Antiquities Act Archives - Page 16 of 17

NPR: Conservationists Push for a National Undersea Monument

October 22, 2015 — WASHINGTON (Saving Seafood) — October 22, 2015 — The following is an excerpt from a story by Heather Goldstone, originally published October 19 on NPR affiliate WCAI. It also appeared on NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday.

Editor’s Note: In the article, the Conservation Law Foundation’s Priscilla Brooks comments that the Antiquities Act is “how we’ve gotten many of our incredible national parks – the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone.” However, Yellowstone National Park predates the Antiquities Act of 1906 by 34 years, having been established in 1872 by an act of Congress.

The ocean off New England’s coast is known for lobster and cod, but there are also lush kelp forests and rare deep-sea corals. Environmentalists want President Obama to declare those natural riches a marine national monument – the first of its kind in the Atlantic. Fishermen say the plan not only threatens their business, it silences their voices.

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Environmentalists are pushing President Obama to declare a marine national monument covering Cashes Ledge, the canyons, and everything in between – six thousand square miles in all. Shank agrees that some protection is needed, but he’s not convinced a monument is the way to go.

“Maybe I’m too much of a nerd scientist,” he jokes. “I just want to see us be informed about what we’re doing.”

By law, fishery managers are required to involve scientists, fishermen, and the public in crafting regulations. Fishermen don’t always like the result, but they have a say, and decisions can usually be revisited. The president, on the other hand, can declare a monument and permanently shut down fishing without any public process at all. Steve Welch of Scituate, MA, helped shape the current rules for Cashes Ledge. Standing outside a recent fishery management meeting, he says the president shouldn’t have that power.

“This is not what America is about,” Welch says. “We might as well have a dictator in the White House.”

Fishermen from twenty six states have signed a petition opposing a presidential proclamation, and the House is considering a bill that would require state and congressional approval for ocean monuments. But monument supporters point to our national parks as living proof that executive action is warranted.

“We learned a century ago that giving the President the authority to protect special areas has been a huge boon for the public,” says Priscilla Brooks, Vice President and Director of Ocean Conservation for Conservation Law Foundation. “That’s how we’ve gotten many of our incredible national parks – the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone.”

Read the full story and listen to the audio at WCAI

JES HATHAWAY: Conspiracy Queries

October 5, 2015 — Once upon a time, fishermen and environmentalists butted heads, pretty much all the time. Then for the most part, both sides slowly realized they had some things in common. We all want clean water (and plenty of it), preserved fish habitats, better fishing gear, more efficient engines, and the list goes on.

We are now in an era in which the environmental movement and the fishing industry often work well together to achieve common goals. But there are some groups who have little interest in collaboration, or indeed even hearing what the other side has to say.

Last week, the fishing industry watchdog Saving Seafood made public what they say are the results of a Freedom of Information Act request to Maine’s governor’s office that showed the New England-based Conservation Law Foundation was working behind the scenes (including attempts to reach out to some Maine state officials) in the hopes of securing an East Coast marine monument designation through the Antiquities Act, which does not require democratic review. The emails indicated that the group hoped President Obama could announce the monument plan at the Our Ocean Conference in Valparaiso, Chile, (taking place this week) and that they hoped to be well under way in the process toward that designation before any potential opposition was aware of it enough “to fight it, to organize against it,” said CLF’s Interim President Peter Shelley, according to Environmental and Energy Publishing.

Read the full opinion piece at National Fisherman

NEW BEDFORD STANDARD-TIMES: Fishermen win a small victory

October 8, 2015 — Fishermen in the Northeast fisheries can celebrate a small victory in what President Obama didn’t do on Monday.

The president addressed, by video, attendees of the Our Ocean 2015 conference in Valparaiso, Chile, and announced two new marine sanctuaries, neither one of them off the coast of new England.

Commercial fishing advocates had been fighting to counter the message of environmental groups that were running a full-scale campaign to put Cashes Ledge and the New England Canyons and Seamounts on the list, along with the two announced by the president in Maryland and Lake Michigan.

New England fishermen looked at the 6,000 square miles under consideration off the coast and saw the next strategic step toward pushing them off the ocean.

The valuable cold-water kelp forests of Cashes Ledge and the coral fields in the five canyons and four seamounts are worthy of protection, but they are already off limits to fishermen.

