Blackfeet Leaders Skeptical of Zinke’s Monument Recommendation

U.S. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke’s recommendation to reduce the size of four large national monuments in the West — an unprecedented charge that he dispatched at the behest of President Donald Trump — held few surprises. Except in Montana. The Whitefish native’s proposal would scale back two prominent monuments in Utah, Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante, as well as Nevada’s Gold Butte and Oregon’s Cascade-Siskiyou. In Montana, however, Zinke not only left untouched the Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument, but he recommended halting mining along the state’s border with Yellowstone National Park and, most surprisingly, adding the Badger-Two Medicine area near Glacier National Park to the list of monuments...more