WASHINGTON — Interior Secretary Gale Norton is joining Rep. Jim Hansen in a drive to scale back or rework the national monuments created by former President Clinton.
She sent letters Wednesday to officials in Western states offering to work with them to possibly adjust monument boundaries, develop management plans and maybe allow grazing, mining or other uses normally banned in monuments.
Earlier this year, Hansen, R-Utah, chairman of the House Resources Committee, wrote to House members whose districts contain new monuments to offer similar assistance.
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His committee Wednesday passed by voice vote the first resulting bill, which would redesignate Clinton's 661,000-acre expansion of Idaho's Craters of the Moon National Monument as a national preserve. That will allow hunting to continue on the land.
Norton said Wednesday, as she released copies of letters she wrote, "I want to hear local voices and ideas on how best to protect, use and care for these precious national treasures for generations to come."
Meanwhile, Hansen said, "I had a long chat with her a month or so ago" where he outlined his similar effort to take another look at the Clinton monuments.
"She is looking at it through administrative eyes and I am looking at it through legislative eyes," Hansen said. "I intend to work with the administration to figure out what it can do to solve some of the problems and what has to be done legislatively."
Hansen said a few House members with new monuments in their districts have told him they are happy with them, so he will seek no changes there. He said several others are exploring management or boundary changes.
Hansen said he and Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, are also preparing to push a bill that would limit a president's ability to create national monuments. It would limit new monuments to 50,000 acres and require 60 days of consultation with state officials before designation.
Clinton had vowed to veto it, but Hansen hopes the new Bush administration will be more receptive. He said it still allows a president to quickly protect a truly endangered site "but stops a rogue president from making large designations for political purposes."
In letters to Western officials, Norton asked, "Are there boundary adjustments that the department should consider recommending? Are there existing uses inside these monuments that we should accommodate? I would like to know your views on vehicle use, access to private inholdings, rights of way, grazing and water rights."
The department is focusing on monuments created only during the past two years of the Clinton administration — not on the 1.7 million-acre Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah, which was created in 1996.
That monument already has a management plan in place, and some trades were approved for swapping state-owned lands inside it. However, talk about allowing coal mining or oil exploration there has been renewed since President Bush said he would favor that in some monuments.
However, Norton sent letters to Utah officials anyway, including its congressional delegation and Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt — mostly to ask about the new Vermilion Cliffs and Grand Canyon Parashant national monuments just over the Arizona border, which affect several Utah ranching, timber and mineral operations.
Meanwhile, environmental groups are blasting the possibility of reworking monuments, especially to allow mineral exploration.
Keith Hammond, Washington representative of the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, told a press conference Wednesday, "While our nation needs a reliable energy supply, it is sheer folly to drill first in national monuments, in wilderness or in America's other special protected lands."
He added, "America has tremendous hydrocarbon reserves outside our national monuments and wilderness lands — why target these sensitive areas first for oil drilling?"
Meanwhile, Norton blasted the former Clinton administration for not planning how to fund the many monuments that it created.
"They didn't include needed funds to hire rangers to protect the monuments. They didn't even include money to put up signs so visitors can actually find the new monuments. Worst of all, they failed to effectively partner with local property owners, elected officials and other people whose lives were affected by the last-minute designations," she said.
E-mail: lee@desnews.com