A Lone Arizona Rancher Lookin' to Fence Biden's Executive Pen

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It hasn’t been just gas stoves, car exhaust, and menthol cigarettes affected by the power of the Biden bureaucratic pen, although those are some of the marquee items. They get the big billing because those decisions impact a ton of people and boatloads of jobs.

The smaller, flashier decisions no one pays attention to get POTATUS good press from his special interest groups. But, sadly, there usually are not enough folks affected by them, or they’re not wealthy enough to cause a fuss, so whatever the deleterious results of the executive action might be, you never hear about it. And rarely is it made right. The administration simply doesn’t have to bother.

In June of last year, I wrote about a proposed Bureau of Land Management rule that would fundamentally change how 245 MILLION acres of government land were managed.

In the time honored Democratic tradition of “Depends what your definition of ‘is’ is,” the Bureau of Land management is proposing to restructure what the definition of “use” is. The BLM’s proposed rule for “Conservation and Landscape Health,” released for public comment on April 3d, would like to define “conservation” as a “use” within the strictures of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA)

Well…huh.

What’s that all about? Depends on whose slant you read. This is from a Nevada piece on environmentalists/conservationists v ranchers

A proposed rule by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) looking to put conservation on equal footing with other public land uses — such as oil and gas leases, solar energy development, grazing and mining — represents a potentially seismic shift in how millions of acres across Nevada are managed.

It was, in essence, proposing a big old BLM land and control grab to stymie any further fossil fuel development and restrict grazing rights.

Golly Nell, do they hate cows.

The Biden Admin’s proposed Conservation and Landscape Rule puts virtually all 244 million acres of federal land into permanent “conservation” status i.e economically inactive.

These 244 million acres provide over $200 billion in economic activity in 11 western states.

— US Oil & Gas Association (@US_OGA) June 15, 2023

In almost a year of review, nothing much has changed except tweaking the definition of “conservation” in the rule. BLM’s announced it’s going to finalize it shortly.

Take that, you whiners.

The Bureau of Land Management will publish a final rule soon allowing the nation’s public lands to be leased for environmental protection, a Thursday news release from the Interior Department said.

The rule, which both proponents and detractors say marks a shift in the agency’s focus toward conservation, directs land managers at the agency to identify landscapes in need of restoration and to create plans to fill those needs.

It also creates two new types of leases focused on protecting natural areas. The BLM already leases parcels of land for extractive industries including energy development, mining and livestock grazing.

The rule is likely to set off a conflict in Congress, where Republicans immediately on Thursday renewed their criticism of President Joe Biden’s conservation policies.

In a deviation from the March 2023 draft rule that proposed a new category of conservation leases, the final rule will allow two new types of leases: restoration and mitigation.

All in the name of global boiling and Science™.

…“As stewards of America’s public lands, the Interior Department takes seriously our role in helping bolster landscape resilience in the face of worsening climate impacts,” Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said in a statement.

“Today’s final rule helps restore balance to our public lands as we continue using the best-available science to restore habitats, guide strategic and responsible development, and sustain our public lands for generations to come.”

The thing is, there’s been plenty of pushback for this, and there will be going forward. Oil and gas associations, the companies themselves, ranchers, and Western elected officials are all arrayed against the forces at work in the White House and their sleight-of-hand, dictatorial penmanship. BLM’s interpretative ruling faces a good fight right up to the election.

And hopefully, a quick death shortly thereafter in a Republican administration.

But sometimes, POTATUS goes it alone. He doesn’t bother funneling his dirty work through his bureaucracy. He blithely signs proclamations like a modern but equally impaired George III handing out land grants in Kan-Tuck-Ee for service to the crown.

Actually, that’s hugely unfair to George – he was known for being an amiable fellow and truly sharp before his brain blew out. Not a soul has ever said that about POTATUS, having always had a reputation as a bloviating dolt.

Since 2022 – that’s only a shade over a year and a half’s worth of time – Biden has used his pen and something called the “Antiquities Act” to set aside 5 separate “National Monuments” created out of whole cloth and encompassing about 1.5 MILLION acres.

Since 2022, President Biden has used the Antiquities Act to create five national monuments, collectively spanning more than 1.5 million acres of federal land. While these proclamations are ostensibly aimed at preserving areas of historic or archaeological importance, they often come at the expense of established laws and local economies.

The American Forest Resource Council has rightly challenged this executive overreach by calling on the Supreme Court to review the Antiquities Act. Council President Travis Joseph says many Americans are “concerned about implications of presidents having unfettered authority to indefinitely suspend or cancel the operation of federal law through the Antiquities Act proclamation.”

Those of us who know about it? You bet we’re “concerned.” More people should know about it and get to be concerned as well.

