My thoughts on #BearsEars

For the new national monument, a great starting point is Jonathan Thompson's piece at High Country News. And, a great backgrounder piece, plus a showing of his chops as a writer, is Jonny Peace's article from this summer.

So, that's our starting point.

Here's some sidebar and backgrounder cold takes from me.

1. I'm not a total fan of BLM and Forest Service national monuments. Haven't been since the Slickster made Grand Staircase-Escalante the first one, or at least the first of any size, on the BLM side, and Giant Sequoia the first of any size on the USFS side. (Doesn't Fish and Wildlife get a National Wildlife Refuge upgraded at some point?)

That said, I've been through portions of Giant Sequoia once, at night driving. Not sure how much the additional protections there are, or the additional values added.

Grosvenor Arch at GSE Nat'l Monument.
Photo by Steve Snyder

I've been to GSE twice, or rather, somewhat through it, especially on the first trip, as well as nibbled around its edges a couple of other times. I've been to Carrizo Plain and Klamath-Siskyou (rumored to be on Obama's list for expansion).

And, as for our newest site, I've done some putz-around hiking on Cedar Mesa and at the start of Grand Gulch as well as other spots at the edges of the new monument. So, I'm not a total stranger to the area.

That said, let's dive in.

First, protection, even under the BLM and its different philosophy on Western lands, as well as the tradeoffs with these things, is better than the older, less adequate protections within the same agencies. And, elimination of new grazing leases is part of the enabling of the monument. Francis Biddle, FDR's attorney general, issued a 1938 opinion that a future president cannot kill a previous president's national monument created under the Antiquities Act. (That said, Woodrow Wilson DID cut TR's original Olympic National Monument in half in 1915.)

Second, as of my most recent visit to GSE just over a year ago, I noticed that the BLM has a new, pretty nice, pretty informative visitor center replacing the old one. And, the workers there seemed to be a couple of old-time desert rats from somewhere on the Plateau, whatever state's BLM office they started in.

They'll tell you some gossip about the creation of the marina towns on Lake Powell, some serious talk about dinosaur sites in the monument, and more. Nice bookstore there, and some nice dinosaur displays. There's still the Old Paria movie set, etc. Oh, the famous "Wave"? It's only a couple of acres.

In other words, the BLM has shown that it's not a horrible steward of such sites. And, per the staffers above, they might be more down-to-earth at times than Park Service rangers.

The Abajo Mountains, in background, from Canyonlands National Park.
Photo by Steve Snyder

2. Re compromises, per Jonny's main piece at the first link, and the BLM official map, now that boundaries have been set, I don't like all the compromises in the final package. Most notably, I think the Abajos should have been included, both for a higher general natural beauty protection, and given the American Indian background to the monument as a whole, their Ute history.

Incorporating the Abajos could also, in theory, have addressed another issue, by transferring the Manti-LaSal National Forest lands involved to the BLM.

Still a bit of Kumbaya in Obama, and it probably popped up there.

That said, I'm not sure, but is this maybe the first of the new national monuments that has both BLM and Forest Service land inside the same monument? I know the two agencies already do bits of work coordination on adjacent lands, but, how well will this work out?

The pristine night skies of the new Bears' Ears National Monument are clear
in this picture of the Big Dipper. / Photo by Steve Snyder

3. That said, in light of No. 1 and 2, I can defend, or even praise, Obama doing this, while still noting that in many ways, including violations of our civil liberties, foreign bombing campaigns, no national health care and, re the National Park Service, a weak, neoliberalized centennial celebration, he's not the bees' knees as president. (On the Great Blue Satan, in a closed group, not all are of the same mind, as far as praising this while remaining critical in general. Vis-a-vis those folks, while I agree that, versus Preznit Kumbaya, you don't compromise away the compromise in advance — along with his other issues — there is a right time to compromise in some way.)

In short, this isn't a zero-sum game.

