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.

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.

Judges seem skeptical of U.S. in high-stakes Utah road dispute

 PUBLIC LANDS

Kane County, Utah, R.S.2477 road claims.

Phil Taylor
E&E / Greenwire

DENVER -- A federal appeals court yesterday appeared skeptical of the federal government's claims that a lower court had wrongly awarded a Utah county and the state rights of way over desert roads in a case with possible ramifications for Utah's larger bid to assert control over federal lands.

But the three-judge panel of the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals offered few hints as to whether it would uphold a district court's decision in March 2013 to award southern Utah's Kane County rights of way over 12 of 15 roads it had claimed, four of which run through the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument (Greenwire, March 25, 2013).

It's a high-stakes case for Utah, whose counties have staked claims over some 12,000 roads spanning about 36,000 miles over federal lands under a Civil War-era mining law, as well as conservation groups, which note that many of those routes crisscross sensitive wilderness study areas, national parks or other public lands they've proposed remain roadless.

The 10th Circuit's ruling on the Kane case could offer legal precedent for how Utah, counties, the federal government and conservation groups negotiate resolution on thousands of other roads.

Yesterday's proceeding featured oral arguments by Department of Justice attorney David Shilton and Kane County attorney Shawn Welch.

At issue are Kane's claims to 15 roads crossing some 89 miles of federal lands under an obscure 1866 law known as R.S. 2477 that allowed miners and homesteaders to build trails or roads over any public lands not yet reserved or claimed for private use. Utah and its counties can gain title to R.S. 2477 roads if they can prove they were in continuous use for at least 10 years prior to the law's repeal in 1976.

Utah argues the law is a critical bulwark against federal decisions to block access to public lands, but conservation groups see it as one of the greatest threats to preserving wilderness-quality lands in Utah's red rock country.

U.S. District Judge Clark Waddoups last year said Kane successfully proved its case for 12 of the roads. While some are noncontroversial, the North Swag route, which Kane won, cuts through the Paria-Hackberry wilderness study area, which BLM recognized for its roadless characteristics and which environmentalists have eyed for future wilderness designation.

Both Kane County and the United States appealed the decision to the 10th Circuit, but for different reasons.

Kane and Utah argued that Waddoups was wrong to require them to prove the validity of R.S. 2477 claims by "clear and convincing evidence," rather than a lower burden of proof, and had incorrectly ruled that a public water reserve issued by President Coolidge in 1926 precluded R.S. 2477 claims.

DOJ's Shilton argued that the district court had no jurisdiction to decide R.S. 2477 claims for the Sand Dunes, Hancock and Cave Lakes roads because they had never been closed to use and therefore created no "dispute" for the court. It also claimed Waddoups had awarded rights of way widths for North Swag, Swallow Park/Park Wash and Skutumpah roads based on current, rather than 1976, uses.

The judges pressed Shilton to explain the government's first argument over jurisdiction. While the roads remained open, legal title was still in dispute.

Shilton argued the Bureau of Land Management, which oversees the tracts, has to take "some affirmative action" to trigger the court's involvement. "The United States has never closed access to those roads," he said. "You need a real dispute."

But Judge Gregory Phillips, an appointee of President Obama, said that line of reasoning could allow "decades and decades and decades" to pass without a resolution of Kane's claims. He said the government stands to benefit from delays because it makes it harder for Utah to prove R.S. 2477 claims.

In addition, Judge Robert Bacharach, another Obama appointee, pressed Shilton to defend the government's claim that Waddoups had wrongly awarded right of way widths for uses that didn't exist in 1976, such as for heavier agriculture vehicles. Bacharach spoke to a need to maintain the "current day's standard of safety."

The third judge, Paul Kelly, was appointed by President George H.W. Bush.

Panel skips enviro arguments

Notably, the panel didn't discuss arguments raised by environmental litigants in the case including the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, Wilderness Society, Sierra Club, Grand Canyon Trust and National Parks Conservation Association.

Those groups argued in friend-of-the-court briefs that Waddoups had failed to consider that a 12-year statute of limitations had expired for the North Swag route, making the county's claim for that route invalid.

They also argued that historical use of alleged R.S. 2477 roads by adjoining landowners, ranchers and others who enjoyed privileged access should not have counted in the Kane County case, nor in any of Utah's other road claims winding their way through the courts.

"It's disappointing," said SUWA attorney Steve Bloch. "There were significant issues that could have steered this hearing in a different direction."

Bloch noted that the 10th Circuit in April had concluded in a separate R.S. 2477 case involving the Salt Creek road through Canyonlands National Park that "proprietary use" of a road doesn't count for determining a valid right of way.

"This is one of the key take-aways from the Salt Creek decision," Bloch said. "This alone could be a basis to send this entire case back to Judge Waddoups."

Conservationists had hoped that finding would come into play in the Kane case yesterday, but it didn't.

Shilton did not raise this point before the court and declined to be interviewed after the arguments.

Welch said the merits of the Salt Creek case should not apply in the Kane case. Unlike Salt Creek, the Kane roads connect other roads and their use was less in dispute, he said.

In the Salt Creek case, the court also had ruled that frequency or intensity of use, not just whether it was used for 10 consecutive years, is important in determining whether a road qualifies as a "public thoroughfare" under R.S. 2477. For example, use by a single cattleman for driving cattle is insufficient, as is intermittent or occasional use by hunters, fishermen, shepherds, farmers and miners, the court said.

This issue also did not come up yesterday.

Westerners fear monumental land grab by Obama administration

By Kelly David Burke
FoxNews.com

Utah officials are scrambling to prevent the Obama administration from locking down thousands of acres of land in their backyard, as federal officials consider up to a dozen possible national monument designations – all in western states.

The Antiquities Act gives U.S. presidents the authority to unilaterally declare public lands as national monuments at the stroke of a pen, with no input from the public unless they choose to seek it.

Many national monuments eventually go on to become national parks.

National Parks Conservation Association spokeswoman Kristen Brengel said the practice has been used for over a century to preserve some of America’s most iconic landmarks: including the Grand Canyon, the Statue of Liberty and Arches National Park.

“It's a wonderful tool to conserve these resources so that people can enjoy them in perpetuity,” she said.

But critics feel the Antiquities Act has been misused in recent decades by presidents of both parties and, in Utah, they’re seeking a compromise that would allow some land to become designated as “wilderness” instead.

"The original Antiquities Act passed as a way of conserving land," Republican Utah Rep. Rob Bishop said. "It's no longer used that way. Now it's used as a political purpose to make a political statement on land that is not endangered in any way."

The issue is particularly sensitive in the American West, where the vast majority of federally owned and controlled land lies.

"In the West, almost half of the land, versus 4 percent in the East, is owned by the federal government," Bishop said. "So in my state of Utah, 70 percent is owned and controlled by the federal government. So we in the West clearly see this differently, because we face it and live with it every day."

A draft Interior Department memo in 2010 suggested 12 sites for possible national monument designation by President Obama. The land already is mostly in federal hands, but a monument designation would more tightly restrict access.

All of the sites are in the West, including Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks in New Mexico, which President Obama declared a new national monument in May.

