Antiquities Act: The Chief Tool for Wildlife Conservation Protection—Is it endangered itself?4/24/2017 The Antiquities Act of 1906 has been a major vehicle and, since Jimmy Carter and protection of lands in Alaska, the major vehicle for providing new protections and expanding wildlife conservation. But it has become the target of Republicans and, President Trump has ordered a review of the use of the Antiquities Act since 1996. As an article in E&E News by Jennifer Yachnin points out, theoretically Congress can reverse or modify monuments, they have rarely done so—indeed, a major “modification” has been to convert the monuments into national parks. Trump’s order says that the monuments have been “overused” and protected more area than they needed to. The current issue especially focuses on the Bears Ears National Monument in Utah created by President Obama just before he left office. Republicans such as Rep. Rob Bishop and Orin Hatch have criticized the monument’s creation and Bishop and other Republicans want to rein in the Antiquities Act (e.g., by requiring state approval of any designations). As I point out in my Wildlife Politics book, Bill Clinton and Bruce Babbitt heavily emphasized a compromise approach to conservation with emphasis on a “stakeholder” approach and tried to avoid confrontation. However, Clinton’s biggest legacy in the environmental area was the use of the Antiquities Act to designate monuments. Since Republicans have dominated the House of Representatives for much of the period since 1994 and have been averse to approving new conservation area, Clinton used the Antiquities Act which of course does not require participation of stakeholders. Likewise, George Bush’s greatest environmental legacy was the establishment of a large marine monument near Hawaii. The Obama Administration, like the Clinton Administration, basically fought a “rearguard” battle concerning wildlife conservation, emphasizing the stakeholder approach and trying to defuse the anger of the rancher-farmer-extractive industry coalition that dominates much of western U.S. states conservation policymaking. Thus, as I discuss in my book, the conservation community was unhappy with Clinton, Bush, and Obama Administrations and their chief successes in terms of expanding protections for habitat occurred through the Antiquities Act. Indeed, Bruce Babbitt, champion of the stakeholder-compromise approach during the Clinton Administration, more recently urged Obama to make aggressive use of the top-down Antiquities Act approach! Babbitt makes an additional point about the monuments created under the Antiquities Act mandates: they have turned out to be very popular in the long-run with the general population. Those opposed to it are very influential and powerful but they are small in terms of numbers. As always, the question in wildlife politics is will this powerful but small constituency be able to prevail to cut back on Antiquity Act use or will the salience of this issue become important enough for the much larger but less focused supporters to provide political support for these monuments? The answer is not clear. Generally, the powerful and focused minority win out but the fact that the Antiquities Act has survived previous unhappiness largely unscathed suggests that there is an unobtrusive but significant support for this law that Republican Teddy Roosevelt first used so creatively for wildlife conservation. Check out Yachnin’s E&E article at: https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2017/04/24/stories/1060053484
1 Comment
5/12/2019 09:40:46 pm
I don't know that there was a threat in The Antiquities Act of 1906. The leaders and law makers should always put such thing in a priority lane, especially that endangered animals issues are still high and doesn't seem to be doing good. I am hoping that we can still make something out of this because Wildlife Conservation Protection is still as important as other laws that we have nowadays. Hopefully, the people would be affected by this.
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During my research for the book, I noticed that there was no blog available for sharing informaton on wildlife conservation and thus I set up this blog to accomplish this purpose. Please share any informaticoncerning issues related to wildife policy and politics. I welcome feedback from users concerning this blog and website.
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