Metate Arch, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument/BLM
Editor's note: The following op-ed piece by Ron Maxwell initially ran on The American Conservative website.
The American people did not vote for Donald Trump because they wanted their forests logged, bounties placed on wolf packs, national monuments reduced in size, and a resumption of the universally outlawed ivory trade.
These odious policies are the direct result of the appointment of a swamp creature positioned by the crony class to further its own narrow financial interests and agenda: Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke. Thankfully the president reversed Zinke’s plans [1] for elephant trophies, calling them a “horror show,” which is what they are. But Trump recently traveled to Utah to announce the opening up of public lands [2] for commercial developers to pillage and plunder to their hearts content.
Bears Ears and Grand Staircase Escalante were first on the chopping block but Mr. Zinke has more in mind. At least eight more of our treasured national monuments, set aside for their beauty and the public’s enjoyment and use, are targeted for reduction. The Antiquities Act of 1906 gives the president the authority to set aside public lands as national monuments, and also to do the reverse. After reviewing these sites, Zinke has recommended that Trump reclassify and reduce the size of these national treasures.
No president has ever shrunk the sizes of monuments, but the Department of the Interior is filled with swamp denizens like Zinke and his deputy David Bernhardt, a former lobbyist for the oil and gas industry and big agribusiness, those most interested in using public land for private gain.
This reclassification means the acreage of the national monuments will be reduced, and the lands—some of the most spectacular scenic areas in the country—can be used for commercial development.
Unlike national parks, national monuments allow local residents and tourists alike to participate in recreational activities such as hunting, fishing, cattle-grazing, and hiking. This is why local businesses, sportsmen, and community groups tend to support keeping the monuments intact, as they provide dependable incomes for local economies, including the additions of jobs.
There is also widespread and bipartisan public support for preserving our national monuments. A new McLaughlin & Associates poll of 1,000 likely voters found that 90 percent of Americans support the creation of more monuments or at least keeping the current ones protected. Maintaining these lands also has the backing of local Native American tribes and chambers of commerce.
Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks in New Mexico is a prime example of how local areas surrounding national monuments can benefit from tourist opportunities. In 2016, tourism hit an all-time high following the monument’s mention in Lonely Planet’s “Top 10 Places to Visit” travel guide, which resulted in a 50 percent increase in visitors over the past year. The monument features petroglyph-line canyons, with thousands of Native American archeological sites, and many historical landmarks and training sites.
If the personal income of those who live near the Organ Mountains can increase by 42 percent, community involvement in supporting national monuments can lead to economic prosperity throughout the country.
Nonetheless, Secretary Zinke has recommended reclassifying Organ Mountains Desert Peaks for oil drilling and mining.
Gold Butte National Monument features significant cultural, historical, and natural treasures: thousands of Native American artifacts, historic mining and pioneering artifacts, rare and threatened wildlife, and dramatic geologic features. Broad and deep local support is a principal reason for its designation, which, in turn, has benefitted the community greatly.
Gold Butte also encourages tourism and increases expenditures for local businesses. An economic study conducted by Applied Analysis found that if only 10 percent of new visitors decided to spend one night in Mesquite, Nevada, the total economic impact for the community would be $2.7 million per year. Think about what that could mean if visitors were to spend the week.
Nevertheless, Secretary Zinke proposes that Gold Butte National Monument should be opened to “traditional uses,” including mining and drilling.
Aside from their captivating scenery and cultural and historical sites, monuments already provide an economic boost for nearby communities without risking damage to their environments. Additionally, their archaeological sites are a link to our prehistoric past and a vital tether to Native American cultural history.
Secretary Zinke’s misguided policies are toxic for local communities and even worse for American economic prosperity. President Trump knows business, but he also understands the need to protect these lands and the local economies they serve. He is wise to question the plans of his swamp creature and should continue to do so.
Ron Maxwell is writer and director of the award-winning film Gettysburg.
Comments
I'm late to this party, but while reading this editorial I immediately thought "BS" on the "no President has ever shrunk the size of monuments", and "national monuments allow local residents and tourists alike to participate in recreational activities such as hunting, fishing, cattle-grazing, and hiking." [The latter also evoked a "huh?". Fishing & hiking are allowed in every National Park I can think of, hunting is more about overlays of "National Preserve" on top of "National Park", and grazing is unit-specific: allowed in some parks & monuments but not in others.]
