Interior Secretary Zinke says he will recommend reductions to some monuments, but not eliminations.

High Country News
Aug 25, 2017 · 2 min read

By Kate Schimel and Rebecca Worby/High Country News

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke has completed his long-awaited review of 21 national monuments, ordered earlier this year by President Donald Trump. Zinke told the Associated Press Thursday he was not recommending rescinding any monuments, but that he was recommending a handful be reduced in size.

The full review has been handed over to the White House, but it has not been made public. However, citing anonymous sources who have seen the review, The Washington Post reported Thursday that Zinke is recommending cuts to Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument in Oregon, as well as Bears Ears National Monument and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, both in Utah. Former President Bill Clinton designated Grand Staircase-Escalante in 1996 and Cascade-Siskiyou in 2000. Former President Barack Obama designated Bears Ears in the waning months of his presidency last year and expanded Cascade-Siskiyou by 47,000 acres in January.

The Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument is located at the crossroads of the Cascade, Klamath and Siskiyou mountain ranges and could serve as a refuge for species as the climate changes. Bob Wick/BLM

The designation of each of those monuments came amid outcry from their opponents of federal government overreach and fears that monument status would damage local economies, which were traditionally bound to resource extraction — timber, grazing or mining. Utah politicians, in particular, have labeled their local monuments as examples of local input being ignored. Echoing such long-held concerns in a press call Thursday morning, Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, called Trump’s review an opportunity to reexamine “how we protect the resources, not if we protect them.” Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, was instrumental in orchestrating the review and making it an early priority for the Trump administration.

However, in the case of the Clinton-designated monuments, those fears have proven unfounded. Instead, counties bordering the protected areas have largely grown and undergone the same economic shifts that are sweeping the rural West.

In the two counties bordering Grand Staircase-Escalante, Garfield and Kane, population has grown by 13 percent and jobs by 24 percent since 2001. Per capita income has grown too. Service jobs, such as doctors, lawyers, retail workers and tour guides, outnumber non-service jobs, like those in mining and agriculture, four to one.

>>Read more about that trend, what happened with the economics of Grand Staircase-Escalante, whether monuments curtails future new extractive uses and about the reactions to the knowns about review on the High Country News website.

Kate Schimel is the deputy editor-digital for High Country News. Follow Kate on Twitter @KateSchimel.

Rebecca Worby is an editorial intern at High Country News. Follow Rebecca on Twitter @beccaworby.

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High Country News

The nation’s leading source of reporting on the American West.

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