As for the blathering of San Juan County, Utah, residents? The land most productive for farming and ranching was either homesteaded by Mormon pioneers before the old General Land Office took federal control — in actuality, not just theory — or else sold off by the GLO. There's plenty of other places to do ORV driving, anyway. As for mineral rights and leases? Well, BLM is often too lenient. Besides, especially if it's coal, it needs to be kept in the ground anyway. And, of course, existing grazing as well as mineral leases remain operative, per a BLM FAQ. The land size is little different than the likes of Randy Bishop proposed, too. The Indian tribal consultation that's part of the monument surely is a difference, though (Those tribes involved are the Hopi Nation, the Navajo Nation, the Zuni Tribe, the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe and the Ute Indian Tribe of the Uintah Ouray.)

And, many people, like Friends of Cedar Mesa, got tired of Bishop's sandbagging, and that of others, and called on Obama to do exactly what he did.

Finally in this vein, I wonder if tribal management consulting will get tied to enforcement of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, or NAGPRA, for theft of potsherds, etc. And, will such consulting allow law enforcement of the various tribes to wield their badges inside the monument? (Update: Jonny says the Archaelogical Resource Protection Act, or ARPA, is what to look to, and that it's unlikely tribal police will patrol inside the monument.)

It may not be a lot, but anything in this regard would be better, for those who know the history of the largely Mormon pothunters in the county.

Speaking of that, per Obama's proclamation, the area is potential as much a fossil trove as GSE, and needs more protection for that reason too.

4. Some broader thoughts on the Park Service, vis-a-vis comments on another High Country News story to another commenter, are next.

No, we do not need mega-sized national parks in all 50 states. (This person was behind an earlier version of what is now the Maine Woods National Monument. He wanted 3.5 million acres, far, far bigger than its actual size. If you're wondering, that's one-seventh the entire state of Maine, or the same size as Death Valley National Monument.)

Second, we do NOT need more NPS units until we address not only the well-documented maintenance backlogs, but also continue work on purchase of private inholdings at current NPS units.

Third, in that situation, and if private entities can't come together for an actual plan, not a Randy Bishop-type head fake like his over Bears' Ears, then a BLM or BLM/Forest Service, national monument is better than nothing indeed.

5. Speaking of BLM, more photos, and information, about both Bears' Ears and Gold Butte on its Tumblr.

Sorry, but I'm still not jazzed by #neoliberal national monuments

And, let's be blunt, B-grade environmentalists — that's what any national monument that's run by the Bureau of Land Management, the U.S. Forest Service, or both, is. Period. Any new national monument not in the National Park Service's control will, in its non-wilderness areas, be run as a multi-use area, with at least some degree of logging, grazing and extractive industries allowed.

Going back to Slick Willie on Grand Staircase-Escalante, through Shrub, and now to Dear Leader, we've added little in the way of real national monument lands. We've also not helped NPS out with its ongoing budget shortfall. And Dear Leader has foisted upon us a commercialized, neoliberal centennial celebration for the Park Service.

Two of the three B-grade national monuments Obama declared a week ago adjoin Joshua Tree National Park; why weren't all or part of Mojave Trails and Sand to Snow added to it?

Answer? It would eliminate multiple use in non-wilderness areas, and it would cost the NPS money that Obama won't fight to get. And a political battle that he might not want, unless he can expand current Joshua Tree boundaries by executive order.

And, why didn't he try? The Antiquities Act creates national monuments by executive action; it doesn't specify what agency runs them. At a minimum, this could have been Joshua Tree NM, jointly administered with the NP. Slick Willie's Giant Sequoia NM could likewise have been tied in with Sequoia/Kings Canyon NP.

And Castle Mountain is an inholding inside Mojave National Preserve, also run by the NPS, so a somewhat similar argument applies.

Per maps of all three, available here, significant amounts of Mojave Trails is non-wilderness. (I don't know how much of that area is WSA or not.) Also, the map of Mojave Trails shows a significant amount of private land inholdings. That's bad enough on a faux national monument.