The largest of these magic wand wavings occurred in Arizona, where Biden yanked damn near a million acres out from underneath the few people who lived there, as well as possibly imperiled our national security, to create the poetically named “Ancestral Footprints National Monument.” In doing so, he stretched the power vested in the Antiquities Act beyond all legal boundaries as specified by the act itself.

…In August 2023, Biden issued a proclamation turning 917,618 federal acres in northern Arizona into the Ancestral Footprints National Monument by wielding the power of the Antiquities Act, a law intended for the protection of archeological sites or landmarks and their immediate, surrounding acreage.

Biden dropped a blanket of government regulation on every inch of the Monument, an area 150,000 acres larger than Yosemite, and 75,000 acres bigger than the Grand Teton National Park and Great Smoky Mountains Park put together. Biden’s proclamation covers landscapes, species, and objects—named and unnamed—within all 917,618 acres, including plateaus, canyons, tributaries, remnants of homes, storage buildings, pottery, tools, other physical remnants of human habitation, 50 species of plants, groundwaters that flow into the Colorado River, geological features, cliffs, faults, deserts, grasslands, woodlands, forests, riparian vegetation, and a variety of endangered species.

There’s a rancher named Chris Heaton whose family has been working those “landscapes” continuously for six generations, on their own land, and in partnership – as many ranchers do – with the federal lands that surround their own. In one fell swoop, Biden has taken his heritage and living away.

…“Normal ranching is now gone here, and that’s what my family has practiced for decades,” Heaton insists. “Overnight, we’re not allowed to disrupt or destroy objects, both known and unknown, on the Monument. We literally don’t know all the objects because some are listed and some are not, yet they have associated criminal penalties. This is like putting someone in a game and expecting them to play by the rules—without telling them the rules.”

On a mix of private land and acres leased from Arizona and the Bureau of Land Management, Heaton, 37, runs cattle on 48,603 acres now overlapped by the Monument. He has three federal grazing permits and 47 private water rights.

But he’s not taking it lying down. Heaton is suing. Quite honestly, when you look at the Antiquities Act itself and what’s happened with successive modern presidents, it’s about time someone tried to put a lid on the imperial proclamations.

…Congress approved the Antiquities Act to allow a president to protect specific locations in tight crosshairs, evidenced by congressional debate on whether monuments should be limited between 320 to 640 acres. (Congress kept the power to create big-acreage national parks to itself, having started with the establishment of Yellowstone in 1872.)

At passage of the Antiquities Act, the text allowed a president to “reserve as a part thereof parcels of land, the limits of which in all cases shall be confined to the smallest area compatible with proper care and management of the objects to be protected…”

Over the next 120 years, the “smallest area” ballooned to millions of acres, and “objects” expanded to ecosystems. Since 1906, successive presidents have used the Antiquities Act to cordon off staggering swathes of land—roughly 800 million acres in total.

Turns out, the race for land in U.S. history never ended, with Uncle Sam still leading the scramble—never mind the law or Constitution. In recent decades, multiple presidents have vastly increased acreage claims for national monuments. Jimmy Carter; 55 million acres. Bill Clinton; 5 million acres. George W. Bush; 215 million acres. Barak Obama; 554 million acres (mainly via two marine monuments).

…Heaton, via his lawsuit, asks glaring questions: “Does the law not matter? Does the will of the people not matter? Do the reps, senators, state legislators, county boards, and resolutions not matter? One president gets total control and the people and elected officials mean nothing?”

When I said Biden had possibly imperiled our national security with his decree? I was talking about uranium mining. Nothing critical, just a nice-to-have item, right?

…This land has some of our country’s richest uranium deposits. While current mining operations continue, Mr. Biden’s decision makes future uranium mining operations impossible. This not only disregards local economic interests, but also exacerbates our dependence on Russian uranium to keep our nuclear power plants running.

If only there were strategic thinkers among Biden’s toadies instead of emotive morons.

The Pacific Legal Foundation is representing Heaton pro bono. This will be a hugely important test of the limits of presidential power when Congress has set pretty clear parameters.

…The president has no authority to unilaterally withdraw millions of acres of land and forbid people from using those lands for the natural resources they contain. Exceeding the limits of the Antiquities Act to do so is simply an abuse of presidential power.

Yet courts are typically deferential to the president in challenges to national monument designations. When the Supreme Court declined to hear a previous PLF case, Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association v. Raimondo, Chief Justice John Roberts expressed concern over the president’s ever-expanding power under the Act.

If the president can designate a one-million-acre landscape as an “object,” under the Act’s sparse delegation, then there is no meaningful limit to how much land the president can rope off from productive use.

“Ranching, mining, or logging—the government wants to control all of it or shut it down,” says rancher Chris Heaton. “That’s why presidents in the past, and Biden now, are willing to ignore the law.” https://t.co/QQ6SnmHop1

— U.S. Farm Report (@USFarmReport) May 1, 2024