Fishing advocates’ concern of “policy creep” can’t be dismissed as paranoia. The steady negative impact of regulation on the fishing industry is well-documented in reports on the health of the industry, and the use of various regulatory tools has left the industry reeling, wondering where the next threat will come from.

Read the full editorial from the New Bedford Standard-Times

House Natural Resources Committee Demands Obama Administration Info on Marine Monument Designations

WASHINGTON (Saving Seafood) October 7, 2015 — In a letter signed by the full committee chairman, the chairman of the Subcommittee on Water, Power and Oceans, and the chairman and vice chairman of the Subcommittee on Indian, Insular, and Alaska Native Affairs, the U.S. House Natural Resources Committee has demanded records of all meetings, correspondence and memos related to marine monument designations.

The letter references emails that “show representatives from the Conservation Law Foundation (CLF), the Natural Resources Defense Council, and the Pew Charitable Trusts warning their members to avoid talking to the ‘outside world’ about the organizations’ efforts to influence the Administration to announce a Marine National Monument off of New England during the ‘Our Ocean Conference’ in Chile.” The emails in question were originally obtained by Saving Seafood via public records requests, and were first reported by Greenwire.

The following is the text of the press release from the House Natural Resources Committee:

Chairman Rob Bishop (R-UT), and Reps. John Fleming (R-LA), Don Young (R-AK), and Aumua Amata Coleman Radewagen (R-AS) sent a letter today to Council on Environmental Quality Managing Director Christy Goldfuss and Assistant Administrator for the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Eileen Sobeck to request further information on the Obama Administration’s plans to designate new marine monuments or expand existing monuments. This concerns all coastal states.

In particular, the members of the Committee raised concerns about the apparent collusion and influence of environmental groups with regard to the Interior Department’s designation process, with almost no local input.

The letter stated, “[T]he day after the Subcommittee’s hearing, a chain of emails were publicly released which raise serious questions regarding the Administration’s plans for a new marine monument designation and the potential involvement of a number of outside interests. Specifically, the emails show representatives from the Conservation Law Foundation (CLF), the Natural Resources Defense Council, and Pew warning their members to avoid talking to the ‘outside world’ about the organizations’ efforts to influence the Administration to announce a Marine National Monument off of New England during the ‘Our Ocean Conference’ in Chile.”

The lack of transparency surrounding the number and scope of potential future designations was a point of emphasis for the Subcommittee on Water, Power and Ocean’s oversight hearing on September 29, 2015.

“As witnesses indicated in testimony before the Water, Power and Oceans Subcommittee hearing, the public input process surrounding the designation or expansion of national marine monuments has been woefully inadequate, or even nonexistent. The American people and those impacted by such potential designations deserve the right to know now what the federal government is or has been doing behind closed doors, given that a true public process simply does not exist under current law or practice.”

The letter requests records of all meetings regarding the designation or revision of national monuments, correspondence and memos related to national marine monument designations, and Executive branch communications including those with non-governmental organizations connected to the September 15, 2015 National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Town Hall meeting in Providence, Rhode Island.

Read the House Natural Resources Committee’s press release online

View a PDF of the House Natural Resources Committee’s letter to Christy Goldfuss and Eileen Sobeck

At “Our Oceans” Conference in Chile, Obama announces the first new marine sanctuaries in 15 years

“Several advocacy groups have been pressing the administration to declare two new national marine monuments off New England’s coast: Cashes Ledge and the New England Canyons and Seamounts, which are home to a major kelp forest and network of deepwater corals, respectively. But some local fishing operators raised objections to the designations of the two areas in the run up to the global conference, and the president did not use his executive authority to put them off limits.”

The following is an excerpt from a Washington Post story, written by Chelsea Harvey with contributions from Juliet Eilperin:

WASHINGTON (The Washington Post) October 5, 2015 — In a video message to conference attendees, President Obama announced plans for two new marine sanctuaries, one off the coast of Maryland, and the other in Lake Michigan. They’ll be the first new national marine sanctuaries designated by the federal government in the past 15 years.

One of these sanctuaries will be an 875-square mile section of Lake Michigan off the shore of Wisconsin, which is recognized for its collection of nearly 40 known shipwrecks, some of which are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The other sanctuary is a 14-square mile area of the Potomac River, which includes Maryland’s Mallows Bay – an area known for its ecological significance, according to the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, and home to bald eagles, herons, beavers, river otters and numerous species of fish.

