BCJ_SPRING 17 Digital Edition

END OF THE LINE
Browns in Browns. The
author (left) and friend Miles
with a double on healthy
trout from Browns Canyon
National Monument.
A MONUMENTAL SUCCESS
IN FEBRUARY OF 1907, Congress included a rider on mustpass
legislation to try and stop the ebullient President Theodore
Roosevelt from creating any more national forest preserves without
their approval. T.R. signed the bill a week later, but only after
placing 16 million more acres – areas now known as the Midnight
Forests – under management of the U.S. Forest Service.
The congressmen of the day probably wished they hadn’t
passed, just a year earlier, a different bill that specifically allowed
presidents to protect special places by executive action – the Antiquities
Act of 1906. Roosevelt had already used the act three
times for some of the archeological sites it was written to conserve.
But after Congress stripped him of the power to designate
forest reserves, he seized on this other method of landscape conservation.
By the end of his second term two years later, Roosevelt
had designated 15 more national monuments, ever to the chagrin
of the timber barons, copper kings and the congressmen they
more or less owned.
Since T.R.’s tenure, presidents have declared 111 national
monuments, often near the end of their time in office, often to
buck political gridlock. Often there has been a broad coalition of
on-the-ground support from sportsmen, recreationists, ranchers,
tribes and other user groups. Sixteen presidents – eight Republicans
and eight Democrats – have used their Antiquities Act authority.
President Jimmy Carter did it with Alaska’s Misty Fjords
National Monument. President George W. Bush did it with the
Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument, the largest
ever. President Barack Obama gave Roosevelt a run for his money,
using the Antiquities Act 34 times to create or expand monuments
and conserve nearly half a billion acres of land and water.
Even a century later, Congress is no less resistant to these presidential
proclamations. But for sportsmen who have sometimes
spent decades seeking protected area designation, it’s just good
to know their special place is safe. Colorado’s Browns Canyon of
the Arkansas River is one of those places, and Bill Dvorak is one
of those people.
“People have been working on [landscape conservation] here
for 40 years I suppose,” Bill said. “I think it was ’79 when the
wilderness study areas came out, something like 120,000 acres of
wilderness quality land. Over the years we had several wilderness
proposals. That kind of went nowhere.”
Bill owns Dvorak Rafting and Kayaking Expeditions and has
been guiding on the Arkansas River since 1985, along with his
wife, son and daughter. He is the president of the conservation -Sam Lungren, editor
group Friends of Browns Canyon and remembers a public hearing
in Salida, Colorado, where, out of 900 attendees, 95 percent were
in favor of protecting the canyon.
62 | BACKCOUNTRY JOURNAL SPRING 2017
Soon after the meeting, a promising wilderness bill sponsored
by that district’s Rep. Joel Hefly was derailed, Bill says, because
Hefly, then-chairman of the House Ethics Committee, chose to
indict then-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay on criminal conspiracy
charges.
“Because of that, they never let his bill come to the floor,” Bill
said. “We had every legislator in the state – House and Senate
both – everybody was behind it. But that squashed the effort.”
In an average year, more than 300,000 people visit Browns
Canyon between Buena Vista and Salida in Chaffee County,
generating an estimated $55 million for the area economy. The
narrow, technical chutes between towering walls of bulbous sandstone
create one of the most popular whitewater runs in the nation.
Guaranteed in-stream flows and intensive recovery efforts to
clean up old mine waste have created a Gold Medal trout fishery.
The rugged mountains sweeping upward to 10,000 feet offer outstanding
bighorn, elk and mule deer hunting opportunities.
On Feb. 19, 2015, at the behest of Colorado’s congressional
delegation and Chaffee County sportsmen, President Obama declared
21,587 acres as the Browns Canyon National Monument,
with grandfathered rights for hunting, fishing, livestock grazing,
horse riding, dog walking, OHV riding on designated routes and
other traditional uses.
Monument status is not static; in fact nearly half of our nation’s
national parks, including Grand Canyon, Zion, Arches and
Olympic national parks, were initially protected as national monuments.
These days, local sportsmen and conservationists often
see a monument as a step toward the wilderness area designation
they want to achieve – like the current effort in New Mexico’s
Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks National Monument.
No president has ever tried to abolish a national monument,
and several attorneys general have issued opinions asserting that
such a move would probably be illegal under the Antiquities Act.
Most modern legal scholars agree.
Theodore Roosevelt’s image is still evoked by a spectrum of lawmakers,
while many choose to ignore the man’s policy. He conserved
special places when there was little political will to do so.
He did it because those places were rapidly disappearing, and he
wanted to leave some areas for future generations of Americans
to hunt, fish and enjoy our country’s natural beauty. I hope our
government chooses to pay more than lip service to that legacy.
Learn more about the Antiquities Act and sportsmen’s
tenets for supporting monument designation in the
national monuments report on our website.
Know your limits: it’s the only way you can push
beyond them. Leupold ® . American to the Core.
Learn more about the optics and gear that goes
where others can’t at Leupold.com.
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