Four of the other 11 sites in the Interior memo are in the state of Utah. Recently, 14 U.S. senators wrote to Obama urging him to declare a Greater Canyonlands monument in Utah. None of the senators live in the Intermountain West, much less the state of Utah, where anger over a previous national monument designation is still palpable.

Utah Gov. Gary Herbert recalled how then-President Clinton designated the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southern Utah, by far the nation's largest, covering an area the size of Delaware and Rhode Island combined.

"President Clinton in 1996 -- denying that he was going to do it without any input from our congressional delegation or local government or state government -- just one day announced this designation,” Herbert said.

Bishop said “there were so many problems with it that were never solved when it was created.”

"They were never solved because it was a simplistic overreach and you didn't go into the details,” he said.

Emery County Commissioner Ethan Migliori said the monument is still a “bitter conversation in Utah.”

The problem, Migliori said, is the designation effectively “shut down everything” in that area.

“You can't access it anymore ... even on designated roads,” Migliori said.

Brengel said this president won't declare national monuments without warning. "One of the main things that the Obama administration has said is that they are looking for local input. Not just from local leaders but also from the public,” Brengel said.

Not willing to wait and see, Bishop has proposed a public lands initiative to work out a compromise. Instead of becoming national monuments, some land would become protected wilderness areas while allowing development on the rest.

Migliori and other officials in Emery County, where 92 percent of the land is owned by the federal government, support Bishop's efforts wholeheartedly. The proposed San Rafael National Monument would take up nearly 1,000 square miles, almost all of it in Emery County.

"It appears you have more access to a national park than you do to a national monument," Migliori said. "So a national monument is almost a death wish, or it feels like that to us."

Several environmental groups are also taking part in the discussions. "We are willing to work with any member of Congress on these proposals. We understand that their constituents have various interests. Ours in particular would be to protect some areas as wilderness or national parks,” Brengel said.

Herbert is also on board, saying: "The environmental community, industry, local civic and business leaders, farmers, ranchers, energy developers … All of the above come together and talk about what areas need to be developed and how, and what areas need to be preserved and protected because of their iconic vistas and venues."

Bishop said Interior Secretary Sally Jewell has spoken to him twice about his public lands initiative. "The secretary of Interior is encouraging us to move forward in doing it this way because it's a much more satisfactory process than ever it would be if you used the Antiquities Act,” he said.

Time to throw the Antiquities Act into the recycling bin of history

Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument, Utah

OPINION

By RON ARNOLD
The Examiner

Two words — national monument — conjure Images of the Lincoln Memorial or the Statue of Liberty, but probably not the Virgin Islands Coral Reef or the Alibates Flint Quarries near Amarillo, Texas.

Only one of those is not on the list of America’s 103 national monuments: the Lincoln Memorial, which was authorized by Congress in 1910.

Congress has rarely authorized a national monument, although it has the power to do so at any time. Overwhelmingly, a president of the United States has created our national monuments, and did it by merely writing and signing a proclamation – a form of executive order – empowered by the controversial and politicized Antiquities Act of 1906.

Originally spurred by looting of Southwest Indian ruins for artifacts - dubbed “antiquities” by anthropologists - in such places as Colorado's Mesa Verde, Congress empowered the president to protect by proclamation, "historic landmarks, historic and prehistoric structures, and other objects of historic or scientific interest," on federal lands, and to “reserve” (read “take”) private property for the purpose.

At the time, nobody worried about giving the president power like a Roman emperor, to swiftly proclaim protection for government property (and coveted private property) without waiting for an unconcerned Congress to act.

Today, a lot of Americans fear and loathe that power and that law, because it has become a political weapon to devastate the fossil-fuel industry.

As an example, President Clinton unilaterally proclaimed the 1.9 million-acre Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah, thereby depriving the energy-using public of an estimated 62 billion tons of clean-burning, low-sulfur coal, five billion barrels of oil, and four trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

Clinton's decree also wiped out dozens of tax-base school land tracts of the state of Utah.

Compounding the problem, four agencies manage 101 of the monuments: the National Park Service (79), the Bureau of Land Management (19), the U.S. Forest Service (7) and the Fish and Wildlife Service (7).

Some monuments are co-managed by two agencies, so overlap complicates dealing with them. Two other agencies co-manage one monument each.

The Antiquities Act is a poster child for mission creep, that contagious federal “we-want-more” disease. We have 22 national monuments associated with Native American sites, 28 with historic sites and 57 with nature sites.

Among these sites was added with a 2009 proclamation was the 9,500 square mile, 6.8-mile deep Marianas Trench Marine National Monument, protecting the deepest place in the world’s oceans, with regional headquarters in Hawaii and no tour buses to the trench. Go figure.

National monuments have a nasty habit of developing mission creep once established, especially against public access.

The motorized recreation community is particularly burned by the hikers-only purists who relentlessly push for controls, then road and trail closures, then selective bans, and finally lockouts.

I asked Duane Taylor, director of federal affairs with the Motorcycle Industry Council, about his organization’s experience.

He told me, “Unfortunately, motorized recreation is far too often shut out of national monument areas. The blanket designation of lands as a national monument, along with the almost-certain restrictions that come along with designation, could effectively mean that much of the total economic contribution of recreation to the area will be forfeited,” he said.

That became an issue in Congress this week with a “briefing on benefits of the Antiquities Act to local economies, communities, and national treasures.”

The briefing featured panelists from the Sierra Club, League of Conservation Voters, Pew Charitable Trusts, Wilderness Society, Outdoor Industry Association and others.

Panelists cited a study showing that outdoor recreation generated $646 billion in national sales and services in 2011 and supported 6.1 million jobs. I asked Taylor for his response.

“They’re telling only part of the story,” he said. “The same study shows that approximately $257 billion or nearly 40 percent of the total $646 billion in economic contribution comes from motorized recreation.”

The power of the Antiquities Act needs to be throttled. It’s not impossible. Congress has reduced presidential powers under the act twice, first in 1950, requiring congressional consent for any future proclamation or enlargement of national monuments in Wyoming; second, requiring congressional consent in Alaska for proclamations of greater than 5,000 acres.

We may hope that the third time is the charm.

RON ARNOLD, a Washington Examiner columnist, is executive vice president of the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise.

Interior secretary says Obama may bypass Congress on monuments

Interior Secretary Sally Jewell says she may advise Obama to act alone to create new national monuments if Congress doesn't act.

Interior Secretary Sally Jewell says she may recommend that President Obama act unilaterally to create new national monuments if Congress remains gridlocked. She recently visited some sites in California. (Dan Joling / Associated Press / September 3, 2013)



By Julie Cart
Los Angeles Times

SAN FRANCISCO — Interior Secretary Sally Jewell says she will recommend that President Obama act alone if necessary to create new national monuments and sidestep a gridlocked Congress that has failed to address dozens of public lands bills.

Jewell said the logjam on Capitol Hill has created a conservation backlog, and she warned that the Obama administration would not "hold its breath forever" waiting for lawmakers to act.

"The president will not hesitate," Jewell said in an interview in San Francisco last week. "I can tell you that there are places that are ripe for setting aside, with a tremendous groundswell of public support."

