Mark Harmon

Columnist

When Ryan Zinke became Secretary of the Interior, he arrived for his first day of work on horseback, riding a bay roan gelding less than a mile from the National Park Service stables on the Mall. The former congressman pulled the stunt to highlight his Montana background and said he was honoring President Teddy Roosevelt.

Conservationists and environmentalists were skeptical. The League of Conservation Voters rated Zinke just 4 out of 100 for his environment record. Protecting lands from exploitation seemed a stretch. His career campaign contributions are $382,904 from real estate interests and $355,836 from oil and gas.

Zinke conducted a sham “review” of national monuments. The Salt Lake Tribune documented that Zinke gave only token attention to monument supporters; most meetings were with advocates of changing or rescinding protections.The paper noted that Zinke offered daily media briefings but little opportunity for questions and, in contrast to his immediate predecessor, no public meetings.

The Interior Department’s 60-day public comment period yielded more than 2.8 million comments. Analysis by the Center for Western Priorities found 98 percent favored maintaining or expanding existing monuments.

Secretary Zinke nevertheless recommended that President Donald Trump shrink the borders of four national monuments and open six others to mining, drilling, commercial fishing and logging — often endangering Native American cultural artifacts. The changes to millions of acres constitute what the Sierra Club described as “the largest-ever reduction of protections for public lands and waters in U.S. history.”

The Seattle Times declared, “Zinke’s report goes beyond the scissoring of monument boundaries and recommends altering management plans designed to harmonize wildlife, recreation and public use. It’s also riddled with inaccuracies, including basic details on hunting and fishing rights at two monuments in New Mexico.”

Zinke’s plans are at odds with Teddy Roosevelt’s conservation legacy; he also is pushing unilateral presidential action. The Antiquities Act of 1906 gives presidents the power to declare national monuments.The committee report for the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976 makes it clear that law specifically “reserve[d] to the Congress the authority to modify and revoke withdrawals for national monuments created under the Antiquities Act.”

Trump and Zinke, determined to eradicate any acre of national monuments done by President Barack Obama, assert they can ignore/reinterpret the law and assume that power because of inadequate public consultation. It’s a laughable claim. Zinke’s predecessor noted that the process for Bears Ears National Monument alone took four years and consisted of more than a thousand meetings.

Those who believe in preserving the beauty of our national parks and monuments (and those who question Zinke’s lavish taxpayer-funded travel) likely have some choice words for him, perhaps ending with the phrase “and the horse he rode in on.”

Mark Harmon is a professor of journalism and electronic media at the University of Tennessee, and a member of the Tennessee Democratic Party Executive Committee.