Bears Ears: Leave it as it is

It was the first national monument to grow out of the thinking, study, support, and political power of Native American nations.

[On May 6, 1903, not a hundred feet from where I was standing at the canyon’s edge, Theodore Roosevelt gave a speech that environmentalists—a word yet to be invented—would come to deem as important as Churchill’s “Blood, Toil, Tears, and Sweat” or Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. It was a perfect match of subject and stage. In the open air on the canyon’s ledge, the president declaimed on the miracle of nature he was trying to save. The five words the speech is most remembered for would become synonymous with the Grand Canyon, and become a touchstone for protecting other wild landscapes.

“Leave it as it is,” Roosevelt told the crowd. “You cannot improve on it. The ages have been at work on it, and man can only mar it. What you can do is to keep it for your children, your children’s children, and for all who come after you, as one of the great sights which every American, if he can travel at all, should see….”]

REGINA LOPEZ-WHITESKUNK WAS A COUNCILWOMAN OF THE UTE MOUNTAIN UTE DURING THE CAMPAIGN TO ESTABLISH BEARS EARS NATIONAL MONUMENT. “WE KNEW WE WERE SPEAKING FOR NATIVE AMERICANS, BUT WHAT WE DIDN’T ANTICIPATE WAS BECOMING LEADERS FOR THE PEOPLE OF UTAH BEYOND THE TRIBES.” | PHOTO BY JUSTIN CLIFTON

Land Grab: Trump’s Campaign Against Bears Ears National Monument | Sierra

The Oil Rush that Wasn’t

[…. these fuels are being produced on less than half of the approximately 27 million acres of public lands under lease to energy companies. Through the 2015 fiscal year, a record 7,950 drilling permits on federal leases were not being used. And last year, the industry bid on less than one-third of the federal acreage offered for lease by the B.L.M., even though the industry identified most of the lands auctioned for energy exploration. What’s not sold can be bought by energy developers at bargain-basement prices — $2 an acre for the next two years.

Even so, federal onshore oil production increased by more than 70 percent from the fiscal years 2006 to 2015, and the number of producing leases on federal land has never been higher. The facts are that the United States already has abundant oil and gas available, the industry has chosen not to drill on leases they already own and is not even bidding on what the government is offering.]

Obama the Monument Maker

Wild landscapes are not the only places that have been protected by our President. Barack Obama has also pushed the National Park Service to be more multicultural in interpreting America’s past. Toward that end, he has established history-minded national monuments honoring César E. Chávez in California; Harriet Tubman in Maryland; the Stonewall Inn in New York; Belmont-Paul, home to the National Woman’s Party, in Washington, D.C.; and the Honouliuli Internment Camp, where Japanese-Americans were held during World War II. These places are reminders of the struggles for equality and dignity that have been part of the nation’s history. (The New York Times | Sunday Review | Douglas Brinkley, 8/27/2016)

[As president, Barack Obama has visited more than 30 national parks and emerged as a 21st-century Theodore Roosevelt for his protection of public lands and marine reserves. His use of the Antiquities Act of 1906, which gives a president unilateral authority to protect federal lands as national monuments, has enabled him to establish 23 new monuments, more than any other president, and greatly expand a few others.

On Wednesday, he set aside some 87,000 acres of federal land along the Penobscot River in north-central Maine as the Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument. The action will safeguard the wild country around the 5,267-foot Mount Katahdin, the state’s highest peak. Then, on Friday, he announced a fourfold expansion of a marine monument designated by President George W. Bush off the coast of Hawaii.]

[In 1907, the San Francisco Bay Area businessman William Kent presented the first President Roosevelt with a 295-acre old-growth redwood grove in Marin County, Calif. Today it is Muir Woods National Monument. In 1943, the second President Roosevelt accepted a gift of 222,000 acres in western Wyoming from John D. Rockefeller Jr. The president designated the pristine valley Jackson Hole National Monument, later incorporated into Grand Teton National Park.

Only a fool would argue that the Roosevelts were wrong to have saved those scenic wonders. The same can be said of President Obama’s actions last week.

Teddy Roosevelt became the first president to use the Antiquities Act when he set aside Devils Tower in Wyoming. Two years later, he protected more than 800,000 acres of the Grand Canyon, offering this rationale as development threatened to overrun it: “Let this great wonder of nature remain as it now is. You cannot improve on it. But what you can do is keep it for your children, your children’s children, and all who come after you, as the one great sight which every American should see.”

Since preserving Devils Tower, he and 14 of his successors have designated some 150 national monuments.]

[Wild landscapes are not the only places that have been protected. President Obama has also pushed the National Park Service to be more multicultural in interpreting America’s past. Toward that end, he has established history-minded national monuments honoring César E. Chávez in California; Harriet Tubman in Maryland; the Stonewall Inn in New York; Belmont-Paul, home to the National Woman’s Party, in Washington, D.C.; and the Honouliuli Internment Camp, where Japanese-Americans were held during World War II. These places are reminders of the struggles for equality and dignity that have been part of the nation’s history.]

Article by Douglas Brinkley , a history professor at Rice University and the author of “Rightful Heritage: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Land of America.”

Ansel Adams as a Defender of Constitutional Rights

An issue photographers face when shooting on federal lands, including national parks and monuments, is that they must pay a fee, otherwise the commercial use of these photographs is not legal. There are other implications outside the realm of photography purely in itself, as –this is only one example– journalists consistently have been scrutinized for documenting police officers in action. With the introduction of the Ansel Adams Act in Congress on 1 January 2015, First Amendment rights are being addressed. Esquire has a detailed article on this subject.

Representative Steve Stockman [R-TX-36] referred to the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, and in addition to the Committees on Natural Resources, Agriculture, and the Judiciary.