In the West, ‘Monument’ Is a Fighting Word (Administration considers designating new Monuments)

[cali]

Al Hartmann/Salt Lake Tribune



In the West, though, it’s a fighting word, bound up for years with simmering resentments against the federal government and presidential powers. The feeling dates to the days when, with the stroke of a pen, Theodore Roosevelt declared lands he wished to protect as national monuments under the American Antiquities Act.

A new monument fight erupted this week when Representative Rob Bishop, Republican of Utah, said he had uncovered a “secret” Interior Department memorandum suggesting that the federal government was considering national monument designation for 14 huge blocks of land in nine states from Montana to New Mexico.

A spokeswoman for the Department of the Interior, Kendra Barkoff, said the list was not secret at all, but simply a “very, very, very preliminary,” internal working document resulting from a brainstorming session that Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, a Democrat and former senator from Colorado, had requested about the lands in the West.

“No decisions have been made about which areas, if any, might merit more serious review and consideration,” Ms. Barkoff said in a statement.

<snip>

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/20/us/politics/20utah.html

[joeybee12]

1. Yeah, God forbid we should preserve land when there's mining to

be given away, thanks to the 1872 Mining Act.