Monumental Error: Zinke’s National Monuments Review Report

 by Tim Peterson, Utah Wildlands Director

After a hasty review by Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, on a quick trip to Utah on December 4, 2017, President Trump attempted to repeal and replace Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments. He tried to use the same law to reverse protections for these places that former presidents Clinton and Obama used enact them — the Antiquities Act of 1906. In attempting to use the law to eliminate national monument protections for over 2 million acres of public lands, he broke with tradition, the spirit and intent of the law, his authority under it, and with public opinion. 

Past presidents have used the Antiquities Act to set aside what have become some our nation’s most revered and beloved treasures — Zion, Arches, the Grand Canyon. But President Trump misused the Antiquities Act to launch the most aggressive attack on protected public lands in American history. It’s all based on Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke’s review of national monuments, along with a healthy dose of political pressure from industry and Utah’s anti-public lands congressional delegation. One day after Trump’s action, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke finally released his national monuments review report as required by Trump’s April executive order requiring review of 27 national monuments. Trump’s order mandated an August 24, 2017 deadline, but the secretary missed it, keeping his findings secret as an internal draft document. 

Late, destructive, and greenwashed

Unfortunately, it looks like more carnage to come for our national monuments. Secretary Zinke recommended in his final report that Gold Butte and Cascade Siskiyou national monuments also be shrunk, and that new management provisions be added to 10 monuments to allow logging, commercial fishing, and other “traditional uses” that, in fact, are incompatible with the proper care and management of the objects and values for which the monuments were originally established. Zinke took a radical step further, recommending an “ongoing review of monuments” to potentially reopen every national monument in America to similar tinkering in the interest of so-called “traditional uses.” 

Zinke’s draft report, leaked to the media in September, was a real mess, but his final report and his department’s press releases still get a lot wrong. The spin is heavy — Zinke (and Trump) have stated that national monuments curtail hunting and fishing and Native American herb and wood gathering for heating and ceremonial use (the original “traditional uses”). 

But this is totally untrue in the case of Bears Ears, Grand Staircase, and most other national monuments. Hunting and fishing are still allowed in both, under their original proclamations, and hunting and fishing continue to be managed by the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources. President Obama’s Bears Ears proclamation guaranteed access for Native American traditional uses and preserved Native American traditional knowledge as a resource to be protected and used in the management of Bears Ears. 

Knowing the unpopularity of gutting public lands protections, Zinke offered a public relations smoke screen in his report by recommending three new national monuments — two small military sites in Kentucky and Mississippi, and a new monument in his home state of Montana for the Badger-Two Medicine area, sacred to the Blackfeet Nation. 

But when this news leaked in September, it drew a swift rebuke from the Blackfeet Nation. “Everyone is grateful to see Secretary Zinke paying attention to permanent protection of the Badger-Two Medicine,” Blackfeet spokesman Michael Jamison said. “But it’s not acceptable to propose monument protection of the Badger while at [the] same time proposing to strip protections from Bears Ears and other sacred places for Native Americans. If monuments aren’t permanent, we don’t want monument status. If it’s so transitory and impermanent it can be undone by the stroke of a pen in some future administration, it’s not permanent protection.”

We agree. National monuments are supposed to be permanent. Why would anyone want a national monument that could immediately change, as Trump has tried to do in Utah? 

“Special interests”

Flipping the term “special interests” on its head, Secretary Zinke and President Trump are now using the moniker to refer to outdoor recreationists and the companies that make outdoor gear, instead of its standard association with the mining and oil lobbies. “The people of Utah overwhelmingly voiced to us that public land should be protected not for the special interests, but for the citizens of our great country who use them…” reads the secretary’s quote in a press release. 

During a press call organized to unveil the long-secret final report on December 5, Zinke revealed what he considers a special interest when he lost his cool after a reporter asked about outdoor brand Patagonia Works’ lawsuit challenging the president on Bears Ears. “You mean Patagonia made in China? This is an example of a special interest," Zinke quipped.

When called out afterward on his proclivity to travel expensively on the taxpayers’ dime, most famously on an oil executive’s private plane after speaking for a hockey team owned by one of his donors, Secretary Zinke managed to get in a Twitter fight with Patagonia, trading punches over what constitutes a “special interest.”

Growing disapproval

The repeal of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase and the looming evisceration of other national monuments detailed in Zinke’s report are just another step in undoing progress made for public lands and wildlife over the last 30 years. These unprecedented attacks, and Secretary Zinke’s policies, are beginning to displease even his early supporters. By rolling back negotiated agreements on sage grouse, pushing to lease more oil and gas on and off shore, issuing a secretarial order calling for drilling the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and repealing a moratorium on coal leasing, Zinke is straining his claim that he wants to emulate Teddy Roosevelt, a legendary conservationist. Although he carefully cultivates his public image as a rugged outdoorsmen, even those in the hunting and fishing community who endorsed Zinke are losing hope.

There’s so much sideshow with the current administration that it’s easy to lose sight of the real policy implications coming out of the White House and the Department of Interior this year. Amid all the spin and alternative facts, Zinke’s monuments report is another big step toward throwing open the gates for more fossil fuel development and mining in places that are overwhelmingly popular with Americans who feel they deserve protection.

Now, it’s time for Americans to speak out, show up, and support efforts to keep public lands protected. One way you can help is by donating. We need your support now more than ever.