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Several advocacy groups have been pressing the administration to declare two new national marine monuments off New England’s coast: Cashes Ledge and the New England Canyons and Seamounts, which are home to a major kelp forest and network of deepwater corals, respectively. But some local fishing operators raised objections to the designations of the two areas in the run up to the global conference, and the president did not use his executive authority to put them off limits.

Marine national monuments differ from marine sanctuaries in that they can be established by presidential proclamation, whereas sanctuaries are designated by NOAA and require extensive public input – however, they can offer similar protections and human use restrictions over marine ecosystems.

The United States is also announcing several other plans aimed at protecting marine resources. In Chile for the conference, Secretary of State John F. Kerry announced the launch of Sea Scout, a global initiative targeting illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing by uniting world leaders, expanding technology and information-sharing and identifying illegal fishing hot spots. NOAA also has plans to expand the development of a technology known as the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite, which detects boats and may help alert nations to illegal fishing activities. The technology will be implemented in several nations in 2016, including Indonesia and the Philippines.

The Sea Scout initiative “provides a real opportunity to improve coordination and information sharing around the world as a way to combat illegal fishing,” said Beth Lowell, senior campaign director for Oceana, in a statement to The Post. According to Lowell, the biggest challenges to combating illegal fishing are an untraceable global seafood supply chain and a lack of enforcement. And on these fronts, there’s still more to be done.

“The first step to effectively stop IUU fishing and seafood fraud is to require catch documentation for all seafood sold in the U.S.,” Lowell said. “While Oceana applauds the president’s task force for taking great steps in the right direction, full-chain traceability is ultimately needed for all U.S. seafood to ensure that it’s safe, legally caught and honestly labeled.”

Read the full story from the Washington Post

Read Secretary of State John Kerry’s remarks here

Deseret News: Antiquities Act and underwater monuments

October 6, 2015 — The Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument was created by President Bill Clinton well over 20 years ago, but for many southern Utah residents whose livelihoods were affected by this arbitrary and unilateral exercise of executive authority, the wounds are still fresh. That monument also placed billions of dollars of clean-burning coal off limits forever. Since those resources were located on school trust lands that provide funding for public schools, Utah students paid, and continue to pay, a steep price for this massive executive overreach.

The lesson that should have been drawn from that episode is that the 1906 Antiquities Act, the legal justification that allows presidents to create national monuments for “the protection of objects of historic and scientific interest,” is outdated, overused and too easily abused. While the designation of these monuments is supposed to be confined to areas of historical significance and limited to “the smallest area compatible with proper care and management of the objects to be protected,” this language has done nothing to prevent presidents from making designations of whatever size and location they choose with no congressional input or oversight.

Read the full editorial at Deseret News

Committee Pushes Back on Potential Marine Monument Designations

WASHINGTON — September 30, 2015 — Today, the Subcommittee on Water, Power and Oceans held an oversight hearing on the designations of Marine National Monuments, which are unilateral executive actions that usurp established regional fisheries management plans and impose significant economic and environmental impacts regionally and nationwide.

In particular, the hearing focused on the threat of Marine National Monument designations off Cape Cod in New England and the Aleutian Islands in Alaska under the Antiquities Act of 1906. President Obama has already expanded existing Marine National Monuments by more than 400,000 square miles, an area larger than the states of Texas and New Mexico combined.

Members and witnesses reviewed the utter lack of public input in prior unilateral monument designations and the adverse effects posed by potential future designations to America’s fisheries and the thousands of jobs supported by the seafood industry.

Read the full story from RealEstateRama

Greens’ Hopes For Quick Win On New England Monument Fade

Emails obtained by Saving Seafood through public records requests confirm rumors that environmental activists hoped to convince the White House to announce Atlantic Marine National Monuments at next week’s “Our Oceans” conference in Chile.

In this Greenwire story, Conservation Law Foundation Interim President Peter Shelly tells reporter Emily Yehle that the organizers were “trying to keep that quiet” to minimize the opportunity for opponents “to organize against it.”

