Environmental, outdoor groups vow to fight national monument reductions

Environmental and outdoor recreation groups threatened Monday to sue if President Donald Trump adopts Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke's leaked proposal to alter nearly a dozen national monuments, while grazing, fishing and other groups welcomed the recommendations. University of Colorado law professor Mark Squillace, an expert in the Antiquities Act, said in an email that Zinke's proposal raises a host of legal issues given that no president has considered making so many changes to previous designations. "Decisions to protect certain objects (and not others) involve judgment call that courts have shown an inclination to respect," he said. "The significant legal issues aside, if we allow presidents to second guess the judgments of their predecessor there would no end to the mischief that would create." Although Zinke has proposed amending all 10 monuments' proclamations to shift the way they are managed, the majority of the management plans for these monuments have not been finalized because they take between five and six years to complete. Randi Spivak, public lands program director for the advocacy group Center for Biological Diversity, said any proclamation change "would be subject to challenge" and "any proposed management plan changes will need to formally go through the same legal and administrative processes again, subject to the same administrative appeal and litigation requirements." "This process will be very legally vulnerable because it will have to deal with all the scientific, environmental and social conclusions produced during the first round of management plan creation," she said. "This would be a massive hurdle for the administration."...more

There is one bright spot in all this:

 Grazing advocates also welcomed the idea of providing ranchers with more access on five different monuments, including not only Bears Ears, Grand Staircase-Escalante and Gold Butte but also the New Mexico monuments Rio Grande Del Norte and Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks.

Both NM monuments have terrible anti-grazing language in them. What remains to be seen is how Interior proposes to fix this issue. It would appear to me they have three options:

° Revise the proclamation to include language like that in the Basin and Range Proclamation, which makes it clear the monument designation has no impact on livestock grazing

° Revise the proclamation to remove the consistency language but still leave it vague as to how the proclamation affects livestock grazing, or

° Not  revise the proclamation and claim they can fix the issue through policy memos and internal guidance.

If they truly want to protect the ranching families in these monuments, they will pursue the first option.

The second option will give these families a better chance of surviving the designation, but still leave them vulnerable to lawsuits or other negative actions

The third option is a total cop out. The consistency language will remain causing great vulnerability to lawsuits and anti-grazing policies of future administrations.

We will be watching to see what Interior's real intent is with respect to the future of ranching in these monuments.

And let's take a look at the statement of the law professor:

 "The significant legal issues aside, if we allow presidents to second guess the judgments of their predecessor there would no end to the mischief that would create."

Let's think carefully of what that would mean. If a President orders troops into a war zone, it would be inappropriate for a subsequent President to "second guess the judgements of their predecessor" and withdraw those troops? We'd be involved in a perpetual war with no options? What a ridiculous statement to make.