July 24, 2018 — Senior Interior Department officials prepared last fall to eliminate the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument — even as they had yet to agree on the public justifications for doing so, according to newly disclosed internal documents.

Interior last week accidentally released thousands of pages of unredacted internal emails in response to Freedom of Information Act requests.

Copies of those emails, provided to E&E News by the Center for Western Priorities, detail Interior’s strategy — including a focus on timber harvesting, mineral rights, and oil and gas extraction — as it reviewed the boundaries of more than two dozen national monuments under an executive order from President Trump.

The documents also disclose internal deliberations over the future of some marine monuments, including reintroducing commercial fishing to some sites and reducing the boundaries of others.

In [a] September email, [Interior official Randy Bowman] advised that Interior strike data on commercial fishing in the [Northeast Canyons and Seamounts monument]. A deleted sentence states that four vessels in 2014-15 relied on the monument area for more than 25 percent of their annual revenues, while the majority of ships generated less than 5 percent of their revenues from the area.

“This section, while accurate (except for one sentence) seems to me to undercut the case for the commercial fishing closure being harmful. I suggest in the attached deleting most of it for that reason,” Bowman wrote.

Saving Seafood Executive Director Bob Vanasse disputed the idea that data didn’t support the repeal of the commercial fishing ban but said it instead was removed because it could be taken out of context.

“While it is generally accurate, if one looks at the entire fishing industry in the region, to make the statement that only a small number of vessels derive more than 5 percent of their revenue from the Monument area, for those vessels and fisheries that conduct significant portions of their operations in the monument area, the economic harm is significant,” Vanasse said in a statement.

He added in an interview: “The suggestion is that the administration is hiding the facts, and I don’t think that’s the case.”

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