Should part of Bandelier National Monument be given over to hunting?/NPS, Sally King
Editor's note: The following column on whether a portion of Bandelier National Monument in New Mexico should be opened to hunting comes from Frank Buono, a former Park Service assistant superintendent who has kept atop issues involving the national parks.
Four-thousand acres does not sound like much in a National Park System of nearly 85 million acres. It is a pittance; small potatoes; inconsequential. That is the number of acres U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-NM) wishes to open to hunting in the Bandelier National Monument of northern New Mexico.
Congress has authorized recreational sport hunting in the National Park System before, explained Shawn Benge, the acting deputy director of operations for the National Park Service. This is nothing unprecedented, he said, in testimony before a Senate subcommittee on March 4.
That is incorrect. Congress has indeed authorized recreational sport hunting in approximately 66 or 67 areas of the National Park System (and subsistence take of wildlife in several more in Alaska). But Congress, outside of Alaska parks, has NEVER before taken lands now closed to sport hunting in the National Park System and opened them to hunting.
That is precisely what Heinrich's bill would do and it is unprecedented. The 4,000-acre allowance for hunting is hidden in the bill Heinrich has introduced to rename Bandelier National Monument a "national park and preserve" (S.2924). It is within the "preserve," now closed to hunting as part of the Bandelier National Monument, that Heinrich proposes to allow hunting.
Bandelier in a Nutshell
Bandelier National Monument is a 34,000-acre area of the National Park System, proclaimed in 1916 by President Woodrow Wilson, enlarged by President Hoover in 1932, and transferred to NPS administration in 1933 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Bandelier was expanded by President Eisenhower in 1961. President Kennedy in 1963 both added and subtracted lands, resulting in a net reduction of over 1,000 acres. Congress designated wilderness of 23,000 acres in 1976, and also expanded the boundary that same year, incorporating the Canada de Cochiti to the south and the headwaters of the Frijoles Creek to the northwest. In 1997, Congress added a small administrative tract transferred from the Department of Energy and a larger tract, nearly 1,000 acres in size, in the Upper Alamo drainage.
Under NPS laws and regulations, Bandelier National Monument, and lands since the time of their subsequent inclusion in the national monument, have been closed to recreational sport hunting for decades, if not generations.
Other National Parks and Preserves
Yes, Congress has re-designated national monuments as "national parks and preserves" outside of Alaska. Great Sand Dunes (2000), Craters of the Moon (2002), and Oregon Caves (2014) come to mind. But in these cases, Congress ADDED to the existing national monuments lands transferred from the national forest system or Bureau of Land Management, on which hunting was already occurring. Wishing to maintain the status quo, Congress designated much of the land transferred from the national forest or BLM to the national monument as "national preserves" so EXISTING hunting could continue.This is not the what Heinrich's proposes. Heinrich proposes to take National Park System lands now closed to hunting and open them to hunting. This is without precedent outside of Alaska.
The Alaska Precedent
On December 1, 1978, President Jimmy Carter employed The Antiquities Act of 1906 to reserve the largest number of acres ever for numerous national monuments. He did so in Alaska. Carter acted quickly to cement the protected and reserved status of the lands that were only temporarily protected under section 17(d)(2) of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971. In October 1978 Congress adjourned without acting on proposed legislation to add recommended federal lands to parks, refuges and other national systems. Congress had a deadline to act by December 17, 1978.
With one exception (Kenai Fjords) all of Carter's proclamations assigning lands to the Secretary of the Interior as new national monuments authorized subsistence hunting but NOT recreational sport hunting (Aniackchak, Bering Land Bridge, Cape Krusenstern, Denali, Gates of the Arctic, Glacier Bay, Katmai, Kobuk Valley, Lake Clark, Noatak, Wrangell-St. Elias, Yukon Charley).
In 1980, Congress, whose hands had been forced by Carter's action, addressed the new monuments in Alaska in the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act. Congress elected to allow recreational sport hunting on much of the lands in Carter's proclamations where Carter had authorized only the subsistence take of wildlife. Congress titled these areas "national preserves." So, it can be said that Congress, prior to Heinrich's bill, has taken National Park System lands NOT open to recreational sport hunting and opened them by law to such conduct. But all comparison ends there. Carter's action was an emergency exigent action to which Congress properly responded under its plenary power in the Constitution's Property Clause to regularize Carter's emergency national monuments. There is no such circumstance motivating or justifying Heinrich's proposal.
Conclusion
If anyone has knowledge of an instance where Congress (outside of Alaska) has taken National Park System lands closed to recreational sport hunting and opened them, I would like to learn of that.
Congress can, if it so chooses, enact the Heinrich proposal. Congress can also designate any part of Yellowstone, Glacier, or Big Bend as open to hunting and retitle the open portions as “national preserves.” The question is not if Congress can do so. Of course Congress can.
The question is has this been done before?
The answer is that, outside of Alaska, whose circumstances were very peculiar to Alaska, Congress has never done this before.
The last question is this: Is it wise to begin unraveling the National Park System this way for the addition of such paltry hunting opportunities? Most of us who care about parks would say "NO." What is Heinrich thinking?
Comments
To answer Frank's question, I can think of one instance in which Congress allowed recreational hunting to an area of the National Park System in which hunting had not previously been permitted. When Hagerman Fossil Beds National Monument in Idaho was established on November 18, 1988, language in the enabling legislation was that used in most new park legislation. Section 303 of Public Law 100-696, Title III, states that: "The Secretary shall administer the monument established pursuant to this title in accordance with the Act entitled "An Act to establish a National Park Service, and for other purposes," approved August 25, 1916 (39 Stat. 535; 16 U.S.C 1 et seq.), as amended and supplemented." I was working at Great Basin National Park in neighboring Nevada at the time, and I recall hearing reports that the Idaho senators who had supported the HAFO legislation were mortified when they learned, after the legislation passed and was signed into law, that administration under the NPS Organic Act meant that there would be no hunting allowed. They vowed to correct what they saw as their error. They accomplished this about two years later, on November 5, 1990, with the passage of PL 101-512 (104 Stat. 1924). A provision in that law states: "that with respect to lands and waters under the jurisdiction of the Secretary within the Hagerman Fossil Beds National Monument, established by title III of Public Law 100-696, the Secretary shall hereafter permit hunting and fishing as well as maintenance of structures necessary to undertake such activities, including but not limited to duck and goose blinds on those lands within an area fifty feet in elevation above the high water level of the Snake River in accordance with otherwise applicable laws of the United States and the State of Idaho."
So, it has happened before outside of Alaska. For about two week shy of two years, Hagerman Fossil Beds National Monument was closed to all hunting. Then, a small portion of the monument upslope 50 feet from the Snake River was opened to recreational hunting, and this provision continues to this day.
Of course, none of this means that opening a portion of HAFO or Bandelier to hunting is a good idea. In the Bandelier proposal it sounds like the area opened to hunting would be re-designated as a National Preserve. That did not happen at Hagerman, where the hunting is permitted within a portion of the overall national monument.
All of the legislation referenced here, as well as the park brochure map that delineates the hunting area within the monument can be found on the park's website: nps.gov/hafo
Al Hendricks
All the more reasons, first, to stop the establishment of any and all of these precedents in their tracks from the very start and, second, to simplify NPS designations into fewer categories with less "weasel room" for mischief and the most stringent possible protections whenever and wherever possible (apply the "never negotiate with terrorists" principle).