Zinke completes review of 2 more national monuments, leaves them as is
Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke has finished his review of two more national monuments with no recommended changes to their boundaries or management.
The secretary announced Friday that he sees no reason to shrink or eliminate Grand Canyon-Parashant National Monument in northwestern Arizona, just across the border from Nevada.
Zinke reached a similar conclusion earlier in the week about Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument in Montana.
In April, President Donald Trump ordered his interior secretary to review 22 land-based monuments and five marine monuments established or expanded by presidential decree since 1996.
Zinke toured Gold Butte and Basin and Range on Sunday but has yet to announce his findings on the two Obama-era monuments under review in Nevada.
Grand Canyon-Parashant covers more than a million acres of federal land now jointly managed by the National Park Service and Bureau of Land Management just east of Gold Butte. Upper Missouri River Breaks covers almost 500,000 acres in central Montana. Both monuments were designated by President Bill Clinton.
In a written statement accompanying Friday’s announcement on Grand Canyon-Parashant, Zinke said the monument preserves “some of the most pristine and undeformed geological formations in North America, which show the scientific history of our Earth while containing thousands of years of human relics and fossils.”
So far, Zinke has completed his review of six of the monuments on the administration’s list.
He previously recommended an as-yet-unspecified boundary reduction for Bears Ears in Utah and no changes for Canyons of the Ancients in Colorado, Craters of the Moon in Idaho and Hanford Reach in Washington.
Zinke is due to deliver his final recommendations to Trump by the end of the month.
Contact Henry Brean at hbrean@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0350. Follow @RefriedBrean on Twitter.
Monument scorecard
Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke has now weighed in on six of the 22 national monuments currently under review by the Trump Administration. Here are his recommendations so far:
No changes
— Canyons of the Ancients, Colorado
— Craters of the Moon, Idaho
— Hanford Reach, Washington
— Grand Canyon-Parashant, Arizona
— Upper Missouri River Breaks, Montana
Reduce in size
— Bears Ears, Utah
Still pending
— Basin and Range, Nevada, 703,585 acres
— Berryessa Snow Mountain, California, 330,780 acres
— Carrizo Plain, California, 204,107 acres
— Cascade Siskiyou, Oregon, 100,000 acres
— Giant Sequoia, California, 327,760 acres
— Gold Butte, Nevada, 296,937 acres
— Grand Staircase-Escalante, Utah, 1,700,000 acres
— Ironwood Forest, Arizona, 128,917 acres
— Katahdin Woods and Waters, Maine, 87,563 acres
— Mojave Trails, California, 1,600,000 acres
— Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks, New Mexico, 496,330 acres
— Rio Grande del Norte, New Mexico, 242,555 acres
— San Gabriel Mountains, California, 346,177 acres
— Sand to Snow, California, 154,000 acres
— Sonoran Desert, Arizona, 486,149 acres
— Vermilion Cliffs, Arizona, 279,568 acres
