The House Natural Resources Committee has taken a first look at a bill that would limit future national monument designations and give presidents the authority to alter monuments.
The bill was introduced earlier this month by Rep. Rob Bishop of Utah, where legislators were enraged by former President Barack Obama’s creation of the vast Bears Ears National Monument.
Since Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke’s monument review began, conservationists have debated, and likely will sue to determine, whether a president can alter monument boundaries and the land uses within them.
Bishop’s bill would settle that issue. It also would require a federal environmental review process for monuments larger than 640 acres – one square mile, with requirements growing increasingly strict as the size of the proposed monument increases, and it includes provisions requiring state and local governments to approve monument creation.
The act is named “The National Monument Creation and Protection Act,” ironically because it is intended to hamper both creation and protection.
Reps. Scott Tipton and Doug Lamborn, Republican committee members from Colorado, a state where tourism depends heavily on public lands, both voted to move the bill out of committee.
A federal review process might make sense except for some serious problems: The executive branch of the government has grown so thoroughly politicized that each administration considers only one point of view and Congress often seems wholly dysfunctional. “Environmental review” is an intentionally deceptive term as well.
Reforming the Antiquities Act is a goal of congressional Republicans who decry “wholesale land grabs.” Since 1906, the law has been used by presidents – eight from each party – to preserve natural landscapes and cultural resources. Bishop has said that the Antiquities Act has a worthy goal and his legislation will rescue it from being “manipulated for ulterior political purposes.” He should have added, “by a party other than my own.”
He says that it limits presidential power to reshape monuments, when the intent is to enable presidents – specifically Donald Trump – to drastically reshape them in a way that past presidents have not felt the need to do.
As this bill moves through the legislative process, we challenge Bishop to seek and consider public input from a wide range of stakeholders.
This bill would do what many Republicans want; why not acknowledge its intent openly?
We can certainly do without all the legislative subterfuge that makes the bill read like it will accomplish the opposite of what its real intention implies.
