Guest opinion: Will we still have national monuments?
Guest opinion
More than 100 of the West’s most special places are protected by designation as “national monuments,” but that could change in the near future if giant outside corporations and their political allies have their way.
This could affect beloved places like Bandelier in New Mexico, Chiricahua and Organ Pipe in Arizona, Canyons of the Ancients in Colorado, Craters of the Moon in Idaho, Devils Postpile in California, Gold Butte in Nevada, Oregon Caves in Oregon, Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante in Utah, Upper Missouri River Breaks in Montana, Devils Tower in Wyoming, and San Juan Islands in Washington, to name a few.
Places like that have been designated national monuments by 17 presidents, including both Republicans and Democrats, under the Antiquities Act of 1906, in which Congress authorized the president to protect federal public lands of particular scientific or historic interest.
While national monument designation usually does not provide the same protection that a national park enjoys, it does generally prohibit mining, logging for commercial purposes, new grazing, or other development.
But a policy agenda for a possible second Trump administration calls for “repeal of the Antiquities Act” and “a fresh look at past monument decrees.”
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The blueprint was prepared by William Perry Pendley, who headed the U.S. Bureau of Land Management in the first Trump administration. The plan that threatens our national monuments is part of the Project 2025 agenda compiled by the Heritage Foundation for a possible Republican takeover of the White House and both houses of Congress.
Pendley’s clients, employers or financial interests have included major oil, mining and agribusiness corporations, according to a disclosure statement he filed when at BLM.
An attack on national monument designations could find a friendly reception from the U.S. Supreme Court. In 2021, Chief Justice John Roberts said he would like to see the court review the Antiquities Act and its uses if the right case comes along.
The Supreme Court recently refused to review appeals court rulings that upheld the expansion of the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument in Oregon. But the logging companies and other corporate interests that unsuccessfully brought that case focused on another law that they said specifically affected that particular monument, and thus did not directly challenge the Antiquities Act.
The logging industry’s lobbying group, the American Forest Resource Council, said after the Supreme Court refused to hear its appeal that it will now ask Congress to act.
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In nearly two decades of hiking in the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument, I have photographed a waterfall estimated to be five million years old that traps isolated populations of three species of fish believed to have been there at least since the end of the Ice Age about 11,000 years ago.
I’ve seen some of the more than 3,500 different plants and mammals, invertebrates, insects, reptiles, birds, and other living beings that may be found in the monument, including at least 130 species of butterflies and at least 209 species of birds. Many of these species need extra protection now as they are impacted by intensifying climate change.
If residents of the West want such places to continue to be protected, all of us will have to remain informed and speak out.
Matt Witt is a writer and photographer based in Talent, Oregon.