Congress has not added any acreage to the national park or wilderness systems since 2010. Jewell blamed ramped-up rhetoric in Washington for the impasse. She said the appetite for preserving American historic and cultural sites remains high but some officials seek to avoid the appearance of publicly embracing more government protection.

Jewell, who has been on the job scarcely six months, came to California to promote several initiatives and tour a site that could be added to a national monument along the Mendocino coast.

She began with a meet and greet at the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. On a bright day with gulls wheeling against a backdrop of the Golden Gate Bridge — the velvety green Marin headlands in the distance — Jewell stood in one of the nation's most-visited national parks and made the case for the value of public lands.

Among the public events on Jewell's schedule was a visit to the 1,255-acre Stornetta Public Lands site on the Mendocino County coast, north of Point Arena. Several members of the California congressional delegation have proposed adding the site to the California Coastal National Monument.

It's one of many pending federal bills that would conserve land in California. One bill would expand the boundary of Yosemite National Park, and another would create a national monument in the San Gabriel Mountains.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) has proposed sweeping legislation that would add thousands of acres to Joshua Tree and Death Valley national parks and the Mojave National Preserve, protect 74 miles of waterways as wild and scenic rivers, designate 248,000 acres as wilderness and create the Sand to Snow National Monument running from the floor of the Coachella Valley to the peak of Mt. San Gorgonio.

The conservation community has a long list of places that it believes require protection, but activists complain that with sequestration budget cuts on top of congressional reluctance to promote conservation, little is getting done.

"It's been nearly impossible to figure out how to get more funding for conservation work, whether it's just getting money to run agencies or getting full funding for the Land and Water Conservation Fund," said Kristen Brengel, who lobbies Congress for the National Parks Conservation Assn. "There is almost no hope for the wilderness or monuments bills — they are being held up."

Brengel said Jewell's willingness to recommend that Obama act unilaterally, using powers granted to presidents under the Antiquities Act of 1906, gives hope to conservationists who see the administration as indifferent to environmental issues.

"The take-away is she's kind of teed herself up to make those recommendations to the president," Brengel said. "They are capable of making decisions on conservation. They just haven't made many of them."

The Antiquities Act gives presidents authority to name new monuments — a power generally residing with Congress. Presidents going back to Theodore Roosevelt have used the act to set aside natural wonders, including the Grand Canyon in 1908, which was later named a national park against the wishes of local officials.

But use of the act in recent years has sparked strong protest. Most notably was President Clinton's decision to designate the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southern Utah in 1996, putting one of the nation's largest coal reserves off limits to mining.

Utah lawmakers, led by then-Gov. Michael O. Leavitt, a Republican, bitterly complained that federal authorities failed to consult with local communities before elevating protections on 1.8 million acres of rugged red-rock canyons. Further antagonizing opponents, Clinton signed the act while sitting at a ceremonial desk placed on the rim of the Grand Canyon in Arizona.

Clinton used the Antiquities Act more than any other president. Obama has used the law to designate nine new monuments, focusing mainly on historic sites such as the Charles Young Buffalo Soldiers National Monument in Ohio, the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Monument in Maryland and the Cesar E. Chavez National Monument in Kern County, which is poised to become a National Historic Park.

BLM renews Grand Staircase grazing study

After 12-year hiatus, BLM set to restart an environmental analysis — and feud between environmentalists, ranchers

Map of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument (BLM)

By Brian Maffly
The Salt Lake Tribune

A long-stalled environmental review of grazing in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument is set to resume more than 12 years after a rangeland management plan was supposed to have been completed for this dry, though biologically and culturally varied, landscape.

The grazing issue has a tortured history on the 1.9 million-acre monument in southern Utah, pitting environmentalists against ranchers and their supporters in Garfield and Kane counties. Both sides have criticized the Bureau of Land Management for either failing to protect a fragile land owned by all Americans or pushing livestock off the range and undoing a revered Utah tradition.

Now the agency is trying to finish a job that it was given 17 years ago when President Bill Clinton established the monument, reigniting debate with both sides still firmly entrenched.

Clinton’s proclamation recognized livestock as a continuing presence on the Grand Staircase, Kaiparowits Plateau and Escalante canyons, but it also ensured grazing would be subject to "applicable laws and regulations."

The monument’s 1999 management plan is silent on the controversial subject of grazing, and officials have been kicking that can down the road ever since in the face of lawsuits and failed planning and collaboration efforts.

On Friday, the BLM is expected to post a notice of intent in the Federal Register, announcing the launch of an environmental review with the goal of producing a grazing-management plan, otherwise known as an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS).

"A grazing plan needs to pay attention to more than just ‘grass utilization’ and how much forage there is," said David deRoulhac of the Grand Canyon Trust. "BLM processes need to include all kinds of stakeholders and not just permittees. Grazers affect all kinds of values, such as wildlife, ecosystem health and recreation."

Local officials and grazing interests, however, contend the trust and other conservation voices don’t deserve a seat.

"Their objective is to eliminate grazing from the monument," Garfield County Commission Chairman Clare Ramsay said. "All they would be doing would be to legitimize their position. We are the elected officials."

The monument currently harbors 82 grazing allotments supporting 102 permit-holders who used a total 11,000 animal unit months, or AUMs, last year. AUM is a measure of how many mother cows and their calves can graze an allotment for one month.

The $1.35 the feds charge per AUM falls far short of covering the grazing program’s administrative costs and environmental impacts, leading some conservation groups to ridicule public-lands grazing as "welfare ranching."

Conservationists believe this landscape is too arid to support grazing at current levels and the monument’s nonagricultural assets, such as biotic soils, native plants and ancient rock art, are being sacrificed for the sake of a 19th-century enterprise.

"Ranching is a negligible part of the economy of southern Utah, particularly in Garfield County. It’s barely measurable," said Jon Marvel, executive director of the Western Watersheds Project. "The politics of Utah is such that BLM has been afraid to complete a grazing plan even though they know that grazing is incompatible with that arid landscape."

The Grand Canyon Trust has mustered the money to buy and retire allotments along the Escalante Corridor and other sensitive places in the monument, provoking lawsuits from local officials.

"You don’t want to put cattle in a desert where they are only going to hang out in the riparian areas," said the trust’s Mary O’Brien.

However, the 1934 Taylor Grazing Act guarantees ranchers can run cattle on these lands, local officials say, and any reduction in grazing harms the counties.

"Those units were set up for grazing. It doesn't mention recreation or anything else," Ramsay said. He contends the trust’s concern with creeks is really an excuse to rid the land of cows.

Still, nearly 97 percent of the monument is actively grazed, according to O’Brien. The remaining 65,400 acres are associated with allotments that conservation interests have bought out through the years.

The BLM has been through this planning process already and issued a draft EIS in 2008. But the scope of the analysis had become so broad and unfocused that officials decided to scrap the document and start afresh.

Officials were reluctant to comment Thursday, but in past public statements, BLM state director Juan Palma has promised that the new review will engage all interested parties, including environmentalists, in a transparent process.

"There is no direction from anywhere [or] anyone about undoing grazing," he told the monument advisory committee last year.

Still, in its last session the Utah Legislature used BLM’s alleged efforts to reduce grazing as the basis for designating a "grazing zone" in and around the monument, declaring livestock the "highest management priority" there.

