Interior clears way for energy development on land Trump removed from monument, but industry shows little interest

Washington Post map shows current and former monument boundaries and the energy potential in the area.

The Department of the Interior has issued its final plans "to allow mining and energy drilling on nearly a million acres of land in southern Utah that had once been protected as part of a major national monument," reports Coral Davenport of The New York Times.

The plan clears the way for energy companies to lease almost 862,000 acres that had been part of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, created by Bill Clinton. President Trump cut the monument’s acreage about in half in December 2017, and "removed about a million acres from another Utah monument, Bears Ears," created by Barack Obama, Davenport notes. "Together, the moves were the largest rollback of public lands protection in United States history."

No developers have moved to lease the land, "although they could have done so at any time in the months following Mr. Trump’s proclamation that he was removing protection from the land, a spokeswoman for the Interior Department said."

That is probably no surprise to Juliet Eilperin of The Washington Post, who wrote over a year ago that the land Trump removed from the monument was unlikely to attract much interest from energy developers. "In this fight," she wrote, "ideology has triumphed over economics."

Privately funded nonprofit is building huge, controversial wildlife sanctuary in Montana

American Prairie Reserve's purchased and leased land is shown in green with white borders, adjacent to Upper Missouri Breaks National Monument and Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge. Together, these parcels complete a network of land larger than Yellowstone National Park, the second-largest national park in the Lower 48 states (NPR map)

"A privately funded, nonprofit organization is creating a 3.2-million-acre wildlife sanctuary, American Prairie Reserve, in northeastern Montana, an area long known as cattle country," Nate Hegyi reports for NPR, with support from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. "The reserve is facing fierce opposition from many locals because . . . the organization is slowly purchasing ranches from willing sellers, phasing out the cows and replacing them with wild bison. Those private properties are then stitched together with vast tracts of neighboring public lands to create one giant, rewilded prairie. The organization has purchased close to 30 properties so far, but it needs at least 50 more."

Local ranch owners who aren't willing to sell worry that they won't be able to hold out, as land prices increase and many ranchers have a hard time finding an heir to pass their land to when they retire. But wildlife advocates from other states and countries have given the project a lot of attention and financial support because, at 5,000 square miles, the sanctuary will be the largest in the contiguous U.S. once completed. Hegyi reports.

"The project's goal is to rewild this swath of the Great Plains and return all the animals that lived on this landscape more than a century ago, before white settlers arrived. Wolves, grizzly bears, thousands of genetically pure, wild bison," Hegyi reports. "The reserve is a new kind of national park, one that's free to the public and privately funded through both small donors and some of the wealthiest people in the world."

Sean Gerrity founded APR more than 18 years ago after he moved back home to Montana after running a Silicon Valley tech firm. "This wildlife habitat is going away and there is almost none left," he told Hegyi. "This is the last bit in the Great Plains, for the most part, where we can do a project of this size."

Montana sportsmen, conservationists oppose appointment of public-lands opponent as co-director of BLM

This week’s appointment of William Perry Pendley as co-director of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management has drawn fire from Montana conservationists and sportsmen who see Perry as an opponent of public ownership of land.

William Perry Pendley
(Missoula Current photo)

A coalition including Backcountry Hunters and Anglers, the Montana Wilderness Association, the Montana Wildlife Federation, Montana Trout Unlimited and Montana Conservation Voters voice strong opposition to Pendley’s appointment, the Missoula Current reports.

“The BLM manages some of the most revered places in Montana, and we now have someone in charge of the BLM who would prefer to sell those places off rather than do the job of caring for them on behalf of all Americans,” said Kayje Booker, Montana Wilderness Association policy and advocacy director. “It’s hard to imagine anyone in this position more dangerous than William Perry Pendley.”

Pendley, of Colorado, was lead counsel for a Louisiana oil company that is suing the federal government for oil-drilling rights in the Badger-Two Medicine National Monument. He was also president of the Mountain States Legal Foundation, a property-rights group.

“On July 15, Interior Secretary David Bernhardt hired Pendley as the BLM’s deputy director of policy and programs, a position newly created for him. A week later, Bernhardt moved Pendley into a co-leadership spot with Michael Nedd after the previous acting director, Casey Hammond, stepped down,” Missoula Current staff writer Laura Lundquist reports.

“Pendley now oversees the management of 250 million acres of public land and 700 million acres of subsurface mineral rights throughout the nation. In Montana, the BLM manages approximately 8 million acres of public land, including a region just east of Missoula where conservation groups are opposing a recent draft management plan that emphasizes extractive activities.”