Add to it that Obama is, outside of the golf course, an even less nature-philiac president than Clinton, even as concerned environmentalists decry the lack of people of color in our national parks, and the circle is squared.

Hillary Clinton, Marco Rubio, #BigCoal and #KeepItInTheGround

Jeremy Nichols, climate director,
Wild Earth Guardians, advocate for
Keep it in the Ground strategy

From one of my favorite magazines, High  Country News, a go-to source for environmental and other news from the Western states, we have two juxtaposed stories.

The first is about Florida presidential candidate and senator-in-absentia Marco Rubio rounding up plenty of endorsements from Western Republican elected officials. As part if it, it notes that Rubio's pandering on anti-environmental stances may be near the bottom of all GOP presidential candidates, and that's lower malebolge territory indeed.

The second is about Hillary Clinton seeking votes and support in coal-producing areas of the West. I don't have a problem with job retraining or other issues — if it's not for coal alone. Remember, we export both jobs and pollution to places like China. Their more inefficient industries cause more acid rain than ours (for Japan, Taiwan and the Koreas as well as China) and more carbon dioxide to warm the whole world than ours. So, job retraining for coal miners should be no more robust than job retraining for jobs lost to "free" trade (and those largely unenforced "side agreements" on both labor and environmental issues that started with Clinton's husband and NAFTA).

Beyond retraining, continued and expanded support for the West's abundant resources on solar and wind energy should be priority No. 1. Yes, they don't have a lot of permanent jobs at individual sites, but let's get more solar panels and wind turbines manufactured there. (Note: Solar and wind need to themselves be environmentally friendly; bigger wind turbines helps there, but thermal solar, at least currently, is a big, big bird killer.)

This, Big Coal, relates to a third story (subscription required). It notes that 40 percent of U.S. coal is mined from federal reserves. In other words, don't think West Virginia and private mountaintop removal. Think BLM lands like the Powder River Basin in Wyoming. It also notes that this is one of President Obama's weakest areas on climate change: his "all of the above" energy strategy has been applied to coal as well as oil on BLM lands.

Jeremy Nichols, leading the charge to "keep it in the ground," is no outsider. He's from Boise, and his dad worked for the BLM. As his activism notes, part of the problem is that Washington has been hands-off on a lot of this, leaving interpretation of environmental impacts and other permitting issues to individual BLM districts.

In any case, the battle has only begun. Nichols says he does "opposition research" at places like Interior Department "listening sessions." I hope he learns strategies that do address local economic concerns, and that he learns to be careful on his language and its possible misinterpretation.

Another neolib sellout on the environment by Obama

Sally Jewell, Obama's nominee to head the Interior Department, has made clear she supports expanded oil and gas drilling on Bureau of Land Management land.

Here's Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski pushing for that and more:

“We need you to affirm that public lands provide not just a playground for recreational enthusiasts,” Ms. Murkowski said, “but also paychecks for countless energy producers, miners, loggers and ranchers.”  

Fine. Let's amend the 1872 Mining Act. Let's charge ranchers fair market rates for grazing leases. Oh, and since the National Park Service generates more than $30 billion a year from tourism and recreation, with Jewell's National Parks Conservation Association, where she is on the board, estimating a 4-1 return on federal dollars, let's see Murkowski match that.

I charge bullshit on a senator who's always helped Alaska, just like her daddy-o, pig out at the federal hog trough.

Unfortunately, Jewell said nothing, however, about increased regulation of such drilling, especially protection of water supplies in the largely semi-arid to arid West. Nor did she say anything about getting more federal dinero from such drilling.

She may be even more "industry-friendly" than Kenny Boy Salazar, in fact.

Here's a tell:

Senator Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee, noted that Ms. Jewell’s résumé cites her work as a young woman as a construction worker on the Alaska oil pipeline, as a petroleum engineer in Colorado, as a commercial banker for 19 years and as chief executive of a billion-dollar company. 

