Dean Hanson/The Albuquerque Journal, via Associated Press

President Obama’s decision to designate five new national monuments is a warm farewell present to the outgoing Interior secretary, Ken Salazar, who has been trying without great success to get Mr. Obama to protect more public lands from development. It also makes a nice welcoming gift for Sally Jewell, the presumed incoming secretary, whose life will be much happier if the President continues along this path. But environmentalists are not dancing in the streets, at least not yet. Conservation issues still do not loom large in this White House, and the lands Mr. Obama has protected over the course of his administration are small change compared to the efforts of his recent predecessors.

The new monuments, announced Monday, include two ecologically significant areas: 1,000 acres in the San Juan Islands in Washington State and a much larger tract of 240,000 acres in the Rio Grande del Norte area of New Mexico. The three others are small sites of historical significance, one commemorating Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad in Maryland, another in Ohio honoring Charles Young, an early African-American graduate of West Point, and a third suggested by Vice President Joe Biden that will protect 1100 acres of open space in Delaware.



To designate the monuments, Mr. Obama invoked his powers under the Antiquities Act, a 1906 law that allows presidents to set aside important natural, cultural and historical sites for permanent protection, without Congressional approval. Presidents of both parties have used this power aggressively, particularly Bill Clinton, who protected over 9.3 million acres by executive action, including large swaths of Utah threatened by oil and gas development. Mr. Obama, by contrast, has protected less than half a million acres.

Meanwhile, Mr. Obama has been more than generous to oil and gas interests, making available six million acres for exploration and drilling. We can and should hope for better in the second term. Mr. Obama has clearly been less reckless and more protective of environmentally-valuable areas than his “drill-now, drill-everywhere” predecessor, particularly in Alaska. But he will have to do more, and do it on his own through the Antiquities Act. The last Congress was the first in more than 60 years that did not set aside any lands for protection as national parks or wilderness areas, and it is unlikely that the new Congress will perform any better.

This blog post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: March 28, 2013

A previous version of this post stated that the Rio Grand del Norte monument will cover 100,000 acres. Actually, it will cover 240,000 acres.