By ROB CHANEY of the Missoulian
Posted: Wednesday, March 2, 2011 6:15 am
Rep. Denny Rehberg and fellow Republican elected officials demanded sovereignty over future federal monument and wilderness designations on Tuesday.
"This is an important day for those of us who believe in private property rights, the rights of states, transparency, jobs and public access," Rehberg said in a conference call to reporters.
He introduced a bill to require more scrutiny of acts like President Bill Clinton's designation of the Upper Missouri Breaks National Monument in 2001. Rep. Raul Labrador, R-Idaho, offered a similar measure for his state.
"While symbolic, symbolism doesn't have to be meaningless," Rehberg said of his Montana Land Sovereignty Act. "It's going to be the cumulative effect of all the various congressmen and women who are particularly upset with the possibility of this kind of machination within their state. I think you will see more and more of this occurring."
Also on the call was Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, who accused past presidents of abusing the Antiquities Act of 1906 and warned that President Barack Obama was poised to do so again.
"I think we can make a fair case there's a war on Western jobs over the last few years," Bishop said. "The federal government is repeatedly being asked by special-interest groups to pick winners and losers economically on those who actually work in the West. (They) use federal lands as one of the vehicles to pick those winners, and it is done to the detriment of the West."
The House rejected an amendment to defund the Antiquities Act of 1906 last month, on a bipartisan 209-213 vote.
Rehberg's bill would require Congress to approve any new national monument in Montana that a president might designate under the Antiquities Act. HR845 would also exempt Montana from any new wildlands inventory by the Bureau of Land Management that lacked a congressional OK.
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The conference call came shortly before the House Natural Resources Committee hearing on the Obama administration's new wildlands classification on Bureau of Land Management property. Idaho Gov. Butch Otter said on the call he was in Washington, D.C., to testify against the policy.
"It's going to invite almost every anti-progress group in the United States ... to engage in court efforts to stop any kind of progress," Otter said.
He claimed designation of new wildlands threatened to take away federal funding Idaho depended on for education. Idaho receives between $32 million and $52 million a year from the federal government for activity on nearly 3 million acres of public trust land, he said.
"When you have a wilderness or a wildlands designation, it locks up those endowment lands," Otter said. "They are no longer available for the children of Idaho."
Interior Department Secretarial Order 3310 was issued in December. It reversed a 2003 Bush administration court settlement that revoked the BLM's existing wilderness management policy. BLM oversees 245 million surface acres in the United States, and 700 million acres of underground mineral rights. In Montana, the agency oversees about 8 million surface acres and almost 38 million subsurface acres.
"It's pretty clear this issue has been blown out of proportion," said Joel Webster of the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership. "All it does is provide a clear national direction for consideration of wildlands on BLM property, which is required by federal law. This order is an attempt to follow the law, not an attempt to run around Congress. These areas are important for secure habitat for big game and clean water for healthy fisheries. But it's been politicized by people who want to make everybody think there's going to be a big lockout."
In Montana, BLM has already designated 39 wilderness study areas covering 449,963 acres. Those would not be affected by Rehberg's bill. Federal law requires the agency to protect certain public lands in their natural condition. Webster said after the inventory process was derailed, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in 2008 that BLM must consider wilderness characteristics in its land-use planning.
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But that has folks like Ron Poertner of Winifred concerned. Poertner helped form the Missouri River Stewards shortly after Clinton established the Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument.
"The biggest issue for me is the uncertainty for ranchers and landowners if you're dependent on grazing allotments," Poertner said. "In a monument, the BLM rule says protected objects take priority over other uses. That means grazing could be reduced if it impacts objects in monuments."
The 377,000-acre national monument is checkerboarded with 81,000 acres of private land owned by 121 people, plus 49,000 acres of state land. Poertner said the landowners generally agreed with a BLM monument management plan that grandfathered in their grazing leases. But he was upset by subsequent lawsuits by environmental groups that want tougher restrictions on monument activities.
In the conference call, Rehberg said he was still suspicious of a leaked 2010 Department of the Interior draft memo which he claimed "revealed clandestine plans to declare millions of acres of Montana as national monuments." He said the new wildlands policy would further presidential power to manage more public land as "de facto wilderness, stifling job creation and mineral development."
Last year, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar's office later referred to the memo as a brainstorming effort that would not be acted upon without public input and participation. And BLM Director Bob Abbey visited Malta last September to state there were no monument proposals in the works for Montana.
BLM records indicate oil and gas companies have leased 3.2 million acres of Montana federal land and have put 762,060 acres of that into production. In the combined states of Montana, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming, 9 percent of BLM land has been either designated wilderness or wilderness study area, while 42 percent of the total 71 million acres has been leased for energy exploration.
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