Earth Day 2000

Earth Day 2000: President targets more monuments - ranchers, small-town residents worry whose land is next

April 22, 2000

By Sarah Foster sfoster@worldnetdaily.com

http://www.wnd.com

To submit a Letter to the Editor: letters@worldnetdaily.com

It's Earth Day 2000. And as President Clinton, assisted by key agency heads, finalizes plans to add more national monuments to his "Lands Legacy," ranchers, farmers, and residents of small towns throughout the West worry how long it will be before they find themselves driven from their land and their communities destroyed.

Ever since Clinton announced his Lands Legacy Initiative in January of last year, Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt has been zigzagging the West looking for areas already administered by the Bureau of Land Management,which he deems in even greater need of special protection by the federal government as national monuments, critical habitat areas or other designation.

This year, the president has designated four monuments -- the most recent being the 328,000-acre Great Sequoia National Monument, which he proclaimed last Saturday.

On February 18, Babbitt announced plans for a program under which the BLM, rather than the National Park Service, would be responsible for administering a new "National Landscapes Monument" network.

Reportedly over a dozen sites have been targeted for consideration of monument status.

The number may be as high as 30 -- with acreage, in some cases, of over a million acres.

Acreage in these amounts is, in the administration's view, necessary to preserve and protect America's public lands.

Some examples:

Oregon: Steens Mountain/Alvord Basin; Soda Mountain
Oregon, Idaho and Nevada: the Owyhee Canyonlands
Nevada: Black Rock Desert
Montana: Missouri River Breaks -- 149-miles along the Missouri River east of Great Falls
Colorado: McElmo Dome
California: Santa Rosa/San Jacinto Mountains; Carrizo Plain
North Dakota: Cheyenne National Grassland

"Like TR [Theodore Roosevelt] we have created an entirely new and visionary system in the process," said Babbitt in announcing the new program. This redirects the bureau from its task of implementing the congressionally mandated "multiple-use" policy -- in which mining, logging, cattle-grazing, and recreation interests share the public lands -- to the conservation of resources, particularly in the designated areas.

Under the plan, mining, logging, grazing and other resource using would be cut back, along with heavy recreational use. Public visiting would be permitted only on a small scale.

"There aren't going to be ranger talks around campfires," said Babbitt.

The administration's proposals are being bitterly resisted by those directly affected in the area who say such added protection is not necessary and would, in fact, impact the areas adversely. There is also a general consensus that the intention is motivated by political considerations rather than environmental ones.

"This isn't about biology or the environment," says Bob Skinner, a rancher in southeast Oregon and president-elect of the Oregon Cattlemen's Association." We're talking politics. The promoters of this -- the environmental community and the administration -- are willing to up-end families, destroy communities, destroy an entire way of life -- do anything to advance a political, environmental agenda."

In his view, Clinton as a lame-duck president has "nothing to lose, and Gore has everything to gain. It's sickening."

As an example, Skinner points to Steens Mountain in eastern Oregon, where environmentalists are demanding that 1.5 million acres be put into a monument. Included within the boundaries would be the thousands of acres of private land owned by over 200 property owners on the mountain along with the small towns of Diamond and French Glen.

Skinner lives south of Steens Mountain and his ranch would not be included in the monument if, indeed, it is designated. But, many ranches north of him would be, such as the 146,000-acre Roaring Springs Ranch -- the largest in the area. Roaring Springs is owned by the Sanders family of Portland and managed by Stacy Davies.

The ranches are privately owned but the owners have the right -- through a system of permits, which they pay for -- to run cattle on the public land. If grazing is outlawed or greatly cut-back, most ranch owners would be forced to close their operations. "These ranches aren't just one or two-people operations," Skinner pointed out. "They hire people. There may be several families living on a ranch, dependent on it -- particularly one as large as Roaring Springs. So, besides the owners or manager, there are all these other people. What's to become of them?" he asks.

Skinner is thinking of people like Fred Otley, a fourth-generation rancher on the Steens in the Kiger Creek and Kiger Gorge area, who would definitely be affected. In addition to owning 10,000 acres, Otley has permits to run cattle on 10,000 acres of BLM land. He hopes to leave his ranch and the grazing rights to his sons, "if we're still here."

Otley is coordinator of Friends of Steens Mountain -- a group of local citizens and ranchers and is a liaison to the local Resource Advisory Council, a mechanism established by Babbitt to provide some degree of public input and participation in the planning process. Otley said the secretary promised he would not designate Steens Mountain as a monument if Oregon congressmen of both parties come-up with legislation and a plan for managing the area that would be acceptable to all parties. A bill has been drafted.

"We've developed some very positive legislative ideas and I don't think the Steens will be designated too soon." Otley told WorldNetDaily, but acknowledged the possibility.

