June 9, 2000: Designation likely to cause uncertainty

Designation likely to cause uncertainty

This story was published June 9, 2000
By Mike Lee
Herald staff writer

When the Hanford Reach joins the register of national monuments, its future likely will be clouded by bureaucratic uncertainty over how to proceed.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the agency most likely to manage the undeveloped stretch of the Columbia River and adjoining 200,000 acres, is a relative novice administering national monuments. That charge traditionally has gone to the National Park Service and more recently to a redirected Bureau of Land Management.

"There is not much guidance out there," said Greg Hughes, project leader at the Fish and Wildlife Service's Richland office. The office already runs the Saddle Mountain National Wildlife Refuge to the north and east of the Hanford Reach.

President Clinton could make federal direction significantly more clear with a detailed proclamation delivered by Vice President Al Gore this morning as part of his remarks in Richland. Or the guidelines may be handed down in coming weeks.

If the Reach monument designation follows the format the Clinton administration set at Utah's Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in 1996, the proclamation will give a detailed account of the Reach's environmental resources along with a mandate for protection.

In Utah, the BLM interpreted the mandate to keep the monument in its "primitive, frontier state" and to provide opportunities for scientific research. That means discouraging public access to the heart of the land to preserve it.

The BLM had three years to complete its plan for the Grand Staircase-Escalante. The agency called the plan formation a "unique collaborative planning process" that included dozens of meetings with tribal, state, local and federal agencies. Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt was invited to appoint five members to the monument planning team.

The plan recognizes "valid existing rights," though it leaves the contentious subject of grazing permits to be settled after future studies.

Still, terms of the Utah plan remain contentious as the BLM attempts to implement it.

"There are just a lot of things now that the plan is being implemented that are causing the hostility to resurface," said Louise Liston, Garfield County commissioner in southern Utah. "They wanted public opinion to show they have gone through the process, but they had it all planned out from the beginning about what it was going to be like."

In January, BLM leaders announced their interim land management policy for newly created national monuments in Arizona and California. It bars most off-road vehicle use and says road improvements should be minimal. Camping is to continue, as are other existing policies - barring they aren't deemed incompatible with monument status.

But federal lands and interests in the Southwest monuments "are withdrawn from all forms of entry, location, selection, sale, leasing or other disposition" under public land laws, including mining laws.

And the policy leaves room for action outside the monuments. "Activities on nonmonument lands that are causing or expected to cause water quality deterioration, soil degradation, or other damage to monument lands - whether directly or indirectly - must be reported to the responsible management official for appropriate action."

The BLM directive also calls for the government to consider land or easement acquisitions and exchanges that "will enhance the values" of the monuments.

Until the Clinton administration's change in direction for BLM - an agency historically charged with management of grazing lands - the National Park Service administered virtually all monuments - more than 70 according to a 1998 report by the Congressional Research Service.

"Permitted and prohibited uses in national monuments are generally the same as in the national parks," according to the research service. "Many recreation uses are allowed, although hunting may be restricted or forbidden."

But since the Fish and Wildlife Service is a much different agency than the BLM, it's not certain how similar the government's direction will be on the 51-mile stretch of the Columbia River above Richland.

The fish and wildlife agency administers roughly 13 percent of the country's federal land, about 90 million acres, for the conservation and protection of fish and wildlife. But its only experience running monuments was in Alaska in the 1970s, said Dave Goeke, of Othello, recently retired project leader at the Fish and Wildlife Service's Richland office.

"We're cutting new ground," said Goeke, who volunteers for his former agency. "The (fish and wildlife) service will be directed to create a management plan and that will be a public involvement process - but how that is going to be worded and in what form that direction is going to come, I don't know.".