Protecting the Past from our own Future Mistakes

FIRST WEDNESDAY CORNER FOR INSECURE WRITERS …and Others
Presidents—and IWSGers—Act when Time is Short

Precious offshore rocks saved as outgoing President adds acreage to National Monument status

With his December 28th Executive order, outgoing president Obama established Bears Ears National Monument, protecting from oil and mineral development 1.35 million acres of land in southeastern Utah. It surrounds well-preserved Native American ancestral sites, dating back 3,500 years. A commission of five American Indian tribes will help manage the lands. This is the first time a president has used the powers granted under the 1906 Antiquities Act to honor a tribal request to protect sites sacred to Native Americans.

President Obama has an impressive environmental legacy, invoking the Antiquities Act twenty-nine times. The Act allows the president to designate national monuments without the approval of Congress, and to add 553 million acres of land and (in Obama’s case, mostly waters) to the American national system of land conservation.

National monuments are managed under plans developed by federal managers with local communities and reflect local priorities. Unlike national parks, some monuments allow grazing, hunting—and dogs.

Protection in Perpetuity
Pressure in California is mounting for the President to complete a trio of additions to the existing California Coastal National Monument, before his term ends January 20th, 2017.
The original monument proposed by former President Bill Clinton in 2000 did not include onshore lands until 2014, when President Obama expanded it to include coastal lands, along with previous rocks and islands off the California coast.

Lighthouse on Trinidad Head guards indigenous Tsurai coastal territories

Last September a rare statewide collaboration calling for the expansion of the California Coastal National Monument succeeded in pitting talents of North Coast Congressman Jared Huffman, Senator Barbara Boxer and Representatives Anna Eshoo and Lois Capps with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to discuss the proposed expansion of the California Coastal National Monument. This would include Lighthouse Ranch in Loleta, thirteen acres of Trinidad Head, and the Lost Coast Headlands. They are guided by non-profit Trinidad Coastal Land Trust, who, according to administrator Ben Morehead,

Provide the community with a non-government means whereby land and water resources and places of historical, community or regional significance can be protected in perpetuity
Ben Morehead,TCLT

My fellow Insecure Writers and our revered leader Alex would no doubt agree with the principle of protection in perpetuity. Would that we writers could come up with such goodies as the outgoing U.S. President. Our deadlines—today being one of them—lol Alex—are usually a little more rushed, a lot less pressurized than presidential vacating of the White House.

But we get the picture. We appreciate the work being done.
First foot forward for a New Year.
©2017 Marian Youngblood