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San Rafael Swell monument proposal could prove that Bush realizes the importance of a fair and public process By
Mathew Barrett Gross Perhaps worst of all, in Republican eyes, was the suspicion that Clinton’s proclamation was pure politics, designed simply to shore up the environmental vote for the Democrats in the 1996 presidential election. Among the most vocal and strident critics of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument was Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt, who called Clinton’s use of the 1906 Antiquities Act "one of the greatest abuses of executive power in history," arguing that the unilateral authority wielded by the president to create the monument "was not intended by the founders of this nation." Thus it was ironic to hear Leavitt’s State of the State address last month. Abandoning his one-time diatribe against the Antiquities Act, Leavitt instead called on President Bush—who only a year ago came into office uttering vague promises to undo as many of the 19 national monuments created by President Clinton as possible—to use his presidential authority to create a 620,000-acre national monument in Utah’s San Rafael Swell, a canyon-carved uplift of the Colorado Plateau located 140 miles south of Salt Lake City. Westerners of all political persuasions were left befuddled by Leavitt’s request for the new monument, and for good reason: His request marks the first time in living memory that a Republican governor of a western state has asked for federal lands to be given such protective status. Furthermore, if President Bush acts upon the request, it will be the first time in 41 years that a Republican president has used the Antiquities Act to create a new national monument (although President Ford did use the act to add 30 underwater acres to the Buck Island Reef National Monument in the U.S. Virgin Islands in 1975). Simply by floating the idea of monument designation, Leavitt and Bush (who reportedly approves of the idea) have co-opted what has been for a generation the pride and sole purview of the Democratic Party: the use of the Antiquities Act to add acreage to the national park system. Of course, the Leavitt-Bush proposal for a San Rafael Swell monument is no less politically motivated than the Escalante designation. With control of both houses of Congress at stake in 2002, Democrats and Republicans are gearing up for what will undoubtedly be a bitter election-year fight. Bush is hoping to soften his anti-environmental image to improve the election prospects of those Republicans running in moderate or suburban districts throughout the nation, and is no doubt hoping that a few news reports along the lines of "Bush Creates New Monument in Utah" will convince some voters that his environmental policy isn’t all bad. (Expect the designation to come in the fall.) Yet the proposed San Rafael Swell national monument offers Bush a greater opportunity than simply fooling voters who may care casually about the environment into pulling the Republican lever. If done right, the San Rafael Swell monument could mark the beginning of the end of the détente that has existed for the past 20 years between environmentalists and the Republican Party. Environmentalists thus far have been understandably hesitant to praise the San Rafael Swell monument proposal, and Governor Leavitt has given them good reason to be. In his State of the State address, Leavitt preceded his call for a new monument by declaring that the state of Utah "will win" its effort to assert its road claims across federal lands—a sore spot for many environmentalists, who believe such claims are asserted solely to prohibit wilderness designation in Utah. "They are our roads," Leavitt insisted in his address, "and our rights." And, like most Republicans in 2002, Leavitt couldn’t float any idea without offering a jab at former President Clinton (who signed the proclamation for the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument at the Grand Canyon) by adding, "I can pretty safely guarantee that if President Bush decides to make the monument declaration in person, he’ll do it in Utah, not Arizona." Ignoring his snide delivery, however, Leavitt’s proposal has merit. Among western Republicans in particular and many Utahns in general, the greatest sting of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument was not the monument itself (although many still argue that it is too large), but the secretive nature in which the decision to declare the monument was made. The Clinton administration failed to consult with a single elected official from the state of Utah prior to designating the Escalante Monument; Leavitt himself, it was reported, first learned of the proposal only days before it happened, by reading The Salt Lake Tribune. The San Rafael National Monument, Leavitt has taken to boasting, uses the opposite approach — a grassroots approach. The monument proposal is the result of seven years of work by the Emery County Public Lands Council, a citizens advisory board appointed by the commissioners of Emery County, in which the proposed monument is located. This local lineage fits nicely with the Bush administration’s stated position that local input is a critical component in making judicious federal land use decisions. Ironically, local conservationists are already complaining they weren’t included in a Jan. 26 discussion about the proposal. And suspicion is mounting that the Bush administration, which will begin a 90-day public scoping period once a formal request from Leavitt is received, will continue to lock out environmentalists. Given the Bush administration’s record of closing the door on anyone green when making policy decisions (think of the White House Energy Plan), the fear is not unfounded. Such a closed door in the San Rafael case would be a lost opportunity to rebuild a relationship between the Republican Party and its once-native constituency, conservationists. If Bush is interested in substance and not just image, he should rely on public hearings and input from all sides. Not only would such a process make the monument proposal better, but it might serve to revitalize public opinion of how his administration makes deliberations, an opinion that has been tarnished not just by the Enron scandal, but by his "privatize no matter what" appointments to his committee on Social Security. Indeed, if Bush hopes to lure at least some conservationists back into the Republican Party, then the devil, as they say, is in the details. A flawed designation process — one that leaves out critical interest groups, such as environmentalists — may dupe the casual observer, but it will do little to ease the distrust that exists between environmentalists and Republicans in these western United States. President Bush should instead seize the rare opportunity that lies before him. While he’ll never win over the hard-core conservationist vote, Bush now has the opportunity to demonstrate that Republican complaints about past monument designations can lead to creative solutions. He has the opportunity to demonstrate, for the first time in years, that the Republican Party is willing to pay more than mere lip service to land protection. If he is able to offer a true and viable alternative to the top-down Clintonian approach to preservation, then he may find, for the first time in a generation, that some conservationists may at least be willing to consider a vote, if not quite for him, then for his party. To do so, however, Bush must understand what has been the Achilles Heel of his administration; he must learn and demonstrate that how you do something in politics is often just as important as what you do. Now that would be a monument worth creating. Mathew Barrett Gross is the editor of the forthcoming Glen Canyon Reader (University of Arizona Press). His writing has appeared in High Country News, Writers on the Range, Canyon Country Zephyr, and the Sunday Denver Post. He writes from Moab, UT.
New Utah monument may protect little By
Greg Lakes, editor While Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt's proposal to create
a 620,000-acre national monument in the San Rafael Swell caught
many by surprise, it wasn't much of a deviation from the proven
Republican agenda. Some observers say that despite the Bush push for
energy, the administration lacks an overall vision of public land
management. They say administration officials, trying to reverse
Clinton-era initiatives without raising a public backlash, have
hit on the tactic of losing in court by not trying.
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Headwaters News is a project of the Center for the Rocky Mountain West at the University of Montana. |
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