Letter - Key to Owyhee protection is trust

It is a great sadness to me that many in the ranching community have organized for the purpose of preventing protections for the great Owyhee Canyonlands in Oregon, and have voted “unanimously” to take the “no negotiations” position. 

Andrew Bentz, who heads the Owyhee Basin Stewardship coalition, indicated that the group’s greatest concern is access to grazing, despite the fact that existing grazing rights are grandfathered in to any creation of an Owyhee National Monument as well as the Wilderness Act of 1964. They simply do not trust that these laws will be upheld. Period.

How do you work through these issues if you build a wall against communication? When trust is nonexistent?...more

And it is a great sadness to me that many enviro-advocates of National Monuments continue to misrepresent the facts.

existing grazing rights are grandfathered in to any creation of an Owyhee National Monument
as well as the Wilderness Act of 1964. They simply do not trust that these laws will be upheld.

With respect to National Monuments the law in question is the Antiquities Act of 1906. That is the law that authorizes the President to proclaim National Monuments. Please read it. Not only is livestock grazing not "grandfathered in", it is not even mentioned in the Act. There may be draft proclamations being floated around by local advocates, but the final authority rests with the President on whether or not livestock grazing may occur within the monument, and if so under what restrictions. It is all dependent on what grazing language the President chooses to insert in the proclamation, and that language has varied widely.  Presidential proclamations have banned livestock grazing entirely, have banned grazing in certain areas of a monument, have allowed grazing but with restrictions, and have stated specifically the designation will have no impact on grazing. One person, the President, makes this decision, with no public hearings, no NEPA compliance, no "collaboration." 

We have been through all this in a nine-year battle resulting in the designation of the Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks National Monument and that is the sad reality facing ranch families in other proposed monuments.