Heinrich's letter on OMDP

Today, U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich led a press conference outside the U.S. Capitol with U.S. Senator Tom Udall and a number of other Senate Democrats on President Donald Trump's executive order that could unravel dozens of America’s national monuments despite the strong outpouring of support from across the nation. The Senators were joined by public lands and community coalitions who called on President Trump and Department of the Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to listen to the American people and keep existing monument protections in place. The monument review threatens public lands and national monument designations including the Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks and Río Grande del Norte National Monuments in New Mexico. Over 2.5 million comments were submitted opposing the Department of the Interior’s unprecedented national monument review. In New Mexico, strong majorities of more than 80 percent want to keep protections for existing national monuments in place. Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks and Río Grande del Norte National Monuments have recieved widespread support across New Mexico. “Erasing America’s national monuments from the map would devastate our thriving outdoor recreation economy, which generates 68,000 jobs and $6.1 billion of annual economic activity in New Mexico alone. And it could easily lead us down a slippery slope toward the selloff of our public lands to the highest bidder and massive giveaways of public resources to special interests,” said Senator Heinrich, who sent letters to Secretary Zinke last week regarding the history of the Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks and the Rio Grande del Norte National Monuments, highlighting the broad public support and extensive consultation with and input from local communities...more 

 "And it could easily lead us down a slippery slope toward the selloff of our public lands to the highest bidder" 

Now if that was truly a threat here in Dona Ana County, why didn't Heinrich do anything about it? Under Section 204 of FLPMA the Secretary of Interior can withdraw lands from all forms of disposal for up to 20 years. All it takes is a simple notice in the Federal Register. Again, if sale of these lands was a real threat why wasn't Heinrich pounding on Secretary Jewell's desk and demanding these lands be withdrawn?


Further, why did Heinrich not introduce legislation to legislatively withdraw these lands? Heinrich had supported a bill to do just that in northern NM and it became law.  Why not, if there was such a threat, do the same thing to protect these lands in southern NM? Instead he's introduced bills that would create wilderness, nca's and monuments, bills that he knew would not pass, and what, left us vulnerable to this so-called "threat"? His actions don't make sense if he truly thought the "selloff" of these lands was imminent.

And embedded below is his letter to Secretary Zinke on the OMDP. It takes him 5 pages, but the Senator's argument basically boils down to this: We've been trying for many years to get rid of multiple-use on these lands. Five different bills have been introduced, millions of dollars of foundation money have been spent to bamboozle the public, but dammit, it just hasn't worked. Finally, with a stroke of the pen, Obama got it done, and how dare Trump come along and pick up a pen of his own.

Here is the letter, and as you can see, the poor Senator can't even get the date right on it.

 https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8Yd5M8kgeNtOFFiRXlnd3Q0eFE/view?usp=sharing