And while I'm agreeing with EC, the Jackson Magnolia has been on its last legs (limbs?) for decades, and the removal of (nearly) all of it needed to happen. NPS ("President's Park", not "The White House") has grown replacements from both seeds and cuttings. Yes, the President (delegated to Melania) had to give the final sign-off, but the entire initiatve & justification & recommendation came from the grounds staff, with expert consultation from the National Arboretum.
Facts matter. At least to me.
... and, speaking of facts, I see I was agreeing more with richp's first comment than with EC about the article. I suspect that most of us find the same problems with the article, but I'm guilty of not paying sufficient attention while posting (while writing a paper while on annual leave).
[I edited the above post to insert the missing "o", not to fix my mistake.]
Zike just did another number on us by re-interpreting the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, allowing incidental bird kills as long as it wasn't intentional. I'm guessing Alfred would not like this.
Alfred does NOT like it, anymore than he liked President Obama's insistence to make even intentional deaths perfectly legal. At least, President Trump admits that wind farms kill eagles.
https://apnews.com/b8dd6050c702467e8be4b1272a3adc87/final-wind-energy-ru...
Which is worse? The person who pretends to be a conservationist--and isn't--or the person who makes no bones about being a hypocrite? One of these days, we will stop defending hyprocrites if they happen to be a member of OUR political party. For me that day has long since arrived.
The Woodrow Wilson national monument changes are the exceptions that prove the rule that national monuments are not reduced. Wilson was out to undercut his enemy Theodore Roosevelt, and among other reckless things, he fired all Roosevelt's African Amerian hires and slashed national monuments. And yes, once in a while, largely for small administrative reasons, a few other Presidents made adjustments, but NOTHING like what the current President did for the pride of Senator Orrin Hatch at Bears Ears.
The reason changes in national monuments without Acts of Congress diminished is because President's around Franklin Roosevelt's time read the law and saw that fundamental changes in a national monument is both inconsistent with the law and fundamentally illogical. President's already had the authority to protect land temporarily as an executive authority of the President. The whole point of the Antiquities Act was the recognition that the integrity of some fragile resources require permanent protection. Wilson was so new to the Antiquities Act and so narrow minded and self-regarding a man that he often acted willfully, and with bias. As illustrated by his firing permanent employees of the Federal Government of achievement because they were Black.
I mean, for those who like to think, think about it. Why would the Congress pass a law to give temporary executive authority over the public lands, since the President already has temporary authority over the public lands? The Antiquities Act did something else. It made such executive presidential action permanent.
The point of the permanence required by law is so profound that when President Bill Clinton rushed to save a portion of the National Landmark District of Governors Island in New York Harbor as a national monument, from an unbelievably corrupt law that Newt Gingrich forced through Congress, that their was an uproar when bureaucrats from the Justice Department and the Office of Management and Budget formed a hit squad to destroy Governors Island the day after Clinton went out of office.
When the Office of Legislative Counsel in DOJ and the OMB issued in 2001 their claim that the Governors Island National Monument was temporary, there was an electric uproar because by that time it was well understood that the only way to make major National Monument changes of the Bears Ears sort is by going to Congress and passing a law.
Now the reason we have such trolls and others repeating talking points of attack as you read above, by proclaiming their great knowledge of history (without doubt recently acquired) is because a few of the right-wing hack law firms, backed if you can believe it as tax-deductible charities rather than the political instrumentalities they are, wrote up long, Through-The-Looking-Glass briefs to invent a legal framework to support the illegal action recommended by Zinke and willfully issued by Trump. Trump needed Hatch.
If you look at Zinke's paper recommending this action, you quickly see how empty of merit it is. He actually tells the President of the United States, who Zinke is responsible for serving, that the Antiquities Act explicitly "provides" for Presidents to modify monuments. If any of the deeply thoughtful historians here read the Antiquities Act i defy you to find one word that indictes, or that even implies, authority given by Congress to the President to modify National Monument Proclamations by previous Presidents. This authority is not there. You cannot find it. The Presidents who so acted broke the clear law.
Obscuring the facts is one "skill" they teach you in law school that becomes whole careers for unscrupulous lawyers. I remember in my second year of law school, in my class on "Wills," on the opening day the professor says: "There is only one rule you need to know in decedents estates, or wills. It is this: 'A man's will is law!' Now we are going to spend the rest of the year finding the exceptions." (direct, word-for-word unforgettable quote) This is the kind of lawyer who digs up irrelevant exceptions to expand Presidental powers beyond those clearly provided by Congress.
