WASHINGTON — Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke has submitted an interim report recommending President Donald Trump shrink the boundaries of Utah’s 1.35-million-acre Bears Ears National Monument.
Instead of former President Barack Obama designating such a large area, “it would have been more appropriate to identify and separate the areas that have significant objects to be protected,” Zinke wrote in the report.
The secretary also recommended Trump ask Congress take action to enable tribal co-management of the monument. The Interior Department is expected to complete a full review and offer more specific recommendations, including how much the size would change, later this year.
“It’s a little premature to throw out acreage,” Zinke said in a call with reporters Monday.
The move comes as little surprise, given Trump and Zinke’s previous comments criticizing recent monument designations.
Bears Ears is one of 27 American national monuments under threat by a pair of executive orders that Trump signed in April. One order tasks the Interior Department with reviewing all federal monuments 100,000 acres or larger that have been established or expanded under the Antiquities Act since Jan. 1, 1996. The other instructs the Department of Commerce to review all marine sanctuaries and monuments designated or expanded within the last 10 years.
Bears Ears is at the center of the monuments controversy, and the issue has divided many in Utah. Yet Trump gave Zinke a shorter time frame to conduct his review.
In launching his review last month, Zinke insisted that “there is no predetermined outcome on any monument.” For those following closely, however, that seemed like nothing more than a talking point.
In April, when Trump signed the executive order tasking Zinke with reviewing 21 years of designations, he was flanked by Utah Gov. Gary Herbert (R) and the state’s U.S. Sens. Orrin Hatch (R) and Mike Lee (R) — staunch opponents of the Bears Ears monument. Trump spoke as if a reversal was already a done deal, as he praised the three men for their “never-ending prodding” on the issue.
It “is the right thing to do,” Trump told them of his views, adding that the Obama-era designation was done “over the profound objections of the citizens of Utah” and “should never have happened.” Trump boasted that he was looking to end “another egregious abuse of federal power,” “putting the states back in charge” of their lands, and freeing up now-protected areas to “tremendously positive things.”
Jennifer Rokala, executive director of the Center for Western Priorities, called Zinke’s recommendation “an undeniable attack on our national monuments and America’s public lands.”
“Instead of reinforcing America’s conservation heritage, Secretary Zinke is recommending President Trump take actions that are both unprecedented and illegal,” she said in a statement. “The law is clear: only Congress can modify or erase a national monument. This report, while disappointing, is not a surprise. President Trump made it clear the fix was in from the moment he signed the executive order, despite overwhelming public support for national monuments.”
In a video posted to Twitter on Saturday in advance of Zinke’s announcement, Hatch said Trump’s executive order gave Utah residents, particularly those who live in San Juan County, “a powerful voice in the process of protecting these sacred lands.”
“I commend the president for acting decisively to right the wrongs of his predecessor,” he said, adding he would support whatever recommendation Zinke offered on Bears Ears.
Like Trump, Zinke’s remarks have suggested the monument wouldn’t survive as-is. In April, he said the Antiquities Act has “become a tool of political advocacy rather than public interest.” And during a visit to Bears Ears last month, Zinke said he believed the area should be preserved, but “the issue is whether the monument is the right vehicle.”
“It is public land,” he said. “It was public land before the monument. It will be public land after the monument. What vehicle of public land is appropriate to preserve the cultural identity, to make sure the tribes have a voice and to make sure you protect the traditions of hunting and fishing and public access?”
To make matters worse, Zinke did not tour Bears Ears not with representatives of the the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition — a group of five Native American tribes that came together to petition monument status. Instead, he was joined by monument opponents, including Herbert and members of the San Juan County Commission, the county where Bears Ears is located. During his visit, which the Interior Department called a “listening tour,” Zinke seemed to lose his manners after a protester repeatedly asked why he hadn’t spent more time talking with tribal leaders. Holding up his finger, Zinke forcefully ordered the woman to, “Be. Nice.”
Last month, the Interior Department denied reports that Zinke had already made up his mind and would recommend abolishing Bears Ears. San Juan County Commissioner Phil Lyman reportedly told E&E News that Zinke disclosed his plans during a meeting with the commission earlier that month. Lyman insisted to HuffPost that E&E News had misquoted him. But when asked about the meeting, Lyman said Zinke told the commissioners the administration intends to not only “address the monument,” but also several other public lands issues.
“Zinke said, ‘My boss [Donald Trump] says that these rural counties have been systematically shut down and it’s time for them to go back to work,’” Lyman told HuffPost. He added that his “impression” was that Zinke would “like to rescind it” and that “there’s no question” the Trump administration is “moving in a certain direction.”
The notion that the majority of Utahans oppose Bears Ears monument is hard to make sense of. An analysis that the Center for Western Priorities conducted last month, for example, found that 99 percent of the more than 685,000 public comments submitted during a 15-day comment period voiced support for the Obama-era monument.
Equally as misleading as some of Trump and Zinke’s comments about a lack of support is the information upon which the administration appears to have based its entire review. In an April press release, the Interior Department wrote, “Since the 1900s, when the [Antiquities] Act was first used, the average size of national monuments exploded from an average of 422 acres per monument. Now it’s not uncommon for a monument to be more than a million acres.”
In an attempt to hammer that point home, Zinke noted that America’s first national monument, Devils Tower in Wyoming, which then-President Theodore Roosevelt designated in 1906, was less than 1,200 acres. “Yet, in recent years, we’ve seen monuments span tens of millions of acres,” Zinke said, in a clear reference to marine monument designations and expansions by former Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama.
The argument, of course, is that the law was established to set set aside small areas, and that recent administrations have abused this. A look at early monument designations, however, shows that’s false.
The 422-acre figure that the Trump administration provides is, at best, cherry-picked data. In 1908, for example, two years after the Antiquities Act became law, Roosevelt — of whom Zinke is an “unapologetic admirer and disciple” — designated more than 800,000 acres of the Grand Canyon as a national monument. (Only a few Obama-era land monuments are larger.) Roosevelt also designated 20,629-acre Chaco Canyon National Monument and 610,000-acre Mount Olympus National Park.
Republican presidents Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover both designated monuments over a million acres. Coolidge designated Alaska’s Glacier Bay in 1925, and Hoover set aside California’s Death Valley in 1937.
The Interior Department did not respond to HuffPost’s numerous requests seeking clarification on the 422-acre figure.
Sixteen presidents have used the 1906 Antiquities Act to designate 157 monuments; however, no president has ever tried to revoke a designation. If Trump does indeed try, the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition and other groups have promised to sue.
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