Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke visited Katahdin this week as part of a systematic review of more than two dozen national monuments being considered for delisting. He’s acting under the executive order of President Trump, who has called the creation of the monuments “abuses.” The president has set his developer’s eye on public property, promising to “free it up” and threatening that “tremendously positive things are going to happen on that incredible land.”
Other targets for possible delisting include Basin and Range in Nevada, Canyons of the Ancients in Colorado, Grand Canyon-Parashant in Arizona, Craters of the Moon in Idaho and Giant Sequoia in California. A few of those locations might arguably have some economic potential beyond their incalculable worth as tourist destinations. The oil and gas industries have begun circling around the culturally significant Bears Ears National Monument in Utah, for example, with hopes of fracking it. Many of the monuments also serve as battlefields in the longstanding ideological war between federal power and states’ rights.
But such arguments over cash or ideology make no sense in the case of the Maine woods. Far from being a federal land grab, the more than 87,000 acres of forest and waters around Mount Katahdin were donated to this country by private owners, along with $40 million earmarked for the land’s preservation and care in perpetuity. The land’s status as a public monument has already begun to return considerable economic value to the local tourist economy.
