This Land Is Saved for You and Me

Late last month, President Obama carried out his first major exercise of the powers granted to the president under the 1906 Antiquities Act, designating roughly 300,000 acres of land as new national monument area. This included land in New Mexico, Delaware, Maryland, Ohio, Washington State’s San Juan Islands and the Rio Grande del Norte, a 240,000 acre sagebrush mesa near the New Mexico-Colorado border. Environmentalists have touted these selections as a victory by environmentalists in a time where policy change has been somewhat hard to come by, but do they bear any real significance in light of the other environmental problems currently faced by the country? I think they do.

“National monument” is a designation the President can give to public land of particular national, historic or ecological interest, and offers a reasonable degree of federal protection to the area. The designation protects the selected land against excavation and allows for the establishment of a management plan for the area’s resources and wildlife. Any action that would defy the management parameters would require an Antiquities Permit to be obtained from the Secretary of whichever department oversees the land. The act has been used over 100 times by United States presidents; one of its most notable usages was Jimmy Carter’s designation of 56 million acres in Alaska as a means to buy time for the passage of the Alaska Lands Act in the 1970’s, an act later undone after legislation was passed. The powers granted to the president by the act are unique in that use is largely left to executive discretion, and the president’s proposals don’t require Congressional approval. Several national parks, including the Grand Canyon, saw monument status as a precursor to park status.

While Obama’s most recent usage is significant in that the Rio Grande constitutes his first landscape-scale designation, it seems unlikely that any of these new monuments are destined to join the national park system. In fact, the Rio Grande monument won’t come with any changes in management. It is thought, however, that the creation of the monument will help bring heightened economic activity to northern New Mexico.

So how does the landscape-scale monument factor into the current political landscape faced by President Obama? While the monument brings little significant change to the current state of Congressional gridlock, the new monuments mark a policy move that had been highly anticipated by environmentalists up until now. It’s always refreshing to see that the President occasionally remembers some of his comments about his commitment to the environment that certainly helped him win over many a vote in last year’s election. And I’ll be able to sleep easy at night knowing that Republicans still know how to shout at policy that protects American lands from energy development. However, these monuments cannot serve as the political substitute for action on higher-profile ecological and energy decisions.

As we continue to wait on Washington’s decision concerning the XL-sized elephant in the room, I find it hard to completely disregard the possibility that these monuments could be nothing more than a goodwill gesture. But the somewhat generous optimist in me can’t help but hope that these new designations will serve as a kind of hors d’oeuvre anticipating the main course of policy decisions to come, preparing the opposition for what will hopefully be even greater policy wins. Calls for a carbon tax or a denial of Keystone may go unanswered for a bit longer. In the meantime, we should appreciate the fact that we’ve got 300,000 more acres — no small amount — of federally protected land, set aside for our enjoyment.