Local Advocates Left Wanting By National Monument Reductions

By VERNON ROBISON

Moapa Valley Progress

Rural northeastern Clark County residents, who have long fought to retain traditional access to public lands, were disappointed last week in being left out of a Presidential proclamation which down-sized two national monuments in Utah.

On Monday, Dec. 4, President Donald Trump travelled to Salt Lake City to sign a pair of executive actions shaving about two million acres from two monuments in the state: Bears Ears and Grand Staircase/Escalante. Bears Ears, created last December by President Barack Obama, will be reduced by about 85 percent to 201,876 acres. Grand Staircase/Escalante, designated in 1996 by President Bill Clinton, will be reduced from nearly 1.9 million acres down to 1,003,863 acres.

Utah state officials, including a united Congressional delegation, had appealed to the President for the reductions, saying that the designations had been overly broad and closed off key areas to energy development and multiple use access.

As justification for the decision, Trump argued that the people of Utah know best how to care for their land. “Some people think that the natural resources of Utah should be controlled by a small handful of very distant bureaucrats located in Washington,” Trump said. “And guess what? They’re wrong! You know and love this land the best and you know the best how to take care of your land.”

Rural public land advocates in northeastern Clark County have long agreed with those sentiments. In fact, local group Partners in Conservation (PIC) was organized back in 1998 based on that very principle.
“That pretty much hits the nail right on the head,” said PIC Chairman Lindsey Dalley of the President’s statement. “That has been our goal all along.”

But there was no mention in the President’s declaration of any down-sizing to the boundaries of Gold Butte National Monument, a vast 300,000 acre area just north of Bunkerville, Nevada which has been a battleground ever since being designated by President Barack Obama last December.

Rural groups like PIC had made appeals to the administration that the monument be drastically reduced to focus only on the relatively small parcels of land that actually contained archaeological treasures. The rest of the land should be released from the designation to allow for the continuation of an ongoing cooperation between federal land managers and local stakeholder groups in managing the land, they believe.

Despite the President’s silence on Gold Butte, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke did confirm that he wanted to see some land carved from Gold Butte. In a press call held on the day after the President’s announcement, Zinke said he was recommending a “minor adjustment” to the monument. This adjustment would exclude lands containing several springs held by the Virgin Valley Water District (VVWD) as a future water source for the city of Mesquite.

Just when and how that recommendation might actually be carried out by the President remained unclear.
Zinke’s announcement also did not specify just how much land should be cut from Gold Butte in the action. But the VVWD has suggested removing about 26 square miles from the roughly 460 square mile monument. That area lies at the far northeastern corner of the monument.
Reaction to both Trump’s and Zinke’s announcements was split down party lines in Nevada.

Republican Senator Dean Heller praised Zinke’s recommendation calling it “welcome news for Nevada” and saying that it would “prioritize local concerns over the opinion of Washington bureaucrats.”
Democratic Senator Catherine Cortez-Masto said that the approach taken by the President “undermines a century of precedent under President Theodore Roosevelt’s Antiquities Act and clearly demonstrates his continued inability to serve as a moral leader of our country.”

Though it was viewed as a step in the right direction, Zinke’s recommendation didn’t go nearly far enough to make local advocates entirely happy. “It is definitely not anywhere close to all that we wanted,” Dalley said.

Dalley pointed out that PIC has worked hard in recent years, appealing to the Nevada Congressional delegation; and, more recently, to administration officials; to maintain a local voice in the management of the Gold Butte landscape. Last summer, the group had been instrumental in orchestrating a visit by Zinke to Gold Butte and a meeting afterwards with local stakeholders.

“It was through a combined effort of our communities that we were able to get that meeting with none less than the Interior Secretary himself,” Dalley said. “That was huge in getting our message out!”
Nevertheless, Dalley said that he had hoped for a much larger carve-out to the monument boundaries. But he acknowledged that the politics in the state had made the idea something of a long-shot.

“I wish that Nevada had a Congressional delegation that was as supportive of its rural areas and their unique concerns as what Utah has,” Dalley said. “Unfortunately, ours seems to be more supportive of only the urban areas of the state and their interests. That is unfortunate.”

Dalley did, however, view last week’s outcome as a positive step in the overall public lands debate.
“I think that it sets a great precedent that the President can shrink a national monument,” Dalley said. “It blows a hole in the argument that once established a monument can’t be touched. Now there will, no doubt, be a court case and we say ‘bring it on’. It is time that it should be established once and for all.”

In addition, Dalley said that it was nice to see, after all the efforts made by the rural folks to reach up through layers of federal government, that it all made a difference – small though it was.
“At least we might have something to show for it,” Dalley said. “So often, when all is said and done, we don’t. But this time we made this huge, herculean effort and we actually moved the needle. After all, when was the last time that we have seen a previous land designation rolled back; even a little bit? Not very often. so I think that this can be chalked up as a small victory.”