As part his review of two dozen national monuments, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke says he will recommend no change in 378,000-acre Upper Missouri River Breaks monument in central Montana. Zinke is under orders from President Trump to report by Labor Day whether the government should scale back the boundaries of national monuments designated since 1995 and covering more than 100,000 acres; Bears Ears in southeastern Utah was singled out for special attention by Trump.
The Missouri Breaks region, explored by the Lewis and Clark expedition in 1805, is the fourth monument to be removed from consideration for change, said the New York Times. The others are Craters of the Moon in Idaho, Hanford Reach in Washington state and Canyons of the Ancients in Colorado. Zinke said the Missouri Breaks holds “one of the only free-flowing areas of the Missouri (River) that remains as Lewis and Clark saw it more than 200 years ago.” The “breaks” are odd-looking small hills created by erosion ages ago before the Missouri changed channels.
Theodore Roosevelt was the first president to use the 1906 Antiquities Act to designate national monuments to protect “historic landmarks, historic and prehistoric structures and other objects of historic or scientific interest” on federal land. Over the years, more than 100 national monuments have been created. When he ordered the review in April, Trump pointed to controversy over the 1.35 million-acre Bears Ears designated by President Obama and criticized national monuments as “this massive federal land grab.”
The review calls for Zinke to judge whether boundaries of the monuments should be smaller, if they truly have noteworthy features, and how the designation of the monuments has affected logging, mining, oil and gas development or other activities that could occur under the government’s policy of multiple use of federal land. The 1906 law says national monuments should be “the smallest area compatible with proper care and management of the objects to be protected.”
In a mid-June interim report, Zinke said that Bears Ears “needs to be right-sized and that It is absolutely critical that an appropriate part be co-managed by the Tribal nations. I also recommend that Congress take action to protect some areas.” Zinke did not say what the appropriate size would be.