More Land Designated
to National Monuments
Move shifts more than 1 million acres to federal jurisdiction.
President Obama designated three more national monuments under the Antiquities Act. The Berryessa Snow Mountain in California, Waco Mammoth in Texas, and Basin and Range in Nevada together add more than 1 million acres to federal jurisdiction. With these designations, Obama will have used the Antiquities Act to establish or expand 19 national monuments, putting more than 260 million total acres of land and water under restrictive management during his presidency.
“The president is charging forward with expansive designations in an attempt to leave behind some type of legacy after his term ends, but what he will be known for is the mismanagement of natural resources, economic hardship in rural communities, and putting farmers and ranchers out of business,” says Brenda Richards, Public Lands Council (PLC) president and Idaho rancher. “He is replacing the people who do the best job of managing our natural resources with Washington, D.C., bureaucrats implementing one-size-fits-all management practices to land across the country.”
Under the 1906 Antiquities Act, the president has power to declare monument designations, which comes with added layers of bureaucracy and restrictive management provisions in the name of environmental protection. In similar fashion to Obama, Richards adds, President Clinton designated more national monuments during his presidency than any other president at the time; decisions that have affected the local economies by limiting productive multiple uses.
Billy Flournoy, president of the California Cattlemen’s Association, adds that despite the claims of the administration, grazing is at great risk with the 331,000 acres encompassed in the Berryessa Snow Mountain designation.
“Even where the administration has historically assured the ranching community that grazing will not be curtailed as a result of national monument designation, just as they are now, we have nevertheless seen ranchers pushed out and grazing significantly decrease,” Flournoy says. “In California, perhaps the most egregious and illustrative example was with the management of the Carrizo Plain National Monument, where grazing was once a thriving industry.”
Land management decisions need to take local entities and citizens into consideration, says JJ Goicoechea, Nevada Cattlemen’s Association past president. When local entities and legal processes are disregarded, the best interest of the land may no longer be a deciding factor.
“To claim the designation is to protect the artwork ‘City,’ an area approximately the size of the National Mall in D.C., by putting 700,000 acres under designation is absurd,” Goicoechea says. “This heavy-handed, ‘I-know-best’ mentality is threatening our livelihood and our ability to produce the food and fiber for our country.”
The livestock industry will continue to call on Congress to end the restriction of land and wholesale reshaping of the West by presidential fiat through modernization of the Antiquities Act, the Public Lands Council concluded in its news release informing cattlemen of the designations. The release further argued that Congress should immediately pass legislation reiterating the original intent of this Act so special-interest environmental groups will not continue to lobby for restriction of western rangelands without public input or approval by Congress.
Editor’s Note: This article is adapted from a news release provided by the Public Lands Council.