July 25, 2018

Dear Editor,

News broke on Monday that Interior Department officials ignored warnings from their own front-line staff that shrinking national monuments in Utah would put cultural, archaeological, and paleontological sites at risk.

Thousands of pages of unredacted emails, released by the Department of the Interior and taken down a day later, confirm that the administration’s national monument review was rigged from the start, relying on cherry-picked information to justify the removal of protections from Western public lands.

As the Washington Post reported: “The new documents show that as Zinke conducted his four-month review, Interior officials rejected material that would justify keeping protections in place and sought out evidence that could buttress the case for unraveling them.”

When President Trump signed the Executive Order directing the Department of the Interior to review, and consider eliminating, 27 national monuments designated since 1996, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke applauded the decision: “Too many times, you have people in D.C. who have never been to an area, never grazed the land, fished the river, driven the trails, or looked locals in the eye, who are making the decisions and they have zero accountability to the impacted communities. I’m interested in listening to those folks. That’s what my team and I will be doing in the next few months.”

What has become increasingly clear however, is that instead of listening, Secretary Zinke dismissed the facts about national monuments at the expense of the West’s protected lands. The unredacted emails confirm that Interior’s review was tailored to prioritize extractive industries over public land protections, actively dismissing evidence and on-the-ground testimonials from career Interior Department officials who highlighted the benefits of national monuments.

In one redacted passage about Utah’s Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, the Bureau of Land Management wrote that “less inventory” and “more vandalism” of the region’s archaeological and paleontological resources would have occurred without a national monument designation. Another passage highlighted Grand Staircase‚ÄìEscalante’s growing tourism revenues. Despite the evidence, the president removed over 800,000 acres from the monument and 1.1 million acres from the neighboring Bears Ears at Secretary Zinke’s recommendation, cutting off federal funding and protection for future scientific discoveries and opening up prized outdoor recreation sites for energy development.

The mistakenly unredacted documents make it clear that the Interior Department is taking liberties with the Freedom of Information Act, attempting to hide from the public basic facts that fail to support their prevailing management approach—that energy development takes precedence over public land protections. Basic facts about America’s public lands should never be hidden from the public.

As Denver celebrates its second bi-annual Outdoor Retailer trade show, drawing 1,500 outdoor recreation companies from across the nation, the administration’s efforts to dismiss the recreational value of public land are appalling. More than 99 percent of the 2.8 million people who commented on the Interior Department’s review support maintaining protections for national monuments. And, according to a new poll from the Center for Western Priorities, 77 percent of Colorado respondents opposed shrinking Utah’s national monuments. Unsurprisingly, given the litany of ethical issues he’s been involved in, the same poll shows Secretary Zinke’s approval rating at just 23 percent among likely voters in Colorado, with 43 percent disapproving.

Secretary Zinke has repeatedly dismissed fact-based evidence and public support for national monuments in pursuit of the Trump administration’s ideological agenda. The decision to undermine the West’s national monuments flies in the face the West’s outdoor recreation future and protections for the region’s cultural and natural history.