“My question is this,” Mr. Alexander said. “How’d you get appointed by this administration? You sound more like a nominee of a Republican administration.” 

Sounds about right.

Wingnut Republicans questioned her background as a member of the board of directors of the NPCA, which they're trying to paint as being as radical as, say, the Center for Biological Diversity.

I'll bet Jewell will push indeed for more drilling. And as a former CEO, for more corporate partnerships with the National Park Service. The NPS' centennial in 2016 will be dripping with capitalism, folks.

Meanwhile, when this happens, will Gang Green enviros like Michael Brune at Sierra Club be as surprised and miss smelling the coffee as much as they have with Keystone XL?

Beyond that, she kind of makes me want to barf by quoting Facebook exec Sheryl Sandberg's half-baked, half-assed "leaning into" four times.

BLM gets enviromental slapdown on ORVs

(Again.) Federal judge Susan Illston said the agency didn't follow environmental standards in laying out ORV trails in SoCal.

That said, the agency has three-plus years for a redo, upsetting, rightly, most enviros.

Wild horse bill – good intentions but bad results likely

Once again, too many Congresscritters have been reading “Brighty of the Grand Canyon” and then, as a result, writing what’s probably bad legislation.

Sure, a wild, Arab-mix white stallion looks noble.

But, a hammer-headed roan, from habitat confinement, overgrazing and inbreeding, doesn’t. And, the bill the House passed doesn’t force the Bureau of Land Management to come up with all the new land.

If passed, the bill would give the government authority to enter into cooperative agreements to create wild horse sanctuaries on nonfederal lands. Right. Fat chance of that.

That said, GOP grandstanding on the bill, saying Democrats were putting horses over unemployed people, is simply shameless.

Here’s the bottom line. Beyond it not requiring the BLM to set up more habitat, meaning all the problems listed above will continue, wolf predators are nonexistent across most the west, and mountain lions almost so. (Coyotes, for the unfamiliar, do nor normally hunt in packs; even on the rare occasions they do hunt in any cooperative manner, they’re still not going to take down horses.)

And, that’s that.

BLM wild burros go to war

A group of wild donkeys rounded up off BLM land in are being trained to be Marine pack animals in Afghanistan.

Given that sometimes, “Brighty of the Grand Canyon” is taken too much to heart by some people, I’m surprised we haven’t had PETA shitting bricks over this one yet.

Ken Salazar continues to show his true colors

Possibly, no, probably, Obama’s worst Cabinet choice this side of Tim Geithner, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar first showed his pseudo-environmentalist flag when he decided people in Idaho and Wyoming could start indiscriminately shooting wolves again.

Now, he claims Bureau of Land Management rules allow private land donated to BLM in the Clinton Administration, with the understanding it would be left undisturbed, can be developed for large-scale solar energy farms. Southern California is a great place for solar, but there’s other BLM sites, right? And, an agreement is an agreement.

Meanwhile, San Diego winger GOP Congressmut Brian Billbray wants to exempt such solar behemoths from any National Environmental Policy Act review. The bill he’s introduced to that effect surely has nothing to do
Apparently, Rahmbo with his major campaign contributors.

Let’s have Feinstein or Boxer on the Senate side, or somebody on the House side, ask Kenny Boy how he feels about this bill. You know, smoke him out more.

Since he rejected Feinstein’s letter on the development on donated lands issue, he needs to be put on the record on this.

New Mexico could get new national monument

While some part of me is excited about the would-be monument west of Las Cruces in the Robledo Mountains, another part of me has several issues.

First, is it going to remain a BLM-run national monument? Well, that’s not necessarily for the best.

Will it be a National Park Service national monument? That’s not for the best until NPS gets a major budget boost — and a permanent one, not a temporary one for the Park Service centennial.

