Just days after it was revealed that the Trump administration had explicitly slashed 90% of the public land from the Bears' Ears National Monument to benefit mining and oil, the GOP Congress took another stab at the very idea of protected public lands. An Arizona Congressman introduced an amendment to defund the Ironwood Forest National Monument, but it fell just 27 votes short of passage.
(Crossposted from RedGREENandBlue)
193 Republicans voted to kill the monument, which sponsor Paul Gosar (R-AZ) called an unconstitutional "political land grab".
"Unfortunately," said Gosar's Arizona colleage Raul Grijalva, "this amendment views these rare landscapes as commodities, only available for extraction of resources and nothing more. It's kind of a corporate-raider public approach and mentality to our shared public assets and lands."
Gosar has been fuming against National Monuments for years. As Randi Spivak, public lands director with the Center for Biological Diversity, wrote at AZCentral:
"... this is what we’ve come to expect from Gosar – dishing out angry personal attacks and supporting anti-government extremists like the Bundys, while feeding into a divisive, hate-filled, us-versus-them mentality that has given rise to the alt right.
...Gosar attacked a fellow Arizona congressman, questioning his character and his qualifications. He spewed invective at the Center for Biological Diversity, its staff and supporters. He blatantly misrepresented the actions of former presidents. He sought to divide and demean, and then he called for bipartisanship and cooperation.
Underlying his screed is an attack on America’s public lands and national monuments, treasured landscapes that enjoyed broad bipartisan support in Congress long before Gosar and the "tea party" arrived.
Gosar accuses National Monuments of causing " significant harm to local communities, negatively impacting grazing rights, water rights, energy development, wildfire efforts, hunting, fishing and other recreational activities." But, as we've pointed out here at RGB, National Monuments support local economies (a lot more than mining and drilling):
- In Arizona, outdoor recreation accounts for more jobs than defense, technology, and aerospace combined.
- Since Ironwood Forest's designation in 2000, total employment in surrounding counties has increased—averaging 7,184 jobs annually, greater than the five year average before designation.
- Since 2001, service jobs in the Ironwood Forest region have grown by 25 percent with travel and tourism making up 20 percent of total private employment in 2015.
- Outdoor recreation in Arizona generates $21.2 billion in consumer spending annually supporting 201,000 direct jobs, $5.7 billion in wages in the state, and $1.4 billion in state and local tax revenue
So why is Gosar so adamant about "picking winners and losers" when it comes to public lands? Spivak says "follow the money":
"[Gosar has] accepted more than $250,000 in campaign contributions from the energy and natural resources industry — namely oil, gas, mining and timber.
So when Gosar complains about “locking up” or “seizing” federal land, he’s using industry talking points. He’s not pushing to lift national monument protections to benefit you and your family. The public isn’t calling Gosar’s office to demand more uranium mining or oil drilling on public land. He’s doing it to please the industry lobbyists and executives that got him elected."
In fact, as Grijavla points out, "Asked whether existing national monument designations for some public lands protected over the last decade should be kept in place or removed, Arizonans supported keeping them in place, 86 to 9.... A sample of public comments received during the first comment period on Secretary Zinke’s review, conducted by the Center for Western Priorities, found an astounding 99 percent of commenters in support of retaining current monument protections."
Gosar also loves to spew divisive and completely untrue rhetoric, such as:
"Largely, these lands and waters were seized by the federal government with no comment period, no notice — no chance for the affected communities to have any say at all. Obama decided, and it was done."
The reality is the exact opposite - the monuments were created following extensive negotiation between ALL stakeholders, including the public and local community governments, while the Trump administration ignored the public outcry AGAINST cutting monuments in favor of a small number of extractive industries who would benefit (and just happen to also be GOP campaign donors):
What the correspondence shows is that Interior officials were focusing their attention on what could be extracted from public lands if these lost their designation as national monuments or were shrunken: timber, fish, minerals and fossil fuels. What was circumstantial before is now clear. It’s as if these industries were clients instead of constituents.
They failed this time, but they'll keep trying; in the meantime, Zinke's stripping of protection from Bears' Ears National Monument is being fought in the courts. And Grijalva has introduced the Keep It In the Ground Act, to “permanently ban new fossil fuel leases on all federal public lands and in federal waters.” Of course, it has no chance in the current Congress, but with a blue wave gathering, it might actually pass next year.
(RedGREENandBlue is a website where progressive voices and conservative voices come together to promote the environment, renewable energy, and climate action.)