Berryessa Snow Mountain on President Trump's list of monuments up for review

WASHINGTON - The Interior Department on Friday identified 27 national monuments, mostly in Western states, that it is reviewing for possible changes to the protections created by Republican and Democratic presidents over the past two decades.

The list includes the Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monument that President Barack Obama established in 2015 to add protection for federal land in Lake, Napa, Yolo, Solano, Colusa, Glenn and Mendocino counties. It does not include Obama’s 2014 addition of the Point Arena-Stornetta Public Lands in Mendocino County to the California Coastal National Monument.

President Donald Trump ordered the review last month, saying protections imposed by his three immediate predecessors amounted to “a massive federal land grab” that “should never have happened.”

The list released Friday includes 22 monuments on federal land in 11 states, including Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante in Utah, Nevada’s Basin and Range and Katahdin Woods and Waters in Maine.

The review also targets five marine monuments in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, including a huge reserve in Hawaii established in 2006 by President George W. Bush and expanded last year by President Barack Obama.

Bush, Obama and former President Bill Clinton were among a host of presidents who protected hundreds of millions of acres under a 1906 law that authorizes the president to declare federal lands and waters as monuments and restrict their use.

Trump said the protections imposed by his predecessors “unilaterally put millions of acres of land and water under strict federal control, eliminating the ability of the people who actually live in those states to decide how best to use that land.”

The land-controls have “gotten worse and worse and worse, and now we’re going to free it up, which is what should have happened in the first place,” Trump said at a signing ceremony marking the executive order.

Trump accused Obama in particular of exploiting the 1906 Antiquities Act in an “egregious abuse of federal power,” adding that he was giving power “back to the states and to the people, where it belongs.”

In December, shortly before leaving office, Obama infuriated Utah Republicans by creating the Bears Ears National Monument on more than ?1 million acres of land that’s sacred to Native Americans and home to tens of thousands of archaeological sites, including ancient cliff dwellings.

Republicans in the state asked Trump to take the unusual step of reversing Obama’s decision. They said the monument designation will stymie growth by closing the area to new commercial and energy development. The Antiquities Act does not give the president explicit power to undo a designation and no president has ever taken such a step.

Rep Mike Thompson, D-St. Helena, said creation of the Berryessa Snow Mountain monument had support from scores of elected officials, businesses, landowners and farmers, and conservation and recreation groups.

“The monument is now a vital and thriving part of our region’s identity. I am fully confident that any good faith review will reaffirm the merits of Berryessa Snow Mountain and confirm our community’s support for its designation as a national monument,” Thompson said last month. “Overturning its designation would be grossly out of step with the will of the public.”

Trump’s order also targets the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah, created by Clinton in 1996, and Katahdin Woods and Waters in Maine, created last year by Obama. At 87,500 acres, Katahdin is the only one of the 22 monuments under review that is smaller than 100,000 acres, the minimum size designated by the order.

The Interior Department said Katahdin will be reviewed under a provision that singles out whether a monument was created or expanded without adequate public outreach and coordination with relevant stakeholders .Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke has been directed to produce an interim report next month and make a recommendation on Bears Ears.