Department of the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2025

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. BENTZ. Madam Chair, this amendment would prohibit the Department of the Interior from using appropriated funds for any purpose having to do with establishing under the Antiquities Act a national monument in Malheur County, Oregon.

Malheur County is part of my congressional district, and it is huge, almost 10,000 square miles in size. As Members can see from the picture to my right, this county is 145 times the size of Washington, D.C. It is sparsely populated, but the people who live and work in Malheur County understand the value and importance of protecting the land because many are second, third, and fourth generations who spent their lives earning a living in the most challenging of arid locations, knowing from hard experience that the only way to survive is to live in harmony with the land.

Back in 2015, a small group of mostly urban activists, funded by recreational sportswear companies, tried to convince the Obama administration that it should use the Antiquities Act to abruptly impose a national monument designation on 2.5 million acres of the 6.3 million acres making up Malheur County. That is about 40 percent of the county's entire area.

This picture beside me shows the typical type of land that makes up much of these 2.5 million acres. The almost 200 miles of canyon seen cutting through the sagebrush flats in this picture are already protected with scenic river designations. We don't need a monument stacked on top of those previous designations.

Much of the proposed monument area is covered by sagebrush and extremely dry. The widely separated springs and ephemeral trickles of water trying to pass as streams in this vast, environmentally fragile area are generally the site of ranch headquarters operated for generations by families of ranchers.

These ranchers, in addition to being an important part of the economy, provide first-responder protection for recreationists, hikers, and hunters. When wildfires break out, as they are right now, they do their best to protect the land itself. Their presence also protects against abuse of the land by those who have little regard for its fragility.

Back in 2015, when those activists began to lobby the Obama administration for a monument designation, local residents gathered together in opposition. They formed a group of ranchers, hunters, environmental NGOs, and others. For the past 7 years, this group has been meeting, studying, arguing, discussing, and working with landowners, State legislators, county commissioners, the local Paiute Tribe of Indians, Congressmen, Senator Ron Wyden, and others to develop a legislative initiative addressing many of the concerns of interested parties.

Their work culminated in S. 1890, the Malheur Community Empowerment for the Owyhee Act, passed by the Senate. Thus, there is no reason for a national monument designation. The pending Senate bill, when finalized, because it needs to be changed in significant part, plus the Federal protections already in place, as shown in the chart beside me, are all designed to protect this important area.

A top-down monument designation will not protect the land. In fact, such a designation will attract tens of thousands of people to this fragile area, resulting in the destruction of the very thing a monument designation would purport to protect.

It is a sad commentary on those who preach cooperation and nonpartisanship that one of the very environmental NGOs that was at the negotiating table and participated in the structure found in S. 1890 has now begun to advertise, fundraise, and lobby, advocating that the President use the Antiquities Act to designate much of that same 2.5 million acres as a national monument, ignoring the years of work and time invested by those who actually live in and around this land to do something more protective.

Madam Chair, my amendment is designed to stop the use of Federal moneys for what would be a totally unnecessary monument designation, thus allowing the locally driven public land protective process to continue.

Madam Chair, I ask for support of this amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. BENTZ. Madam Chair, I point out that there is layer upon layer of Federal protective designations already in place. More importantly, the local community has worked together for almost 7 years to put together a bill similar to the one that has been passed by the Senate.

Why in the world would we want to allow the designation of a monument to usurp the local work done by people living in that area? This amendment keeps that from happening, and we need this kind of protection so that local people recognize they are not powerless and that they can step up and protect their land.

Madam Chair, I strongly urge my colleagues to join me in defending our communities' rights and upholding our constitutional rights. We must not allow executive overreach but protect our rural communities and promote balanced approaches to Federal land management.

Madam Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source