“The premise has to be there can be economic development, but it can’t take away from environmental concerns or preservation. That’s why the entire PR campaign against what the president and we are trying to do in Bears Ears and Grand Staircase is so galling. Because they are trying to say you can either have preservation or you can have development, you can’t have both. That once again is a lie. I am not saying Patagonia is lying, but they are.”
Josh Siegel
Rep. Rob Bishop, the chief congressional backstop and encourager of President Trump’s rollback of national monuments, said the president’s moves are being mischaracterized by opponents.
“We can only overcome it with the truth,” Bishop told the Washington Examiner in a recent interview. “The reality is this was never about conservation versus development. Interest groups who claim to be environmentalists are always making pictures of oil rigs and oil wells drilling on these areas. That is a false narrative and it’s a fake issue. We are taking that narrative off the table and we are simply saying it’s a lie.”
Trump on Dec. 4 signed a proclamation cutting the Bears Ears National Monument in southeastern Utah by more than 1.1 million acres, or 85 percent. Trump also shrunk in half the 1.86 million Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah, and he is considering reducing the size of two more monuments and changing how six others are managed.
Multiple environmental groups and Native American tribes have sued the Trump administration over the moves, arguing the president acted beyond his power.
Bishop, the chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, argues the president can undo national monuments under the 1906 Antiquities Act exactly how he can make them. To make his point, Bishop and his committee have engaged in a public feud with outdoor retailer Patagonia, whose owner, Yvon Chouinard, has become a major agitator, filing its own lawsuit against the Trump administration.
Bishop says Patagonia’s public campaign exemplifies how the debate over monuments has gone national and away from the people who live near the land at stake.
“It is bizarre to me why this has become as controversial as it is, the entire thing about creating national monuments,” Bishop said. “The premise has to be there can be economic development, but it can’t take away from environmental concerns or preservation. That’s why the entire PR campaign against what the president and we are trying to do in Bears Ears and Grand Staircase is so galling. Because they are trying to say you can either have preservation or you can have development, you can’t have both. That once again is a lie. I am not saying Patagonia is lying, but they are.”
[paypal_donation_button]
The sad fact is the antiquities act was not designed for such vast tracks of land to be set aside by a stroke of the presidents pen. All these monuments need to be reviewed for size and purpose. The environmental community must have contributed vast sums of money to the Clinton global charity fund to have received such special treatment. President Trumps review is great and I hope future Presidents will never allow such abuse of power in the future. Congress was missing in action on this issue and should be ashamed of themselves. These monuments must be reduced in size to fit the intent of the antiquities act.