Six weeks before the Biden administration’s finish, when some fear the retiring senator did seize millions of acres of public land with statue safeguards on his method out of business, House Republicans are ramping up efforts to reform the Antiquities Act.
On Tuesday, the Congressional Western Caucus held a conference to debate the Parliamentary Oversight of the Antiquities Act, introduced by Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks next September. The president must approve fresh national monuments within six months of the establishing purchase or the end of the current parliamentary term in order for the bill to be effective.
” I do n’t know what to expect”, Western Caucus Vice Chair Celeste Maloy, R-Utah, told The Federalist, but she added that new monument protections “do tend to happen at the end of Democrat administrations”.
Leaders have bypassed Congress since the Antiquities Act became legislation in 1906 to defend particular cultural and historical sites. With the classification of about 1,300 hectares surrounding Devil’s Tower in Wyoming as a secured monument, President Theodore Roosevelt was the first to make use of the power. But, far-left governments have increasingly abused the century-old law in an effort to earn money from their so-called environmental supporters, who demand that large swaths of public land remain unaffected.
President Joe Biden expanded two national monuments in California by more than 120, 000 acre in May, a land area larger than Lassen Volcanic National Park in the state. While a , national park , is a huge place protected by an act of Congress, area with a “national memorial” status is supposed to defend a” specific healthy, cultural or historical have”. The 1906 laws, nevertheless,  , requires , the place preserved get” the smallest region compatible with the right care and management of the objects to be protected”.
On Tuesday, a panel of three witnesses testified before lawmakers to discuss concerned land use that had been interrupted by massive new monuments that were in violation of the 1906 law’s” smallest area suitable” mandate. According to Megan Jenkins of the Pacific Legal Foundation, “90 % of all acres designated” by the rules “were set off since the year 2000.”
” In many cases, they are as significant or larger than U. S. state”, she added.
Jenkins cited the land area that was covered by President Biden’s resumption of the Bears Ears National Monument’s southern Utah-era restrictions in her Tuesday evidence. Biden quickly reversed his Republican counterpart’s determination to cut Bears Ears and the local Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah to the” smallest region compatible” with protection during the first year of the new leadership. Collectively, the two landmarks cover more than 3 million acres, or an area larger than Yellowstone National Park.
The radical use of the Antiquities Act to establish quasi-national parks, Rep. Maloy ( whose district includes Grand Staircase-Escalante in southern Utah ) told The Federalist, demonstrates that presidents” ca n’t be trusted with that kind of power”.
The actual people who are affected by national monument designations are not depicted in these drawings, Jenkins said, citing an Arizona farming community whose access to public land for cattle grazing was threatened by President Biden’s defense of nearly 1 million hectares under Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument next summer. The Heaton family, which has been ranching on both public and private land for six generations, is currently suing the administration on behalf of the Pacific Legal Foundation.
At the forum, Garfield County Commissioner Leland Pollock of southern Utah declared,” I’m going to tell you all the truth.” The Antiquities Act has been used, and the other side should wake up and realize whatever they can do to us, we can do to them, according to the statement.
Pollock continued by highlighting the numerous public land failures that have come as a result of far-left initiatives to leave lands unmanaged in the name of conservation.
” If they’re the true environmentalists, how come they destroy everything they try to protect”? Pollock said, citing, for example, the proliferation of massive forest fires in the aftermath of the logging industry’s destruction. Sustainable timber harvesting rids forests of the nation’s forests of the excess wood fuels that are accumulating as massive tinderboxes ready to catch fire.
Environmental policymakers are now also grappling with the negative effects of rejecting the timber industry as the source of the Pacific Northwest’s declining spotted owl populations. Federal officials made plans to kill nearly half a million barred owls that were found to be encroaching on the spotted owls ‘ territory earlier this month.
” It’s so unnecessary what they did to the logging industry”, Trump’s Director for the Bureau of Land Management William Perry Pendley told The Federalist. ” A few years ago, these experts were saying,’ It’s logging.’ … Nobody was saying,’ Maybe it was logging,’ or’ Maybe it was the barred owl.’ Now they’re saying,’ Oh sorry, my bad.'”