And under the Public Lands Transfer Act passed last year, the monument and another 28 million acres of federal land are to be transferred to the state by the end of 2014. The legality of either law is open to debate, but both send a message that Utah intends to assert as much control over the monument as it can.

Learning to bend: Settling Utah's road wars

BOOK REVIEW

By Ed Marston
High Country News

Roads in the Wilderness: Conflict in Canyon Country
Jedediah S. Rogers
242 pages, hardcover: $39.95.
University of Utah Press, 2013.

Some fear that we will saddle our children with trillions of dollars in federal debt. That would be too bad, but it would be a minor inconvenience compared to what our forefathers cursed us with: the 1866 federal law known as R.S. 2477. Like other such gifts -- including the 1872 Mining Law -- R.S. 2477 lays a heavy, destructive, expensive hand on the present.

The statute's 19 words said that anyone who wished to could build a public "highway" across the West's public land. That highway could not be extinguished by the later creation of a homestead, a national park or even a wilderness.

R.S. 2477 was repealed in 1976, but its highways -- sometimes nothing more than rough trails made by cowboys herding cattle -- are still being fought over in the West. That is especially true in Utah, where the state has launched 30 federal lawsuits to establish 36,000 miles of mechanized rights of way through existing wilderness, national parks and monuments, and wilderness study areas.

Into this expensive, litigious mess bravely comes the young historian Jedediah S. Rogers. With Roads in the Wilderness: Conflict in Canyon Country, Rogers attempts to connect two warring ways of life. He asks us to look at roads not only as physical structures but as symbols of culture and history. In Rogers' telling, the Mormons of southern Utah regard the primitive roads their ancestors pioneered as comparable to the naves of medieval cathedrals. To interfere with the public's ability to travel them amounts to sacrilege. But to those who favor wilderness, the sacrilege is motorized travel through red-rock canyons and riparian areas.

Rogers humanizes the conflict over wilderness by portraying some of the people most involved. He is sympathetic both toward Edward Abbey, author of Desert Solitaire and The Monkey Wrench Gang, and toward Abbey's nemesis, uranium miner and Lake Powell resort developer Calvin Black, immortalized by Abbey as the character "Bishop Love."

Abbey hated roads -- the better the road, the more he hated it -- and the reservoir he called Lake Foul. Black appreciated Lake Powell because it also served as a highway, and so loved roads, writes Rogers, that he assumed the 1960s slogan "Black is Beautiful" referred to pavement.

Given the area's bitter history -- which includes the Grand County commissioners repeatedly, and feloniously, sending bulldozers into Moab's Negro Bill Canyon to "refresh" the disappearing road -- what could bring the two sides to the table now?

Partly it is the passing of generations; both Black and Abbey are gone, for example. And partly it is exhaustion from decades of expensive struggle.

But it may also be fear of the future: Utah could win its R.S. 2477 cases, or President Barack Obama might unleash the 1906 Antiquities Act, as President Clinton did at Grand Staircase-Escalante, and create de facto wilderness. Or both events might happen, further complicating what is already a mess.

Rogers' book is both perfectly timed and a sign of the times, appearing as Utah Congressman Rob Bishop seems to be progressing toward a two-state solution in Utah, with some public land being protected and some now-protected land being opened to development.

Although the book is well-timed, it isn't always well-written, and it lacks clear maps to illustrate chapters about the road wars in places like Arch Canyon and the Book Cliffs.

While Rogers lacks the partisan passion of an Abbey or Black, he has passions appropriate to this time: for compromise and the merging of interests. He believes that if the two sides were to bend a little, each would win more than they could by defeating the other in Congress or the White House or the courts.

He urges environmentalists to see desert homesteads, mine shafts, abandoned orchards and even roads as part of a landscape shaped by humans but still dominated by nature. He quotes environmental historian Bill Cronon, who has written that the exclusion of man's works from nature is dehumanizing.

And he asks southern Utah's Mormon residents to acknowledge that the heroic pioneer days, when wagon trains were lowered to the Colorado River by rope down the Hole in the Rock notch, are over. We have blasted an interstate highway through the San Rafael Swell and turned parts of the Colorado, San Juan and Escalante rivers into ponds. Progress now, Rogers argues, is not demonstrated by how much more nature we can bulldoze, but by how much we can refrain from conquering:

"In a country -- a world -- that is increasingly developed one acre at a time, we need these places to keep us rooted. The (Colorado Plateau) region is one of the few places where large tracts of wildlands exist."

RS 2477 fight is important

One of the state's RS 2477 claims in the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area. (SUWA)

Editorial
The Richfield Reaper

The fight over Revised Statute 2477 roads has been long and arduous, but it is also important.

In all, 13 lawsuits were filed last month by the Utah Office of the Attorney General on the behalf of counties in Utah with RS 2477 claims. The goal of the lawsuits is to protect access to roads that have been in use since before 1976.

An 1866 law designed to validate a system of highways and roads that traversed federal and private lands in the western United States established the RS 2477 roads. The law was repealed in 1976, but Congress granted right of way for roads used prior to the repeal.

In the years since then, there have been attempts to close several RS 2477 roads. One of the biggest examples of closures occurred with the declaration of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in 1996.

Environmental groups have argued for a different interpretation of RS 2477, as closing roads would allow for more wilderness areas to be designated.

While some may be under the impression that RS 2477 roads are all obscure dirt roads in the middle of nowhere, that is not the case. Looking over the list of recorded RS 2477 roads in Sevier County, one may be surprised to find names like Black Knoll Road, Hepplers Pond Road, Lost Creek Road and Upper Redmond Lake Road.

In all, 713 roads in Sevier County have been included in the lawsuit, as well as 101 in Piute, 341 in Wayne and 329 in Sanpete.

The goal of the attorney general’s office in filing lawsuits is to preserve access to roads so that they cannot be arbitrarily closed in the future. While some may never face the danger of being closed, others could be without warning.

Right of way is something that should be protected with zeal. It’s difficult to reopen roads that are closed, and even more so to establish new roads.

Closures of some roads may mean not being able to access a favorite fishing hole, while other closures could have severe economic and transportation consequences. In an area where the vast majority of terrain is federally owned and administered, being able to traverse the land is vital.

The attorney general’s office was right to file lawsuits in an effort to bring the RS 2477 issue to a resolu-tion. Hopefully, once the litigation is complete, access to public areas will be preserved for generations to come.

Kane County Wins First RS 2477 Road

by Morgan Skinner
KCSG News Kcsg Television

(L-R) Kane County Commissioners Mark Habbeshaw, Daniel Hulet, Doug Heaton with State Representative Mike Noel (R-Kanab) next to recently erected RS2477 road sign on Skutumpah road. (Kane County photo)

(Salt Lake City, UT) - Kane County has achieved what is believed to be the first concession in Utah of the federal government agreeing to grant rights-of-way to a disputed road that crosses federal land.

The court stipulated change allows the county to assert control and access over 27 miles of the 33-mile Skutumpah road, a road leading to Cannonville within boundaries of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.

The victory comes as a result of a stipulation made by Department of Justice attorneys that could pave the way to resolve such disputes through negotiation, rather than litigation.