Big conservation and historic-sites bill passes Senate 92-8

"The Senate on Tuesday passed the most sweeping conservation legislation in a decade, protecting millions of acres of land and hundreds of miles of wild rivers across the country and establishing four new national monuments honoring heroes including Civil War soldiers and a civil rights icon," Juliet Eilperin and Dino Grandoni report for The Washington Post.

The measure enjoyed broad bipartisan support, passing 92-8, and is expected to pass the House after the mid-February recess. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell pointed out, "It touches every state, features the input of a wide coalition of our colleagues, and has earned the support of a broad, diverse coalition of many advocates for public lands, economic development and conservation."

The bill designates 1.3 million acres as wilderness, bans mining on more than 370,000 acres around Yellowstone National Park in Montana and the Methow Headwaters in Washington, and permanently funnels offshore drilling revenue into the Land and Water Conservation Fund, which it reauthorizes. The Congressional Budget Office projects that the bill would save taxpayers $9 million.

The bill creates five new national monuments: St. Francis Dam Disaster in California, Jurassic in Utah, the home of civil-rights leaders Medgar and Myrlie Evers in Mississippi, and the Mill Springs Battlefield and Camp Nelson, both Civil War sites in Kentucky. (President Trump made Camp Nelson, where black troops were recruited and trained, a national monument last year.) The bill significantly expands five national parks: Death Valley and Joshua Tree in California, and Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield, Ocmulgee Mounds and Fort Frederica in Georgia.

"The bill reauthorizes and funds the Neotropical Migratory Bird Conservation Act through 2022, which provides habitat protection for more than 380 bird species, and codifies a signature program of President Barack Obama’s," the Post reports. "The Every Kid Outdoors Act, allows U.S. fourth-graders and their families to visit national parks free."

Trump slashes 2 Utah national monuments, draws lawsuits from Indians and environmentalists

Yesterday in Salt Lake City President Trump reduced the area of two major national monuments in Utah and split them into five new monuments. No president had ever done such a thing, and Native American tribes and environmentalists quickly filed lawsuits to stop it. "Several high-value sites the original monuments were designed to protect are left out," Brian Maffly reports for The Salt Lake Tribune.

Bears Ears National Monument, created by Barack Obama as he left office, was slashed from 1.35 million acres to 202,000 acres, and split into two new monuments: Shash Jaa (Navajo for Bears Ears) and Indian Creek. Grand Staircase-Escalante, created by Bill Clinton in 2001, was reduced from 1.9 million acres to 1 million, and was split into three new monuments: Grand Staircase, Kaiparowits  and Escalante Canyon. "Trump’s order specifically authorizes grazing in the Bears Ears area as well as motorized recreation and American Indian gathering of wood and herbs, and it asks Congress to pass legislation to mandate co-management by tribal leaders," Thomas Burr and Lee Davidson report for the Tribune.

The original Bears Ears National Monument (light pink) and new ones in red: Indian Creek at top, and Shash Jaa at bottom. Brown dots are sites proposed for oil and gas development. (Click here for interactive map)

Formerly protected areas that were cut from the monuments include Cedar Mesa and Elk Ridge. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said more than 400,000 acres of Cedar Mesa is "inaccessible wilderness" and can't be effectively monitored and protected by the Interior. He said that as a wilderness, it is protected more than it would be as a monument. The Kaiparowits boundaries were drawn in jagged lines apparently meant to free up some of the plateau's rich coal seams to mining.  Paleontologist Jeff Eaton, who has worked on the plateau for more than 30 years, told Maffly that the new boundaries for Kaiparowits were a "land management nightmare." Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, wrote on Fox News that national-park lovers should applaud Trump's move because over-reaching monument proclamations "have strained land management budgets and limited public access to beautiful places."

The original Grand Staircase-Escalante (light blue) and new monuments in dark blue, L-R: Grand Staircase, Kaiparowits, and Escalante Canyons. (Click here for interactive map)

Zinke said no land removed from monument status will be sold or transferred, and will return to its previous status as wilderness, national forest, or land managed by the Bureau of Land Management. "Raising the possibility of drilling and mining inside that monument’s former boundaries, 10 environmental groups filed a federal lawsuit in Washington, D.C., alleging the Antiquities Act does not allow presidents to diminish or rescind monument designations by their predecessors," Burr and Davidson report. A similar claim is made in a suit filed by five Native American tribes: Hopi, Navajo Nation, Ute Mountain Ute, Pueblo of Zuni, and Ute Indian), Courtney Tanner reports for the Tribune.