President Clinton’s national monuments have
survived a legal assault by two conservative groups that sought to
strip the areas of protection. On Oct. 6, the Supreme Court
declined to hear arguments against six Bureau of Land Management
and Forest Service-managed monuments created in 2000 and 2001. The
monuments, including Grand Canyon-Parashant in Arizona and Giant
Sequoia in California, add up to more than 6 million acres in five
Western states.
The 1906 Antiquities Act grants the
president broad authority to protect areas of historical and
scientific significance. But Bill Dart of the off-road vehicle
users’ group, BlueRibbon Coalition says, “The act was
meant to be directed at smaller landscapes — when you get
into the scale of millions of acres, you go beyond what was
intended.”
The BlueRibbon Coalition and the
Mountain States Legal Foundation originally sued in 2001. Their
case was dismissed by a federal district court in November of that
year, and again by an appeals court in October 2002. The groups
appealed to the Supreme Court, which let the previous decisions
stand (HCN, 11/25/02: Clinton-era monuments weather court
challenge).
Jim Angell, an attorney for the nonprofit law
firm Earthjustice, hailed the ruling: “This makes clear, yet
again, that presidents can use the Antiquities Act to protect
unique natural objects.”
The battle isn’t
over yet, though. Environmentalists say that the management plans
for the new monuments, which are now being crafted, could provide
skimpy protection and permit increased logging and off-road vehicle
use.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline National monuments are here to stay.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