State Representative Mike Noel (R-Kanab) said this shows that the process can be simple and easy if the federal government cooperates in cases like these where you have roads that are easily determined to be the roads used and maintained within the county.

RS 2477 public highway rights-of-way were granted to states and counties from 1866 to 1976 to facilitate the settlement of the West. The Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976 repealed the statute but established "RS 2477" roads were grandfathered as valid existing rights-of-way.

In 1997, Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt directed his department agencies to ignore RS 2477 rights-of-way prompting controversy and conflict. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM), an agency of the Department of Interior, closed and/or restricted numerous county roads across the West claiming that RS 2477 rights must be “determined” before the agency would validate existing rights-of-way. Since then the Department of Interior has avoided validating any RS 2477 road rights-of-ways.

For the last two years in federal court, the Department of Interior has denied Kane County had any rights-of-way to the Skutumpah Road. It informed the public, however, that Kane County should maintain it.

Kane County petitioned the court for an expedited hearing to validate the county's rights-of-way because of failure by BLM to maintain the Skutumpah road resulting in public safety hazards along the roadway.

In Monday's stipulation, the Department of Interior validated Kane County's rights-of-way for most of Skutumpah road. The court order stipulated Kane County has the jurisdiction to properly maintain, repair and manage the Skutumpah road as it has historically done.

Kane County filed a motion for summary judgment on July 22, 2010 with the court quieting title to Kane County’s RS 2477 public highway rights-of-way for eight roads which include:

1. The Mill Creek road, designated as Kane County road K4400 and including segments known as the Tenny Creek road K4410 and the Oak Canyon road K4405;

2. The Bald Knoll road, designated as Kane County road K3935;

3. The Skutumpah road, designated as Kane County road K5000;

4. The Sand Dune road, designated as Kane County road K1000;

5. The Hancock road, designated as Kane County road K1100;

6. The Swallow Park/Park Wash road, designated as Kane County road K4360.

7. The North Swag road, designated as Kane County road K4370; and

8. The Nipple Lake road, designated as Kane County road K4290.

These roads have long been Kane County public thoroughfares, the petition said, and continue to provide needed access from private and public lands to cities, schools, stores, places of employment, and recreational areas within Kane County. Where these eight roads cross public lands, the rights-of-way were granted by Congress through RS 2477. RS 2477 was an express grant of rights-of-way, the filing states.

Attorneys for Kane County, Janna B. Custer and Shawn T. Welch, said in their filing that the undisputed facts demonstrate Kane County’s acceptance of the express grant for the eight roads by showing at least ten years of continuous public use prior to October 21, 1976. The undisputed facts also demonstrate Kane County’s acceptance of the express grant through designation of these roads as Class B – County General Highways and/or Kane County’s improvement, maintenance, or repair of these roads at Kane County’s and the State of Utah’s expense.

Monday's concession by the federal government was prompted by the dangerous conditions of the unmaintained Skutumpah road which the Department of Justice attorney’s claim Kane County hasn't fully documented as used and maintained prior to October 21, 1976. Six-miles of Skutumpah road remain in dispute.

Governor approves use of eminent domain to take federal land

Brock Vergakis
The Associated Press
Salt Lake Tribune

Fed up with federal ownership of more than half the land in Utah, Republican Gov. Gary Herbert on Saturday authorized the use of eminent domain to take some of the U.S. government's most valuable parcels.

Herbert signed a pair of bills into law that supporters hope will trigger a flood of similar legislation throughout the West, where lawmakers contend that federal ownership restricts economic development in an energy-rich part of the country.

Governments use eminent domain to take private property for public use.

The goal is to spark a U.S. Supreme Court battle that legislators' own attorneys acknowledge has little chance of success.

But Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff and other Republicans say the case is still worth fighting, since the state could reap millions of dollars for state schools each year if it wins.

More than 60 percent of Utah is owned by the U.S. government, and policy makers here have long complained that federal ownership hinders their ability to generate tax revenue and adequately fund public schools.

Utah spends less per student than any other state and has the nation's largest class sizes. Under the measure Herbert has approved, the state will set aside $3 million to defend the law.

Lawmakers recently slashed education funding by $10 million and raised taxes on cigarettes by $1 a pack. Democrats have decried the eminent domain measure as a waste of money, and Democratic gubernatorial hopeful

Peter Corroon is making it an issue in this year's special election.

But if the law is as bad as Democrats say it is, a court will quickly overturn it and the state won't have to spend much money defending it, Herbert said.

Initially, the state would target three areas for the use of eminent domain, including the Kaiparowits plateau in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, which is home to large coal reserves.

Many people in Utah are still angry that then-President Bill Clinton's designated the area as a national monument in 1996, a move that stopped development on the land and greatly pleased environmentalists as he ran for re-election.

Utah lawmakers contend the federal government should have long ago sold the land it owns in the state. Because it hasn't, the federal government has violated a contract made with Utah when statehood was granted, they say.

Eminent domain would also be used on parcels of land where Interior Secretary Ken Salazar last year scrapped 77 oil and gas leases around national parks and wild areas.

In Utah, a move to seize federal land

The state House passes a bill allowing the use of eminent domain to take protected land from the federal government. Utah wants to develop a stretch outside Arches National Park and other areas.

By Nicholas Riccardi
Los Angeles Times

Reporting from Salt Lake City - Long frustrated by Washington's control over much of their state, Utah legislators are proposing a novel way to deal with federal land -- seize it and develop it.

The Utah House of Representatives last week passed a bill allowing the state to use eminent domain to take land the federal government owns and has long protected from development.

The state wants to develop three hotly contested areas -- national forest land in the Wasatch Mountains north of Salt Lake City, land in a proposed wilderness area in the red rock southwestern corner of the state, and a stretch of desert outside of Arches National Park that the Obama administration has declared off-limits to oil and gas development.

Supporters argue that provisions in the legislation that granted Utah statehood allow it to make such a land grab. They also hope to spark a showdown in the Supreme Court that would rearrange the balance of power between states and the federal government.

Some legal experts say the effort is unlikely to succeed, but Republican state Rep. Chris Herrod, one of the authors of the bill, said the state had little choice.

"I love America, and I'm a peaceful guy," Herrod said, "but the only real option we have is rebellion, which I don't believe in, and the courts."

The eminent domain proposal is among the most audacious yet in a state accustomed to heated battles over the two-thirds of its land owned by the federal government.

This is the state, after all, where local officials bulldozed their own roads through Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, tore down signs barring off-roading in Canyonlands National Park and, with funding from the statehouse, spent years unsuccessfully defending those actions in federal court.

The eminent domain proposal quickly drew scorn from environmental groups.

"This is an ideological fantasy," said Scott Groene, executive director of the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance in Moab. "Everybody knows this isn't going to happen. The federal public lands are the thing that makes the American West so great."

The proposal is one of a host in statehouses nationwide that show a deep discontent with federal authority. Eight legislatures have passed resolutions asserting, to various degrees, the sovereignty of their states.

In Utah, a dozen measures have been introduced since January that defy the federal government. It has reached such a pitch that the House's Democratic leader last week complained that Republicans were spending too much time on such proposals.

