Andy Kerr

Conservationist, Writer, Analyst, Operative, Agitator, Strategist, Tactitian, Schmoozer, Raconteur

Crabtree Valley

A Monumental Battle, Part 2: National Monuments in the Congress

March 31, 2017 in Antiquities Act, Bureau of Land Management, Congress, Fish and Wildlife Service, Forest Service, Marine National Monuments, National Monuments, National Park Service, National Park System, National Parks

There is no question that an Act of Congress can eliminate, shrink, or weaken a national monument proclaimed by a president pursuant to authority granted by Congress. What Congress giveth, Congress can taketh away. The property clause of the U.S. Constitution (Article 4, Section 3, Clause 2) ensures that. Yet in fifty-five Congresses over the past 110 years, Congress has rarely acted to eliminate, reduce, or weaken a national monument proclamation by a president.

“In short all available wild areas, large or small, are likely to have value as norms for land science. Recreation is not their only, or even their principal, utility.”

— Aldo Leopold, from “Wilderness” in A Sand County Almanac (1949)

“Small” Wilderness: No Big Deal

September 23, 2016 in Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, Wilderness, Recreation

Of the 766 wilderness areas designated by Congress since 1964, 48 (6.2 percent or approximately 1 of every 16, not including island wildernesses) are freestanding wilderness areas smaller than 5,000 acres (see Table 1). While most such areas are in the eastern United States, four are in the wide-open American West: the Menagerie Wilderness (4,800 acres) and the Lower White River Wilderness (2,870 acres) in Oregon, Jumbo Springs (4,631 acres) in Nevada, and Baboquivari Peak (2,040 acres) in Arizona.

Public Lands Blog

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A ~1,000-word weekly exposition on some aspect of federal or state public lands in the United States. Some blog posts goes rather deep and serve as a useful (I hope) backgrounders on particular public land areas, matters or issues. Other weeks, you’ll find a topical piece addressing a public lands controversy of the moment. This blog not only defends, but also extols, public lands.

Andy Kerr of The Larch Company (www.andykerr.net) splits his time between Ashland, OR and Washington, DC. He has been significantly involved in the enactment of more than 25 pieces of federal and state legislation and in copious litigation pertaining to public lands. Dedicated to the conservation and restoration of nature, The Larch Company is a non-membership for-profit organization that represents species that cannot talk and humans not yet born. A deciduous conifer, the western larch has a contrary nature.

If you wish to contact me, I will probably be glad you did.