While the Obama administration celebrated naming three new national monuments on Thursday, the Republican-led Congress signaled it could move to limit the president’s authority to designate large swaths of land unilaterally under the 1906 Antiquities Act.
President Obama is on track to use the Antiquities Act more than any other president has, and on Thursday he named new national monuments in Chicago, Hawaii and California. The Antiquities Act was intended to allow the president to quickly reserve and protect historic landmarks.
Obama has used the Antiquities Act 16 times to declare public land as national monuments, ranking him above all other presidents since the law was enacted except for Presidents Theodore Roosevelt, who designated 18 national monuments, and Bill Clinton, who named 21.
And Obama has signaled he’ll designate more national monuments before his term ends in two years, which could put him at the top of the list.
Many people have endorsed the monument designations, saying the move provides needed protection to some of the nation’s pristine landscapes, culturally important places and threatened animal and plant habitats.
Thursday’s designation included Chicago’s Pullman Historic District, a former Japanese internment camp in Hawaii and the 21,000-acre Browns Canyon area located 140 miles southwest of Denver.
“Making Browns Canyon a national monument has overwhelming support from the public, especially from people who live the closest to it.” Bill Dvorak, a National Wildlife Federation public lands organizer in Colorado said in a statement. “We know what we have and we don’t want to lose it,”
But many Republicans believe Obama’s frequent designations constitute a federal land grab executed without local input. The designation, they say, increases federal regulations and restrictions and will impact ranchers and hinder full recreational use of the land.
A 2009 Department of Interior internal memo urged the Obama Administration to use the Antiquities Act to designate as national monuments millions of acres on 14 parcels of western land in order to afford more federal protection, “should the legislative process not prove fruitful” in helping the Department achieve its conservation agenda.
The list includes the San Juan Islands in Washington, the 77,000 acre Vermillion Basin in Colorado and the Northwest Sonoran Desert in Arizona.
doimonumentdesignationdocs_revised062910 by Washington Examiner
But Republican lawmakers believe Congress, or at least the public, should have a say in which areas of the United States are turned into national monuments. Republican lawmakers have proposed legislation to curb unilateral executive authority they say Obama has abused.
“President Obama has sidelined the American public and bulldozed transparency by proclaiming three new national monuments through executive fiat,” House Natural Resources Chairman Rob Bishop, R-Utah, said Thursday.
Rep. Raúl Labrador and Sen. Mike Crapo, both Republicans from Idaho have introduced legislation that would require Congress and affected state legislatures to approve new monument designations.
Crapo and Labrador authored the bill in anticipation of Obama’s designation of close to 700,000 acres of Idaho’s Boulder-White Clouds area as a national monument.
“It’s on the short list,” a Republican aide told the Washington Examiner.
Labrador and Crapo oppose the move and the local community appears divided on whether it wants the designation.
An online petition backing the designation has more than 13,000 signatures, but another group opposing it has collected more than 4,000 signatures.
Local ranchers fear they will no longer be able to use the land if it is declared a national monument, which would make it easier for the federal government to prohibit grazing.
“They’re going to force us out of business,” Doug Baker, whose cattle graze on the land, said in a video posted on a site opposed to the national monument designation.
Recreational use would also be limited under a national monument designation, with restrictions on the use of motorized vehicles and even mountain bikes, say opponents.
Last year, Bishop introduced and passed legislation in the House to update the Antiquities Act so that large-scale national monument declarations would first require environmental and economic impact studies. Aides say Bishop is likely to introduce the bill again this year and it stands a much better chance of passage, now that Republicans control the Senate Majority.
“It’s a priority for the committee,” an aide said.