The most aggressive efforts are generally by conservative groups, but Michael Boldin of the 10th Amendment Center in Los Angeles -- named for the constitutional clause that some contend limits federal power over states -- said that states' rights were also being cited by liberals in support of state proposals to legalize marijuana and gay marriage.

In the Intermountain West, particularly in rural areas, residents have long complained that federal preservation of land has prevented development that could provide reliable jobs and bolster the tax base.

Last week, a Utah congressman warned that the Obama administration was plotting to create two national monuments in the state, and Republican Gov. Gary Herbert announced that he would meet with Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to urge him to reconsider.

The administration said the hullabaloo was sparked by a memo identifying areas that could be protected at some point in the future, not imminently.

A spokeswoman said Herbert supported the concept of the eminent domain proposal but was unsure whether it would survive a legal challenge. The bill's authors contend they can rely on the legislation that brought Utah into the union in 1896, which they read as requiring the federal government to sell its land in the state and give Utah a 5% cut.

The legislators want to seize and open two roads through national forest land that the federal government closed. This would allow access to state land that they hope to sell to developers to build high-end cabins.

A third area would be more provocative: a swath of federal land outside Arches National Park where the George W. Bush administration, on the eve of the 2008 election, authorized oil and gas exploration. The Obama administration reversed the decision.

Legal experts contend that the federal government is under no obligation to sell its land in Utah and that no state could successfully seize federal property.

"It flies in the face of history and is also inconsistent as a point of law," said Bob Keiter, a law professor at the University of Utah.

Keiter and others argue that the move illustrates a pattern in recent Western history -- a conservative backlash to the election of a Democratic president. After Jimmy Carter was elected in 1976, the movement known as the Sagebrush Rebellion helped lock up the West for the GOP and put Ronald Reagan in the White House.

President Clinton faced a similar backlash, aggravated by his creation before the 1996 presidential election of Grand Staircase-Escalante Monument.

"Utah has this history of grand conservation gains," Groene said. "Every time it happens it triggers this anger. And 20 years later we always look back and agree that conservation was a wise idea."

White House land grab

Proposal to seize land would favor animals over Americans

By Sen. Jim DeMint
Washington Times



You'd think the Obama administration is busy enough controlling the banks, insurance companies and automakers, but thanks to whistleblowers at the Department of the Interior, we now learn they're planning to increase their control over energy-rich land in the West.

A secret administration memo has surfaced revealing plans for the federal government to seize more than 10 million acres from Montana to New Mexico, halting job-creating activities like ranching, forestry, mining and energy development. Worse, this land grab would dry up tax revenue that's essential for funding schools, firehouses and community centers.

President Obama could enact the plans in this memo with just the stroke of a pen, without any input from the communities affected by it.

At a time when our national unemployment rate is 9.7 percent, it is unbelievable anyone would be looking to stop job-creating energy enterprises, yet that's exactly what's happening.

The document lists 14 properties that, according to the document, "might be good candidates" for Mr. Obama to nab through presidential proclamation. Apparently, Washington bureaucrats believe it's more important to preserve grass and rocks for birdwatchers and backpackers than to keep these local economies thriving.

Administration officials claim the document is merely the product of a brainstorming session, but anyone who reads this memo can see that it is a wish list for the environmentalist left. It discusses, in detail, what kinds of animal populations would benefit from limiting human activity in those areas.

The 21-page document, marked "Internal Draft-NOT FOR RELEASE," names 14 different lands Mr. Obama could completely close for development by unilaterally designating them as "monuments" under the 1906 Antiquities Act.

It says all kinds of animals would be better off by doing so, like the coyotes, badgers, grouse, chickens and lizards. But giving the chickens more room to roost is no reason for the government to override states' rights.

Rep. Robert Bishop, Utah Republican, made the memo public because he didn't want another unilateral land grab by the White House, like what happened under former Presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter.

Using the Antiquities Act, President Carter locked up more land than any other president had before him, taking more than 50 million acres in Alaska despite strong opposition from the state.

President Clinton used the authority 22 times to prohibit hunting, recreational vehicles, mining, forestry and even grazing in 5.9 million acres scattered around the country. The law allowed him to single-handedly create 19 new national monuments and expand three others without consulting anyone.

One of the monuments President Clinton created was the Grande Staircase-Escalante in Utah, where 135,000 acres of land were leased for oil and gas and about 65,000 barrels of oil were produced each year from five active wells. But, President Clinton put an end to developing those resources.

President Obama could do the same in other energy-rich places unless Congress takes action. At least 13.5 million acres are already on his Department of Interior's real estate shopping list.

This includes a 58,000-acre area in New Mexico. The memo said this should be done so the lesser prairie chicken and the sand dune lizard will be better protected. Are these animals going extinct? No. The bureaucrats wrote that the land should be locked up to "avoid the necessity of listing either of these species as threatened or endangered."

In Nevada, the Obama administration might make another monument in the Heart of the Great Basin because it, supposedly, is a "center of climate change scientific research."

In Colorado, the government is considering designating the Vermillion Basin as a monument because it is "currently under the threat of oil and gas development."

Americans should be wary of any plans a president has to seize land from the states without their consent. Any new plans to take away states' freedom to use land as they see fit must be stopped.

That's why I sponsored an amendment to block Mr. Obama from declaring any of the 14 lands listed in the memo as "monuments." Unfortunately, the Senate, led by Democrats, rejected it on Thursday evening by a vote of 58-38.

It was particularly disappointing that the Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, of Nevada, voted against the amendment. The government owns more than 80 percent of the land in Nevada and the unemployment rate there is 12.8 percent. Surely it would help job prospects if more land were open for business.

This is a nationwide problem. The government currently owns 650 million acres, or 29 percent of the nation's total land.

Federal bureaucrats shouldn't be wasting time thinking up ways to acquire more, especially in the middle of a recession. Taking the nation's resources offline will stifle job creation and dry up tax revenues.

If anything, the government should be selling land off, not locking more up. By voting against my amendment, the Democrats tacitly endorsed Mr. Obama's secret plan to close off millions more acres to commerce.

If enacted, the plan would mean fewer jobs for Americans.

The Democratic Congress refused to stop it, but one sure way Americans could help block it is if they decide some Democrats should lose their jobs in November.

Sen. Jim DeMint, South Carolina Republican, is chairman of the U.S. Senate Steering Committee, a caucus of conservative senators.

In the West, Opposition to New National Monuments

Representative Rob Bishop said he had uncovered this "secret" list of possible monuments.

By KIRK JOHNSON
New York Times

DENVER — In much of the nation, “monument” is an innocuous word, conjuring up images of historical figures cast in bronze or road-side plaques few stop to read.

In the West, though, it’s a fighting word, bound up for years with simmering resentments against the federal government and presidential powers. The feeling dates to the days when, with the stroke of a pen, Theodore Roosevelt declared lands he wished to protect as national monuments under the American Antiquities Act.

A new monument fight erupted this week when Representative Rob Bishop, Republican of Utah, said he had uncovered a “secret” Interior Department memorandum suggesting that the federal government was considering national monument designation for 14 huge blocks of land in nine states from Montana to New Mexico.

