...From the reaction of many environmental groups to Secretary Zinke’s review, you would think antiquities will go unprotected. For example, a $1.4 million advertising campaign says “Mr. Secretary, don’t turn your back on Roosevelt now.” According to Land Tawney, president of Backcountry Hunters and Anglers (BHA), the organization sponsoring the ad campaign, “Our national monuments have stood the test of time, and the present review could trigger a game of political football, leaving some of our most cherished landscapes in limbo.”
Indeed, national monuments have become a political football, and organizations like BHA are the punters. Several environmental groups and some Indian tribes say they will sue to stop any recommended reductions, thus punting the ball to judges who will decide how federal lands will be managed.
...Instead of letting professionals manage our lands and our wildlife, environmental groups want to create de facto wilderness areas where backpackers displace loggers, ranchers, and miners. They do this in the name of protecting public lands, suggesting that throngs of Patagonia-clad hikers -- who demand new trails, climb rock walls with holes drilled in the rock for protection, and leave dozens of fire rings around popular lakes -- do no damage. (This summer I camped at a lake 7 miles from the trailhead where stone fire rings were scarcely 50 yards apart built by previous campers wanting to demonstrate their wilderness skills.)
After the president acts on Zinke’s review and the wilderness-hungry environmentalists hike into courtrooms, Congress should go to work reforming legislation in ways that return land management to federal and state professionals. Teddy Roosevelt did this when he appointed Gifford Pinchot to run the newly created U.S. Forest Service in 1905. Pinchot was a professional forester who knew how to manage trees. Federal lands included in Bears Ears and other national monuments need management by local people on the ground , not by judges in black robes.
A starting point would be to require approval by state congressional delegations of any national monument designated in their state. Let state wildlife managers have more say in whether grizzlies are removed from the endangered species list. Entrust Indian tribes with management of their antiquities as they already are with Canyon de Chelly National Monument.
Most of Bears Ears is under the purview of the Bureau of Land Management. It is time to return to the BLM motto—“land of many uses”—not land of no uses.
2 comments:
His 3rd paragraph puts it all in a nutshell -- enviros displacing ranchers in favor of throngs of hikers who physically altar the land for recreational use.
I'm glad that in a publication that reaches a more mainstream-urban population, somebody can put into context about the hypocrisy of what's happening to ranchers - hopefully the urbanites will start seeing the light.
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