"The Lands Legacy thing is important to the administration and they're bent on doing it even if it destroys the infrastructure that's protecting the special places," he said. "Under modern livestock management systems, grazing is a positive tool for managing watersheds, grasslands and protecting wildlife. Monument designation would [by eliminating cattle-grazing] destroy all the progress we've made and return no benefits. It would have a negative impact on things we've been trying to protect."

Otley said there are 45 public-private partnerships on Steens Mountain dedicated to preserving the environment.

"We've worked hard together to manage the landscape well," he said. "If they come in and do a monument on us, it will destroy those relationships and the traditions on which they're based."

In his view, the public should be "outraged" -- not only for what the wave of monument designation will do to the people living in an area but also for its effect on the public at large which goes to BLM and Forest Service lands for recreation and relaxing.

Those places will eventually be closed, he predicted, to all but a few.

"The public doesn't understand that the monuments are being set up to close lands to the public," he explained emphatically. "A lot of the land here is unfenced and people, when they visit, don't really realize whether they're on public or private land. That will change. People will have to buy permits to go camping -- they'll be restricted as to where they can go.

"So there's fear out there," he continued. "Fear of the reality that designation would destroy everything we've worked for. The public should be outraged at what is going on -- all the special places people like to visit won't be available to them and their families. More and more of these will be made off-limits -- particularly to motorized travel -- guaranteed."

Still, he hopes the secretary will pass over the Steens and not recommend it for monument designation but for something less restrictive.

Not so at Soda Mountain on the California-Oregon border where a possible 80,000 acres on the Oregon side is targeted for monument designation.

That designation seems imminent despite opposition by much of the local community -- including the Jackson County board of supervisors that voted a resolution opposing monument designation.

Because of the diversity of plants and animals found there, the BLM in 1995 designated 53,000 acres of land north of the Oregon border as the Cascade / Siskiyou Ecological Emphasis Area, a label the government invented for that one-time use and hasn't used since. In 1997, the World Conservation Union marked the region as one of 50 areas of "global significance" for plant diversity in North America.

Soda Mountain, like the Steens, is "a fantastic place," said David Lexou, legislative affairs director for the Motorcycle Riders Association and the MRA liaison to the Multi-Use Trail Coalition, a broad-based group which counts sled-dog enthusiasts, horseback riders, hunters -- everyone who uses the trails there.

The MRA was founded in 1960 and owns 220 acres in the forest, which gave the group "a foothold as a landowner in the discussions," said Lexou, referring to a February 18 round-table meeting in Medford between ranchers, loggers, off-road-vehicle recreationists, environmental groups and other users of the public lands.

Lexou, a participant at the round-table, said there were no property rights groups represented, or any elected officials from the California side -- such as the Siskiyou County Board of Supervisors which, like Jackson County's, has come out strongly against the designation.

"I had to speak for them and all the others who hadn't been invited," he said.

Lexou said he was "surprised at the poor science on which this proposed designation was based," and added that the BLM had relied on reports done by environmental groups, not its own scientists. In his opinion, "The BLM should not use biased science in its decision making. Unbiased science -- that's what we're asking for."

He reported "significant" local opposition to monument designation, including that of local officials like the county supervisors, but added, it "can't hold a candle" to what the environmentalists can muster backed by huge foundations and often multi-million dollar budgets.

Detailing the history of the pending designation, Lexou recalled that the original area was the 3,600-acres Soda Mountain Wilderness Study Area. It was so small it didn't qualify as a wilderness area under the strictures of the 1964 Wilderness Act.

"It wasn't big enough to be considered for a wilderness, but in 1989 they found what they claimed was spotted owl habitat on adjacent land and, so, they were able to enlarge it," he said. "Then botanical areas, riparian areas, areas of critical concern were tacked on -- and the boundaries were expanded to cover an area anywhere from 40,000 to 70,000 acres. The Soda Mountain Wilderness Coalition is asking for 70,000."

Lexou is not misrepresenting the conservationist position.

"We want no grazing, mining or logging," Dave Willis, chairman of the Soda Mountain Wilderness Coalition, told The Oregonian, http://www.oregon-online.com a daily paper in Portland, Oregon, that covers statewide and national events in March 2000.

"We want to close all the jeep trails on public lands and as many non-residential public roads as possible. We want to permit, but not promote, all forms of wilderness recreation, including hunting. And, we want the government to acquire private holdings from willing sellers."

"Conservationists don't want visitor centers and back-country restrooms," the Oregonian noted.

On March 10, the BLM released the draft of the Cascade/Siskiyou Ecological Emphasis Area, "which completely obliterates considerations of land ownership or multiple use," according to Lexou.

"It's all show. There will be a 90-day comment period, they'll collect the comments, then they'll do what they want to do," he said bitterly.