Brendan Trainor

from Jan. 12, 2017

News

The Gold Butte designation

On Dec. 28, President Obama designated 300,000 acres around the Gold Butte ghost town near Mesquite as a national monument. Obama also designated 1.35 million acres in Southeast Utah as the Bears Ears National Monument.

Republicans are upset. First Obama signed an order forbidding oil exploration in over 100 million acres in the Alaskan and Atlantic oceans. Now he is federalizing more Western land under the 1907 Federal Antiquities Act. Our lame duck president is seen as vindictively throwing roadblocks in front of incoming Republican Presidentdesignate Donald Trump.

These designations are popular with environmentalists and the Utah Navajo and Nevada Paiute tribes. Gold Butte Monument will create a seamless wildlife corridor from Lake Mead to the Grand Canyon. It is home to the desert tortoise and features ancient Indian petroglyphs and curious rock formations. There is no doubt it has ecological value.

What Gold Butte also features are rancher Cliven Bundy’s cattle. Bundy’s ranch abuts the currently recognized Gold Butte and the family is fearful that, after so far defeating the BLM’s attempt to seize their cattle for back grazing fees and their sons’ acquittal of charges in Oregon for the Malheur Wildlife Refuge demonstration, the monument will be enlarged to encompass his ranch. Harry Reid supports Gold Butte partially as a blow against Bundy. When fellow Mormon Crescent Hardy lost reelection in U.S. House district 4, Reid saw his opening and pushed for the monument designation.

The feds’ desire to take the land dates back at least 10 years. In June 2015, Bundy actually talked to two men posing as campers who later turned out to be federal surveyors. Later that night the men claimed they heard shots and left hurriedly. Bundy denies any knowledge, and no one was hurt or even thought they were actual targets. But with tensions high, the incident was reported in the Las Vegas papers.

Conservatives are enraged over President Obama’s timing and his decision to simply use executive authority, without public comment or congressional hearings, to lock up the state land. Gold Butte is popular with hunters, campers, shooters, off-roaders and other recreational users. In Utah’s Bears Ears especially there could be untapped energy resources. Under a national monument designation, energy development and recreational use would likely be severely restricted.

Sen. Dean Heller and Gov. Brian Sandoval supported the project initially but now have spoken out against the lack of input from Nevada citizens in the process. The Bundy family is asking concerned Nevadans to contact state Attorney General Adam Laxalt’s office and ask him to sue to stop the designation. Their faith in the AG may not be misplaced. On Dec. 28, Laxalt issued a legal opinion blocking the implementation of Question 1, the gun background check initiative passed by a slim majority last November. The reason is somewhat technical, but effective: Question 1 forbids Nevada from processing the new background checks on private gun purchases, and the FBI has refused to do them. The law was supposed to take effect New Year’s Day but now will not. The 2017 legislature will have to try to find a fix or write a new law to replace it. Good luck with that!

President-designate Trump has promised to spend his first days in office repealing many of Obama’s executive orders. Under the Antiquities Act, however, he cannot just undo the naming of a National Monument. It will have to be done by Congress or the courts.

Deplorables like the Bundy family won the Presidential election. They still have an uphill fight to preserve their way of life from federal interference. Ω