Notable Reads
National monuments, including Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument, remained one of the top stories about the environment in 2017. From Cascade-Siskiyou's expansion on January 12, 2017, through the Zinke review and his subsequent recommendation to shrink its size, each of these articles tell about the difference in policies and impacts upon the nation's landscape and heritage.
Poll: Vast Majority of Voters Oppose the US Department of Interior Secretary’s recommendation to remove the protected status of certain national monuments.
McLaughlin & Associates 11/28/2017
Trump Wrongly Slashed Monuments Making the Most Use of Public Lands
By Stephen Trimble, The Hill. 12/29/2017
“These 27 national monuments have become the core units of what we now call the National Conservation Lands System, acknowledged in a 2009 law as a permanent part of the public trust. Managers long focused on grazing and fossil fuel extraction have been asked to modernize and broaden the agency’s culture to include conservation and restoration.”
Interior revokes climate change and mitigation policies
By Elizabeth Shogren, High Country News. 01/4/2018
“Just before Christmas, the Interior Department quietly rescinded an array of policies designed to elevate climate change and conservation in decisions on managing public lands, waters and wildlife. Order 3360, signed by Deputy Secretary David Bernhardt, explains that the policies were rescinded because they were “potential burdens” to energy development.”
National Monuments Protect Meaning Not Just Landscapes
By Jonathan Thompson, High Country News. 9/1/2017
“With the tug-of-war over its future status raging, the Bears Ears National Monument is a monument in name only — without a management plan, it’s not getting any more protection, just more visitors and impacts. Yet even there, the designation itself, and the vast amount of acreage it encompassed, acknowledged that the “significant” archaeological sites need the surrounding landscape, both cultural and natural, to give them meaning. Hacking up and shrinking the new monument would be done in blindness to this knowledge, and take us back to the myopic approach of a century ago. That is why the tribal nations that pushed for the original designation are prepared to fight any effort to shrink the new monument.
The Economic Importance of National Monuments to Communities
Headwaters Economics 8/2017
"This research and interactive charts show that the local economies adjacent to all 17 national monuments studied in the West expanded following the monument’s creation."