A spokeswoman for the Department of the Interior, Kendra Barkoff, said the list was not secret at all, but simply a “very, very, very preliminary,” internal working document resulting from a brainstorming session that Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, a Democrat and former senator from Colorado, had requested about the lands in the West.

“No decisions have been made about which areas, if any, might merit more serious review and consideration,” Ms. Barkoff said in a statement.

But the word “secret,” especially when applied to the possible doings of far-away federal bureaucrats, is right up there with “monument” in its ability to unleash vitriol among Western conservatives. In 1996, President Bill Clinton created the 1.7 million-acre Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southern Utah with a surprise announcement that still resonates across the region as a symbol of government powers, or what critics call the abuse of those powers.

The new Interior Department memorandum, people in both parties said, has reopened a wound from those days that never quite healed.

“Given the lingering frustration felt by many Utahns, following the 1996 ‘stroke of the pen’ monument designation, it is totally inappropriate for this federal agency to even have preliminary discussions without involving the stakeholders on the ground,” said Representative Jim Matheson, Democrat of Utah, a state that had two of the possible new monuments on the list, the San Rafael Swell and Cedar Mesa.

In Montana, an area of unplowed grassland called the Northern Prairie was listed on the Interior Department memorandum, discussed as a possible home for a new national bison range. But the state’s representative at large, Denny Rehberg, a Republican, said in a statement, “The Antiquities Act was never intended as an end-run around the will of the people nor as a land-grab device for East Coast politicians.”

Ms. Barkoff at the Interior Department said in an interview that Mr. Salazar, as Colorado’s attorney general, United States senator and secretary of the interior, had a history of seeking consensus, and that any discussion of monument designation would be open to public and Congressional involvement.

A spokesman for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, a conservation group, said the appearance of secrecy in monument talks had melded with ideological opposition to the Obama administration — widespread in a deeply Republican part of the country.

“I don’t think it’s as much about the specifics of the land issues as it is pure ideological concerns,” said the group’s executive director, Scott Groene. “There’s already been a great fury going on in this state, and it’s hard to imagine that this really changes any of that.”

The fury is nothing new. In 1969, for example, the town of Boulder, Utah, passed a resolution changing its name to Johnson’s Folly, and predicted the town’s demise after President Lyndon B. Johnson added thousands of acres to Arches and Capitol Reef National Monuments, which were both later designated national parks by Congress.

The town later reverted to its original name, and on its Web site the Boulder Business Group now proudly calls the town the “gateway to the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.”

Representative Bishop, who was teaching history and government in a high school in northern Utah when that monument was created in 1996, also held out the possibility that cooler heads and calmer discussions could prevail on land protection in the West. The prerequisite, he said, is transparency and genuine dialogue. If Westerners think there is a foregone conclusion, hostility to more national monuments will be unavoidable.

“If they do things in an open and transparent way and involve everyone, then there’s no need for yelling and screaming,” Mr. Bishop said. “Do it the right way, and we can work it out.”

Obama Eyes Western Land for National Monuments, Angering Some

The Otero Mesa, a large desert grassland in New Mexico. (AP)

By William La Jeunesse
FOX News

More than a dozen pristine landscapes, wildlife habitats and scenic rivers in 11 Western states, some larger than Rhode Island and Delaware combined, are under consideration by the Obama administration to become America's newest National Monuments -- a decision the administration can make unilaterally without local input or congressional approval.

According to internal Department of Interior documents leaked to a Utah congressman and obtained exclusively by Fox News, the mostly public lands include Arizona deserts, California mountains, Montana prairies, New Mexico forests, Washington islands and the Great Basins of Nevada and Colorado -- totaling more than 13 million acres.

Sources say President Obama is likely to choose two or three sites from the list, depending on their size, conservation value and the development threat to each one's environment.

"Many nationally significant landscapes are worthy of inclusion in the NLCS (National Landscape Conservation System)," according to the draft report stamped NOT FOR RELEASE. "The areas listed below may be good candidates for National Monument designation and the Antiquities Act."

Presidential use of the Antiquities Act is highly controversial because the White House, with the stroke of a pen, can lock up thousands of square miles of federal lands used for timber, ranching, mining and energy development without local input or congressional approval. The Act is generally interpreted to commemorate or protect a specific historical landmark, not prohibit development or deprive local communities of jobs and tax revenues.

"Any federal action that could lead to limited access should be done in an open and public manner using extraordinary caution," said Rep. Dean Heller, R-Nev., upon seeing the leaked report. "The fact that this administration is already circulating internal memos to bypass Congress and the public process is troubling."

In 1996, President Clinton turned 1.3 million acres of southern Utah into the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument without telling the Arizona or Utah congressional delegation. Highly controversial at the time, the designation has withstood numerous legal challenges to the president's authority, and the national monument remains one of Clinton's boldest environmental accomplishments.

While Western politicians are still digesting the report, several properties stand out.

-- Otero Mesa, New Mexico: The area stretches over 1.2 million acres and is home to 1,000 native species. Gov. Bill Richardson has sought protection for Otero Mesa for years, but the Bush administration targeted it for oil and gas development.

-- Heart of the Great Basin, Nevada: Researchers call it a "globally unique assemblage of cultural, wildlife and historic values" that includes thousands of petroglyphs and stone artifacts dating back 12,000 years.

-- Owyhee Desert, Oregon: Called one of the most remote areas of the United States, the Owyhee is home to the largest herd of California bighorn sheep.

-- Bodie Hills, California: Located in the fast growing eastern Sierra Nevada mountains, Bodie contains the Golden State's best preserved ghost town. But the area is also loaded with gold, and several mining permits are pending.

-- The Modoc Plateau, California: Spanning close to 3 million acres in the northwest corner of California, the Modoc Plateau is "laden with biological and archeological treasures." Interior officials call it the second largest unprotected landscape in the state.

The list contains a number of political land mines for the president, according to a former Bush Interior Department appointee familiar with the document who asked to remain anonymous.

"Right now a number of senior officials are going over the report," he told Fox News. "When Clinton did it, most of the West was red states and he didn't have any blowback. Obama has to ask himself, if he chooses a Nevada location, will it hurt (Senator Harry) Reid's re-election. The same is true in almost every (Western) state where Democrats have made serious inroads."

The list was leaked just days after a story appeared in the New York Times outlining the administration's plans to use executive power to advance his agenda in the face of congressional opposition. "We are reviewing a list of presidential orders and directives to get the job done, across a front of issues," White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel told the newspaper.

Western representatives are planning a full-fledged assault on the report when Congress returns from its break next week.

Congressman Rob Bishop, R-Ut., co-founder of the Western States Coalition and now Chair of the Congressional Western Caucus, has also seen the leaked memo.

"We are taking this seriously. The tar is warming up. The pitchforks are ready. We will do what ever we need to make sure Congress is fully informed and fully aware of this action. This process should be open and transparent and President Obama should go though Congress and do it this the right way, not by presidential fiat," said Bishop.

"Outrage. In a country as dependent on foreign oil as this one, this kind of action on public lands is simply unacceptable."

Interior Department spokesman Craig Leff told Fox News late Wednesday the leaked document "reflects some brainstorming discussions within [the Bureau of Land Management], but no decisions have been made about which areas, if any, might merit more serious review and consideration."