WASHINGTON (Saving Seafood) – October 1, 2015 – The story excerpted below was written by E&E reporter Emily Yehle, and appeared on September 30, 2015 in Greenwire:

One month ago, environmental groups were strategizing over their latest bid: Get the Obama administration to create its first marine monument off New England.

They had talks with fishing groups, lawmakers and think tanks. At the end of August, they exchanged emails over their progress — and in one, the president of the Conservation Law Foundation warned everyone to keep quiet about the possibility of a breakthrough at the upcoming Our Ocean Conference in Chile.

“I hope no one is talking about Chile to the outside world,” CLF Interim President Peter Shelley wrote. “It’s one of the few advantages we may have to know that it could happen sooner rather than later.”

The email showed up in response to a public records request that Saving Seafood filed with the office of Maine Gov. Paul LePage’s. The advocacy group — which represents fishermen opposed to the monument — sent the emails to Greenwire yesterday, asserting that they confirm “rumors” of an impending monument announcement from the White House.

Such an announcement would certainly make waves. The proposed monument is small and sees little activity today, but it is near prime fishing grounds. House Republicans have also added the proposal to their arsenal of criticism over the White House’s use of the Antiquities Act (E&E Daily, Sept. 30).

But Shelley, in an interview today, said the email was just hopeful speculation. With the conference coming up, environmental groups had hoped to convince the Obama administration that the New England marine monument was shovel-ready and ideal for a conference announcement.

“The time was pretty short to pull it off. We thought there might be an opportunity we could get them to think about these areas for an announcement in conjunction with the Our Ocean Conference,” Shelley said. “We were trying to keep that quiet because we didn’t want to give the opposition more of an advantage. The more time they had, the more opportunity they would have to lobby, to fight it, to organize against it.”

Chile is set to host the second Our Ocean Conference in Valparaíso next week. The State Department hosted the first one last year — and used it as an opportunity to announce that Obama would drastically expand the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument (Greenwire, June 17).

Robert Vanasse, executive director of Saving Seafood, said rumors that the White House would make an announcement at the conference have been making the rounds for a few weeks.

“Given that last summer the Pacific monument expansion announcement took place at the State Department oceans summit, that seemed in keeping with previous actions,” Vanasse said. “We don’t put a lot of stock in Washington rumors; however, whenever our various [Freedom of Information Act] filings yielded this document, it seemed to be in sync with the rumors around town.”

The creation of monuments is usually shrouded in secrecy. Presidents can unilaterally create them under the Antiquities Act, a century-old law that requires no public process and no congressional approval.

Read the full story here

Greens’ hopes for quick win on New England monument fade

September 30, 2015 — One month ago, environmental groups were strategizing over their latest bid: Get the Obama administration to create its first marine monument off New England.

The email showed up in response to a public records request that Saving Seafood filed with the office of Maine Gov. Paul LePage’s. The advocacy group — which represents fishermen opposed to the monument — sent the emails to Greenwire yesterday, asserting that they confirm “rumors” of an impending monument announcement from the White House.

Read the full story from the E&E Reporter

Aleutians monument fought as threat, derided as ‘straw man’

September 29, 2015 — Alaska Congressman Don Young and other Republicans on the House Natural Resources Committee this morning attacked the idea that President Obama might create a marine national monument around the Aleutian Islands, with unknown effects on the fishing industry. But the administration has given no sign it’s considering the notion.

At a subcommittee hearing, Congressman Young said a marine national monument around the Aleutians would be terrible for the fishing industry.

“I’ve watched this over and over: The creeping cancer of the federal government overreaching,” Young said. “The worst managers of any resource is the federal government. They do not manage. They preclude.”

The idea of protecting the waters of the Aleutian Chain came from environmentalist and retired UAA professor Rick Steiner. Last year, he proposed a massive marine sanctuary, covering all the federal waters of Bristol Bay and thousands of miles of the Bering Sea. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration killed the idea, saying it lacked local support. That seemed to be the end of it, except that Steiner launched an online petition telling President Obama he should create an Aleutian national monument instead. (Under the Antiquities Act, the president can just declare a monument on his own.) Steiner’s plea to Obama, on thepetitionsite.com, has attracted more than 100,000 supporters, many from foreign countries. Steiner was not invited to the hearing to defend his idea.

Read the full story at Alaska Public Media