Nev. congressman says document points to massive designation

President Obama is planning to designate a 700,000-acre national monument in rangelands of east-central Nevada, according to a document obtained by Rep. Cresent Hardy (R-Nev.) and shared with Nevada media. The six-page draft proclamation was prepared by the White House and has been circulating among federal agencies the past week, Hardy's spokesman said, according to a report in the Las Vegas Review-Journal.  If true, the so-called Basin and Range National Monument in portions of Lincoln and Nye counties would be Obama's largest land-based designation yet under the 1906 Antiquities Act, a conservation law that has been a target of Republicans in Congress including Hardy. In January, Hardy co-sponsored a bill by Rep. Mark Amodei (R-Nev.) to prohibit the president from designating national monuments in Nevada without approval from Congress. Hardy said the Basin and Range monument would lie under the airspace of the Nevada Test and Training Range and include one of the most heavily used military operating areas in the country. The Air Force and its partners flew nearly 20,000 aircraft sorties in the area last year, exercises that would be "drastically impaired as a result of this monument designation," Hardy said...more

The proclamation for the Organ Mtns.-Desert Peaks National Monument contains the following language:

Nothing in this proclamation shall preclude low level overflights of military aircraft, the designation of new units of special use airspace, or the use or establishment of military flight training routes over the lands reserved by this proclamation.

At least the Nev. rep and the public have an opportunity to see and possibly influence the language.  We were denied that opportunity in NM.  In Colo., the two Democrat Senators intervened for the Cattlegrowers organization, our two Democrat Senators did neither.  No transparency and no help.