Call off the fight

Counties should accept court ruling

EDITORIAL
Salt Lake Tribune

It's time for Kane and Garfield counties to quit wasting Utah taxpayers' money chasing a court ruling they have been repeatedly denied.

Kane County argued before U.S. District Judge Bruce Jenkins in 2007 that the federal Bureau of Land Management should recognize what the county called "valid existing rights" to roadways within the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument.

Jenkins ruled that county officials had not proven the rights of way under state law and the BLM is not required or authorized to recognize county road claims.

Last year U.S. District Judge Tena Campbell told Kane County it had no authority to remove BLM signs limiting motorized vehicles on roads the county claims in the monument. Now a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals has affirmed Jenkins' ruling in an appeal brought by the counties against the U.S. Department of Interior and the BLM.

The counties have said they have valid claims to the rights of way under a 2005 federal judge's ruling that made state law the standard for deciding ownership of roads on federal land. But state law dictates that each and every road claimed under RS2477, the Civil War-era mining law that gave local governments the right to build roads over federal lands, must be proven in court.

When RS2477 was repealed in 1976, the repeal contained a grandfather clause protecting "existing rights of way." Utah law requires proof of "continuous use and maintenance" for 10 years prior to 1976 on each road claim.

Kane and Garfield want to sidestep the requirement by forcing the BLM to recognize their claims. But their repeated unsuccessful attempts to get the courts to agree, financed by taxpayer money, have got to stop.

What the courts are saying is really not that hard to understand: Local governments and people in Jeeps and all-terrain vehicles don't have an unfettered right to use public land any way they choose. And they can't get away with misinterpreting the law to claim access to public lands that belong to every American, not only those who happen to live nearby.

The BLM has a mandate to protect the public's lands while allowing people to use it for a variety of purposes. The national monument is protected because of its scenic, recreational and archaeological value. Access to the land must be limited in order to maintain those values.

Roads with longtime value to local residents for transportation can be "grandfathered in," but only by a court.

Court denies Utah counties' monument road claims

Counties sued over water rights and road access

By Patty Henetz
The Salt Lake Tribune

Kane and Garfield have lost another round in their years-long court fight for more road and water access in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.

A three-judge panel of the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday upheld an earlier ruling that the Kane County Water Conservancy District, which is seeking to drill a culinary well within the monument, doesn't yet have a case.

In their 32-page ruling, the judges said that because the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, which crafted the management plan for the monument's 1.9 million acres, hasn't completed an environmental analysis on Kane's request to drill the well in Johnson Canyon, the county cannot show it has been harmed.

Kane County, the Kane County Water Conservancy District and Garfield County sued the Interior Department and the BLM to challenge the monument plan on both road and water-right access.

Mike Noel, executive director of the water district and Kane's representative to the Utah House, said the monument plan allows water rights of way only under certain circumstances that make it difficult for his water district to tap its water right, whose headwaters are within the monument boundaries.

The proposed well site is on land proposed for wilderness study, which the BLM already has identified as having wilderness-quality resources.

Earthjustice attorney Ted Zukoski warned that riparian areas on the monument could be jeopardized if Kane County is allowed to siphon the water.

Earthjustice is representing the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the Sierra Club and The Wilderness Alliance as interveners in the lawsuit against Interior.

Kane's water district wants to drill a new well on federal land, Noel said, because too many ranches in the narrow canyon have septic systems that could contaminate a water line laid on private property.

The Denver appeals panel also upheld a lower-court ruling that counties seeking ownership of certain roads across federal land must take their claims to federal court, road by road.

This marks another time a federal court has responded the same way to lawsuits over road claims filed under a Civil War-era law, called Revised Statute 2477, that Congress abolished in 1976.

BLM spokesman Larry Crutchfield said nearly 1,000 miles of roads and trails are open to motorized access within the Grand Staircase -- with about 600 miles open to off-highway-vehicle recreation.

Future of long-sought Utah lands bills in question

By Lee Davidson
Deseret News


When the Senate convened this year, it quickly passed a much-ballyhooed package of hundreds of public lands bills — including several affecting Utah. Quick House passage for that omnibus bill was expected, but something funny happened on the way to that forum.

Upon closer inspection, members of both parties there found much in it that gave them heartburn. It has forced Democratic leaders to keep delaying consideration, because they are not sure they have enough votes to pass it.

That is putting into doubt several long-sought Utah bills in the package, including a major one worked out over many years to determine which areas of Washington County should be maintained as pristine, and which should allow development. Others bills affect Park City open space, a Bountiful gun range, a Utah Boy Scout Camp and trails used by Mormon pioneers.

"As good as the Utah bills are, there is so much else that is so outrageously bad that it kind of hurts your heart," says Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah.

He has two bills in the package himself (affecting Park City and Bountiful). But as the ranking Republican on the House Natural Resources Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Public Lands, he is helping formulate GOP opposition to the bill as now written.

He says the question for Republicans, and many Democrats, is whether they will put up with a lot of bad to pass small, good home-state bills they personally seek.

Bishop said, "Somebody described the whole thing to me like this: You purchase a book that is full of erotic violence because you like a paragraph on page 242. The overall package is still bad."

Among the controversial bills in the package are: increasing penalties for those who take fossils from public lands (which some worry might make amateur fossil hunters criminals); granting wild and scenic status to the Taunton River in Massachusetts, even though it includes some heavy industrial areas; allowing a road through an internationally recognized wetland in Alaska; and codifying a National Landscape Conservation System set up by the Clinton administration but opposed by many Republicans.

"If they could cull out maybe 50 of the real stinkers (in the package), they might have a bill that's not bad enough to get people upset," Bishop said.

Also, he says many House Democrats have heartburn because the Senate stripped from its version all amendments that the House had earlier added to individual bills when it had debated and passed many separately, before they were all bundled together.

"So some of those (stripped) amendments that are bringing them grief now are protection of hunting and fishing rights, gun rights … (and) private property rights," Bishop said.

With the problems, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., last week would not say exactly when the bill may reach the floor, but said he hoped it would be before the House's spring recess.

House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Nick Rahall II, D-W.V., explained the delay to Congressional Quarterly, saying, "We want to make sure we have the votes."

So again hanging in limbo is the Washington County land bill that had been negotiated for more than a decade.

It would create two new national conservation areas to provide permanent protection for the endangered desert tortoise and other at-risk species near St. George, allowing development in other areas. It would also do such things as create more than 250,000 acres of wilderness areas in the county and enlarge Zion National Park to include some of them.

That bill also would designate 165.5 miles of the Virgin River as a wild and scenic river, sort of a wet wilderness area. It also authorizes the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to sell excess BLM lands in the county not considered to be environmentally sensitive, and to use the proceeds to buy lands that are considered biologically significant.

The other Utah bills hanging in limbo include a trade to give a Boy Scout camp near Brian Head more usable land; one to give Park City some federal tracts within its boundaries to protect as open space; a trade to bring federal land to Bountiful including a gun range operated by the Lion's Club; and a bill to correct a surveying error that put part of the Turnabout Ranch for troubled youth into the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.

Another bill would study the possibility of giving federal protection to some alternate routes used by early travelers on the Mormon Pioneer, Pony Express, California and Oregon trails.