Salazar to Interior? Another sell-out

That's the report about one of Obama's last Cabinet spots to fill, that Colorado Sen. Ken Salazar has the Interior job.

Interior, due to the presence and land ownership of the federal government, has traditionally gone to a Westerner, but Obama could have done far better. Yes, as director of the Colorado Department of Natural Resources, he funded state land conservation efforts. But, in his brief time in the Senate, or his state service before that, you never heard him mentioned as a real environmentalist. And, he certainly doesn't have an A-list record of standing up to Big Oil and Big Gas on BLM land. Yes, he did take on the government on oil shale on the Roan Plateau, but beyond that?

Overall, I'd give Salazar a B-minus on environmental issues, but that's not all that great. Given that, after violations of international law and civil rights, anti-environmentalism is one of Bush's biggest legacies, we need more than a B-minus leading Interior.

Especially on things such as getting new wilderness bills past Congress, getting BLM and the Forest Service to work with the National Park Service on things like large-scale ecosystem preservation, etc., Salazar has NOT shown any "vision."

BLM sells out southern Utah

New Bureau of Land Management proposed resource management plans would severely lessen protection of both environmental and archaeological beauty in places like Cedar Mesa.

As drafted, per High Country News, the plans open about 80 percent of this land to energy development. Nearly half a million acres would lose their status as areas of critical environmental concern.

That means ORVs tearing up more fragile land. It means fragmenting wilderness study areas to deliberately make it harder to make them into protected wilderness. And it means more oil and gas drilling.

“It’s the Bush administration’s last stand to make sure Utah’s public lands are open for development,” says Liz Thomas, attorney at the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance.

To make matters worse, the BLM is rushing the changes through.

“We really need to get these wrapped up because we’re running out of money,” explains Don Ogaard, lead planner for the Utah BLM. The fiscal year ended on Sept. 30, and the Utah BLM cannot suck any more money out of the national coffers for the plans, he says. All of the records of decision will be signed by the end of October.

Uhh, yeah, right. Nov. 4 is the date on your calendar, Mr. Ogaard.

Hiking Dinosaur National Park Monument and avoiding eyesores

Well, it would be a national park, not “just” a national monument, if Bob Waite had his way. Waite, who led the charge for the creation of Great Basin NP in eastern Nevada (tentatively on my to-visit list next year), has been crusading for more than 25 years for Dinosaur to get upgraded from NM to NP. He’s still doing it, from an assisted-living center.

Second, it looks like I got here just in time to avoid seeing this eyesore on BLM land just a mile west of the monument boundary, the latest courtesy of the Bush-Cheney Bureau of Hydrocarbon Management.

Fortunately, the approval process for the exploratory drilling is not done yet, and the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance is still fighting the whole process, even if, per the BLM, the well site won’t be visible from Dinosaur’s most pristine viewing areas:

(I)t’s like crossing the Rubicon,” said Scott Braden, SUWA’s field advocate. “It’s a small step that opens the door to expanded commercial drilling on the monument boundary should the well prove up.”

We’ve crossed too many Rubicons in the last 7.5 years, and the BLM, in its refusal to offer any protection to wilderness study areas, is guilty as hell of leading the marches.

Western Colorado up for sale

The Bureau of Land Management put 55,000 acres of western Colorado’s Roan Plateau up for auction for oil and gas leases today. This is the area of and around Dinosaur National Monument, and sure to pressure wildlife such as prairie chickens, and add to smog in what’s supposed to be an area of pristine natural beauty.

BLM cuts oil drillers slack

Oil and gas drillers on government land in western states are getting audited less.

Instead, by the claim of “saving audit money” through letting oil and gas companies pay royalties in kind instead of in cash, the Bush Administration is showing the same naïve trust Georgie-Porgie did to Vlad the Impaler Putin.

And, per the story, California officials say their auditors usually recover three times as much money from drillers’ underpayments as they spend on auditing.