Interior Department document details plans for possible new national monuments

The Interior Department has released additional pages of a leaked document, which identified potential sites for new public monuments. The list released this spring led to complaints from Republicans and several local officials that the Obama administration was trying to lock up public lands by creating new monuments, Patrick Reis of Environment & Energy Daily reports. House Republicans received pages 15 through 21 of the internal memo that identified 14 Western U.S. sites eligible for monument designation in February, and had called on the department to release the rest of the document with a disclosure resolution in the House Natural Resources Committee.

"The newly released pages detail the Bureau of Land Management's goals for expanding its National Landscape Conservation System and endorse expanding NLCS holdings through legislative efforts," Reis writes. All sites listed at in the West, butne passage early in the document, which you can read here, says unspecified sites in the East should be considered for monument designation, which can be done solely by the president.

The document calls for such action if legislative efforts for new conservation designations fail, but says "BLM recognizes that public support and acceptance of preservation status is best achieved when the public has an opportunity to participate in a land-use planning or legislative process." Still, Utah Republican Rep. Bob Bishop was not satisfied with the qualifier. "Thousands of Westerners whose livelihoods depend upon access to our public lands stand to be affected by these decisions, and yet this document blatantly goes out of its way to exclude their input or participation," Bishop said. "If there was any question about whether or not this administration has declared a war on the West, these new documents are evidence enough." (Read more, subscription required)