TRUMP AGENT LIES AGAIN - Support For Shrinking Bears Ears

HINT:  This is just another anti-Obama move.

"Navajo Didn’t Support Shrinking Bears Ears" by Vanessa Schipani, FactCheck.org 6/1/2018

Department of Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke claimed the Navajo people who “live close” to Bears Ears National Monument “were all in support” of President Donald Trump’s decision to shrink the protected land.  But tribe representatives told us that’s false.

In fact, the Navajo Nation and other indigenous tribes have sued the federal government over the President’s decision.

National monuments “are areas reserved by the National Government because they contain objects of historic, prehistoric, or scientific interest,” explains the National Park Service.  This is different from a national park, which is designated because it has “some outstanding scenic feature or natural phenomena,” NPS adds. 

In December 2016, President Barack Obama created the Bears Ears National Monument, declaring 1.35 million acres in Southeast Utah protected under the Antiquities Act of 1906.  About a year later, Trump split the monument into two units — the Shash Jaa’ unit and the Indian Creek unit.  Together, they make up about 201,876 acres, which is over 6.5 times smaller than Obama’s designation.

Zinke made his claim on the radio program “Breitbart News Daily” in an interview with Breitbart’s editor in chief, Alex Marlow (at about the 8:20 mark).  He pointed specifically to the Shash Jaa’ unit, which is closer to the Navajo reservation.

Zinke, May 28:  The Navajo tribes that actually live close to Bears Ears, now the Shash Jaa’, were all in support of the President’s action.

When we contacted the Interior Department for support for Zinke’s claim, spokeswoman Heather Swift clarified that Zinke was speaking specifically about the “Utah Navajo.”

But James Adakai, the President of Oljato Navajo Chapter in Utah, told us via email that Zinke’s claim is “totally incorrect and misleading.”  He explained that there are seven chapters with a good chuck of their territory in the state — Oljato, Navajo Mountain, Aneth, Dennehotso, Mexican Water, Red Mesa and Teec Nos Pos.  Out of those seven chapters, six “supported President Obama’s Bears Ears Proclamation for 1.35 million acres,” he said, with the Aneth Chapter being the only one that originally didn’t.

Adakai added that the Navajo Utah Commission, which consists of the seven elected Utah Navajo chapter Presidents and council members of those chapters, sent Zinke a request to “uphold the Bears Ears National Monument Designation” in May 2017.

Gavin Noyes, the executive director of Utah Diné Bikéyah, a nonprofit that helps indigenous communities protect their lands, similarly told us that Zinke’s claim is “false.”

Noyes sent us a map (see above) that shows the territories of the Navajo chapters in Utah.  It shows that in 2017, 163 members of the tribe voted in favor of the monument, while three opposed it and 12 abstained.  This includes members of two additional Navajo chapters — the Inscription House and Sweetwater chapters — that border or have a minority of their territory in Utah.

The Aneth Chapter didn’t hold a vote at all, as the map shows.  “The Aneth Chapter refused to allow a vote to proceed (perhaps because its citizens and Chapter President now support the Obama monument),” said Noyes.  Adakai confirmed this was the case.

However, Alastair Bitsóí, the communications director for the Utah Diné Bikéyah, clarified over the phone that the majority of the Navajo who live within these chapters’ territories didn’t vote in 2017.  Still, he said, more Utah Navajo support Bears Ears than don’t.

In fact, “the Navajos in Utah first led the fight to get the area protected, after there were raids in 2009,” Adakai added.  In June 2009, federal agents arrested a number of residents of Blanding, Utah, who had “allegedly looted artifacts such as pipes, jewelry, stone knives and woven sandals and sold them to an undercover informant,” reported the Denver Post at the time.

Adakai told us that “this movement” by Utah Navajos to get the area protected “eventually lead to the Bears Ears Coalition,” of which he is a member.  In July 2015, leaders from the Navajo Nation and other indigenous tribes formed the coalition with the aim of conserving Bears Ears.

The coalition not only condemned Trump’s decision to shrink the monument, but its member tribes also have filed a lawsuit, claiming the decision wasn’t legal.

Swift, the DOI spokeswoman, also pointed us to sources that show Rebecca Benally, the commissioner for Utah’s San Juan County and a member of the Navajo Nation’s Aneth Chapter, opposed the initial creation of the monument and supported Trump’s decision to shrink it.  We reached out to Benally for comment, but she hasn’t responded.

Overall, there does appear to be some disagreement among members of the Navajo Nation living in the chapter territories near Bears Ears, but it’s not true that “all” support Trump’s decision to shrink the monument, as Zinke claimed.

BARBARIANS AT THE GATE - The Rape of Our National Lands

"Trump move to downsize Utah national monuments could reshape land conservation" PBS NewsHour 12/4/2017

Republican Dictionary:  "prior administration(s)" the equivalent "the Obama Administration"

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  President Trump took aim at two different national monuments in Utah, announcing a plan to downsize them in order to rectify what he says were instances of overreach by prior administrations.  With the full support of the state's all-Republican congressional delegation, Trump proposed shrinking Bears Ears by 85 percent and reducing Grand Staircase-Escalante by almost half.  William Brangham reports.

CALIFORNIA - The San Gabriels

As a Californian who once lived near the San Gabriels, I agree.

"National monument status is best for San Gabriels:  Editorial" Pasadena Star-News 9/24/2014

National monument status is the best way right now to ensure needed resources to protect the San Gabriel Mountains.

Not someday.  Not whenever it is that the U.S. Forest Service is allocated enough money to pay for more rangers and trail maintenance.

In these hot years, in this almost permanent wildfire season, almost all of its budget goes toward fighting fires.