No one in their right mind would cite the Wilson exceptions as evidence that national monuments can be changed willfully by subsequent Presidents. It is like saying that the law allows you to shoot a law enforcement officer acting to arrest you, even though once in a blue moon a jury will let such a person off. It is the rarest exception that proves the rule that you cannot shoot law enforcement officers.
Okay, guys, now that you've been loaded for bear with the talking points written by the kind of lawyers who wrote up the legal briefs for President Bush that gave him the courage to say that torture was not torture, you can focus on the trivial as Zinke and Trump did in order to rationalize the illegal policy. Well done! But the reality is that even if you can get away playing 'got'cha' to a fundamentally accurate analysis of the issues at stake, wow are you missing the point. If you are more than a troll.
By the way, what happened on Governors Island, and the effort by exactly the kind of lawyers at OLC who write torture exonerations is this: even though President George Bush II campaigned (as Trump did) objecting to the way his predecessor used the Antiquities Act, when it became clear to Bush and Cheney how disturbed people were that the principle of the Rule Of Law was being violated and threatening Clinton's Governors Island National Monument, that Cheney set up a public review process to verify that the public overwhelmingly approved of this and other Clinton National Monuments, and President Bush then allowed the Republican Governor to fly him around Governors Island, and then tell Bush what it meant when we play games with the law for ideological purposes. He told Bush his Secretary of the Interior, who came from one of those politicized right-wing 'charities,' was about the dumbest person he had ever talked to. Bush realized that the easiest way to undo all the damage would be to hire a lawyer from outside who had no biases at work, and that guy devised a way to outsmart OLC and OMB and save Governors Island from disappearing without Act of Congress. In fact Bush even added a little bit of land and a dock, so the NPS could do a better job managing this partnership park, and set up a system to work with the City and the State for the rest of the Island. So much for Newt's incredibly corrupt law. Of course as we know, Newt was a big supporter of Trump.
Ok so Maxwell, not a historian, made a trivial mistake. One that does not diminish his point as much as it diminishes his critics. But the fundamental truth remains that for our entire lifetimes it has been profoundly understood that the only way to lawfully cut out a National Monument's core resource is by Act of Congress.
Okay, D-2. We all stand corrected. I am just a bit suspicious that you give no citations, other than to accuse those with other interpretations for being trolls.
"Obscuring the facts is one "skill" they teach you in law school that becomes whole careers for unscrupulous lawyers." Well, they now teach that in History departments, too. Inconvenient? Just leave it out. The inconvenience you fail to address is the whole matter of legal precedent. If I do something--and it goes unchallenged--it may indeed come to be interpreted as precedent, in fact entitled to the rule of law.
Wilson's reduction of Mount Olympus was hardly minor in that respect. You can say all you want what the Antiquities Act allows and doesn't allow, but now, I should think, it will be up to the Supreme Court. In a democracy, a century is no minor amount of time. Explicit actions, as much as explicit words, do make for legal precedent. As a historian, I've said all along that the Antiquities Act will one day wind up in the Supreme Court. And if you think the Supreme Court is itself not governed by the culture in which it convenes, you should have paid more attention in law school. In the end, law is all about the culture--and changing times. We can only hope the Court agrees with our interpretation that national monuments should be inviolate.
President Obama never said that wind farms do not kill eagles. Now they can kill with glee and not even try to stop the deaths
"President Obama never said that wind farms do not kill eagles. Now they can kill with glee and not even try to stop the deaths."
No, all that President Obama did was sidestep Congress--resorting to the Federal Register to establish a "legal" take. As I say to D-2 above, if no one opposes the subterfuge it takes on the quality of precedent, in which case precedent can become the law.
If anyone killed "wtih glee," it was the owners of the wind farms, who pulled a fast one on both the president and the American public. But at least the president should have known better.
Which remains the issue, does it not? You use the royal "they," meaning strictly the "other side." When we do it, it's okay. When they do it, it's a crime. The crime, Argalite, is your indifference to anything suggestive of a moral compass. If you have one, please tell me what it is. Tell me where and when your outrage is simply outrage, rather than political showboating veiled as outrage.
I normally would not bring religion into it, but we sure could use a dose of the Old Time Religion. The Founding Fathers were willing to admit that. For them, "In God We Trust" was more than a cliche. Now, which of your beliefs are more than a cliche? You want to "stop the deaths?" No, you don't, if they were ordained by Democrats, which is to explain why you resort to the royal "they. " You need "they" when you lack the courage to name the players honestly, in this case everyone in government who values power over morality, and that goes for your "side," too.