason Chaffetz proposed land uses covering 18 million acres in eastern Utah, including the Bears Ears region.

Instead of a monument designation, however, the bill called for two national conservation areas in the Bears Ears area that would have still allowed for multiple uses in a less restrictive land management strategy.

Sen. Jim Dabakis, D-Salt Lake City, said the proposal turned into a game of politics and was never a sincere attempt by Bishop or others in Utah's congressional delegation to answer Native Americans' concerns in the region.

"The process fell apart and got all political," Dabakis said, earlier emphasizing the anti-Bears Ears resolution as a "dumb bill."

Niederhauser, joined by other colleagues, defended the initiative and said the legislation, while a messy exercise in compromise, is the right way to protect land.

"You say the process broke down and it did not get through Congress. That is not an argument," Niederhauser said. "It is not supposed to be easy."

"Two wrongs don't make a right," emphasized Sen. Lyle Hillyard, R-Logan.

But Senate Minority Whip Karen Mayne, D-West Valley City, said the majority of people in her district — the hunters, the campers and the anglers — support the Bears Ears monument.

Mayne added that the only "stream" in her district is a canal, and outdoor spaces are valued.

"We have no place to go," she said. "It's hard for us."

Sen. Brian Shiozawa, R-Cottonwood Heights, the only Republican member of the Senate to vote against the resolution, said he had hoped for a compromise solution that stopped short of upending the entire designation.

Sen. Curt Bramble, R-Provo, stressed that he supports monuments but said the rescission of the designation would allow parties to "reset the clock" and start a better process.

Friday's vote came after the Senate voted to suspend the rules and move the resolution to the front of the line. Its passage followed twin hearings before Senate committees on Thursday and passage in the House earlier this week in a fast-tracked process designed to deliver a strong message to the U.S. Department of the Interior and the White House.

Both HCR11 and a resolution to shrink the boundaries of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument were requested for consideration before the Legislature by Utah's congressional delegation, who will wave the document as a flag in the war on federal "overreach."

Pro-monument group Utah Dine Bikeyah board members are marching out their own paperwork with a letter to Interior Secretary nominee Ryan Zinke, imploring him to accompany them on a field trip to Bears Ears and attend a community meeting before making any decision.

"Grass-roots people who depend on this landscape every day would like the opportunity to explain why we have worked so hard and so long to create this first-ever Native American national monument that honors our history and points toward our future," the letter reads.

The organization invited Zinke to attend a Monument Valley community meeting and meet with tribal leaders to discuss the designation.

"We do not want any action that will change the boundary, deny the role of traditional knowledge, develop these lands, undermine local voices or disgrace our ancestors who still reside there. To truly appreciate what is at stake, you must see the landscape and you must hear the wisdom of elders for yourself," the letter states.

Utah Dine Bikeyah says it developed the monument proposal seven years ago at the request of local elders, and their input in the Public Lands Initiative process and other land management planning was either ignored or shut out.

Critics of the Native American tribal "movement" behind the Bears Ears campaign say that support was co-opted by environmental and conservation organizations that reasoned there was a better chance for a monument if it came gift wrapped with a distinct cultural bow.

Both sides in the monument debate claim support from local tribal members or grass-roots people.