On his website, Congressman Greg Walden opined: “The conclusion of the Obama administration, without a national monument designation in the Owyhee Canyonlands, marks a long-awaited victory for the people of Eastern Oregon.”
Walden goes on to use a cheap shot by asserting this proposal was backed by “big-city corporate and special interests.”
One must wonder where he gets the idea that people like myself and the thousands of other Oregon residents and U.S. citizens who are, after all, the owners of these lands and support protecting the Owyhee are corporations or special interests. Seems more likely that those inclined to mine, drill for oil and graze their cattle on public lands that Walden appears to represent are corporations and special interests.
It is unfortunate that Walden hasn’t done his homework. Opposition to national monuments by local economic interests is universal. And just as universal is how wrong this opposition has turned out to be.
Over and over local perspective has been on the wrong side of history.
Teddy Roosevelt tried to get Congress to designate the Grand Canyon as a national park, but again local politicians and local folks who wanted to log, mine and graze the area were opposed and thwarted all efforts.
Not content to let short-sighted and parochial interests preclude protection of the canyon, in 1908 Roosevelt used the Antiquities Act to create an 800,000-acre Grand Canyon National Monument over local objections.
So dependent has Arizona become on the Grand Canyon’s tourist dollars, that when the Republicans shut down the government in 1995 and the national parks were closed, Arizona offered to pay salaries to federal employees if the Park Service would reopen the park.
Similarly, loggers on the Olympic Peninsula were apoplectic when Roosevelt created Olympic National Monument, forerunner to today’s Olympic National Park. Had Roosevelt not acted, I am certain the largest trees north of the redwoods would have been logged.
A similar hue and cry occurred when Jackson Hole National Monument (later to be renamed and designated as Grand Teton National Park) was established with local papers declaring that Jackson, at the foot of the Tetons, would soon be a “ghost town.” Anyone who has been to Jackson lately knows it is anything but a ghost town.
More recently, in 1980 when Jimmy Carter established a number of national monuments in Alaska, including Kenai Fjords National Monument, Alaskans in Seward responded by burning the president in effigy.
Today communities like Seward, Alaska, have completely transformed themselves into a community that welcomes and loves the tourism created by the Kenai Fjords National Park.
Many of our best-known and beloved national parks were originally designated national monuments by presidential use of the Antiquities Act, including Death Valley, Arches, Glacier Bay, Bryce Canyon, Acadia, parts of Zion and many others.
Similar stories exist for nearly all the national monuments established by presidential order. Local opposition eventually becomes local celebration.
I am certain that if we ever create an Owyhee Canyonlands National Monument, future generations of Americans will be grateful that the president used his authority to garner special protection for these lands.
And I also predict that given a decade or two, even locals near these monuments will be singing the praises of these monuments once they come to appreciate the ethical, economic and ecological benefits that national monument protection brings to our American lands — lands that belong to all Americans, not just the residents of Malheur County or even in Walden’s district.