A new status as the San Gabriel Mountains National Monument will put a spotlight on the grand mountain range and its recreational possibilities as real wilderness, the closest to any mega-city in our nation.

These magnificent mountains that loom over our region — buffers from the desert, funnelers of whipping winds, place where we hike, fish, ski and hunt — were not created by any government.  They are for the ages; the federal government has tried to protect them for a mere century.  But it is county, state and federal government that built the trails and highways into them, and provided what resources they have beyond their flowing waters and wildness.

The proposals to bring them additional protections beyond the national forest status that they have began 11 years ago through the offices of Hilda Solis, then the member of Congress for the central San Gabriel Valley.  They have continued under Rep. Judy Chu, D-Pasadena, who has sought the status of National Recreation Area for the mountains and a region downstream along the San Gabriel River banks.

That status as an NRA isn’t happening anytime soon in the current congressional quagmire.  So Chu has made a controversial request to President Obama for him to use his executive powers to declare the mountains a national monument, as 15 presidents before him have unilaterally declared other wild and scenic areas as monuments.

In reality the reason the executive-order request is controversial is that the President has been exercising the privilege perhaps too often on other, entirely unrelated matters.  Does that have any effect on whether monument status is a good idea for the San Gabriels?

It does not.  Neither does it matter here whether some people don’t like President Obama and therefore don’t want to approve of him taking action.

The reason his taking action is a good idea is that the San Gabriels see a tremendous number of visitors and yet the Forest Service doesn’t have the resources to handle them.  The budgets for the Angeles and San Bernardino National Forests are not separate line items in federal spending; they are tiny parts of the vast USFS budget, and can’t be increased by lawmakers or even by private philanthropy, which just goes into the big pot.  A national forest is that vague thing, a “land of many uses”; national monuments — which, for instance, the Grand Canyon and Joshua Tree originally were — are created specifically to welcome visitors.  Once the San Gabriel Mountains National Monument is created, a visitor management plan follows, and financial resources would shift to repair the signage, restrooms, picnic tables and trails that are now in such disarray.

The private cabins on leased land, the Adams Pack Station, the current rights of off-road vehicle use — none of these would be adversely affected by a monument.

We urge President Obama to take executive action for the park-poor people of Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties so the tremendous possibilities of the San Gabriels can be fully realized.

NATIONAL MOUNUMENTS - The Pacific Remote Islands Marine Preserve

"U.S. expands pristine national monument in the middle of the Pacific" PBS NewsHour 9/25/2014

Excerpt

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  A region of the Pacific Ocean three times the size of California will now be off-limits to commercial activity.  President Obama signed an order today expanding protection for what scientists say is one of the most pristine remaining ocean ecosystems.

Hari Sreenivasan has more.

HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour):  The Pacific Remote Islands Marine Preserve is farther from human settlement than any other U.S. territory.  The president’s expansion of the reserve today will close 490,000 square miles of largely undisturbed ocean to commercial fishing and underwater mining.

The area is home to thriving colonies of rare and endangered ocean life, including fish, sea turtles, and coral reefs.

Joining me now to talk about the significance of today’s announcement is Elliott Norse.  He is founder and chief scientist of the Marine Conservation Institute.

Thanks for joining us.

So, first off, what is in these waters?

ELLIOTT NORSE, Marine Conservation Institute:  These waters are filled with marine life.

They have extraordinary coral reefs, extraordinary because they are among the most pristine coral reefs on earth.  They still have their big sharks.  Waters further from shore have large predators, including tunas of several species.  They abound with seabirds, sea turtles.  There’s a species of whale there that was discovered within the waters of that monument just a relatively few years ago. It’s full of life.

HARI SREENIVASAN:  The area was deemed a monument by President George W. Bush.  Why the need to expand it?

ELLIOTT NORSE:  Well, President Bush did something really visionary in 2009 by designating it as Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument, but I don’t think all of the scientific information was taken into account at that point.

We know now that the seabirds that feed their chicks in their nests on the islands forage out to a distance in some cases of several hundred miles, and they need to find concentrations of food so they can go back and feed their babies.

ENVIROMENT - The Expansion of the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument

Need I say, Republicans and their Big-Money owners will not like this.  They want to be able to rape our environment for profit.

"Can Obama’s Pacific Ocean sanctuary plan balance environmental and economic interests?" PBS NewsHour 6/17/2014

Excerpt

GWEN IFILL (NewsHour):  The President used the power of executive authority again today, this time to protect a wider expanse of the central Pacific Ocean.

Jeffrey Brown has the story and why scientists believe the area needs special safeguards.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA:  If we drain our oceans of their resources, we won’t just be squandering one of humanity’s greatest treasures.  We will be cutting off one of the world’s major sources of food and economic growth.

JEFFREY BROWN (NewsHour):  President Obama announced his plan to create the world’s largest marine preserve in a video message delivered today at a State Department conference on oceans conservation.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA:  And like Presidents Clinton and Bush before me, I’m going to use my authority as president to protect some of our most precious marine landscapes, just like we do for mountains and rivers and forests.

JEFFREY BROWN:  Today’s directive would add to U.S. marine monuments in the Central Pacific designated by President George W. Bush during his administration.  President Obama’s proposal could expand protection areas around seven islands and atolls in the U.S. territorial waters from 50 miles to 200.

And while final boundaries have not yet been determined, the executive step would expand the sparsely inhabited Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument from almost 87,000 square miles to more than 780,000.  That would put drilling, fishing and other activities in the new preserves off-limits.

CALIFORNIA - Our Coastal National Monument

Pewetole Blowhole: Trinidad, Humboldt County CA

This is just one photo from the galleries of the Bureau of Land Management's California Coastal National Monument.  Take a look at the rest of the galleries.