Department of the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2024

Floor Speech

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Mr. BENTZ. Mr. 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 you can see from this 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 there understand the value and importance of protecting the land. Why? Because many are second, third, and fourth generations who have 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 this 2.5 million acres. Almost 200 miles of the 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 designations.

Much of the 2.5 million acre 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 rancher families.

These ranchers, in addition to being an important part of the economy, provide first responder protection for recreationists, hikers, hunters, and, when wildfire breaks out, 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, 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, now pending in the Senate.

Thus, there is no reason for a national monument designation. The pending Senate bill, when finalized, plus the Federal protections already in place, as shown in the chart beside me, are designed to protect this important area. A top-down monument designation will not protect the land, and in fact, such a designation will attract tens of thousands of people to this fragile area, resulting in destruction of the very things a monument purports to protect.

It is a sad commentary on those that preach cooperation and nonpartisanship that one of the environmental NGOs that was at the resolution 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 that same 2.5 million acres as a national monument, ignoring the years of work and time invested by those who actually live in, on, and around this land.

Mr. Chair, my amendment is designed to stop the use of Federal moneys for a monument designation, thus allowing the locally driven public land protective process to continue.

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

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Mr. BENTZ. Mr. Chair, I want it known for the record that we had a vote in Malheur County some years ago on whether or not to have a monument, and 90 percent of the voters said no to the monument.

The purpose of the amendment is focused on Malheur County, Oregon, alone. The purpose of including the entire county is that the county itself and the work we are doing in this other bill addresses the county. There is no reason to worry about the amendment being overly broad.

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

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