Reid ‘confident’ Obama will designate Gold Butte a national monument

[struggle4progress]

Posted August 18, 2016 - 6:37pm
Updated August 18, 2016 - 11:08pm
By MICHAEL SCOTT DAVIDSON
LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL

U.S. Sen. Harry Reid said Thursday he’s “confident” that President Barack Obama will designate Gold Butte as a national monument before leaving office in January ...

Such a designation would be the president’s second in Nevada, and would widen federal protections to maintain Gold Butte’s historic significance ...

The property is home to the desert tortoise, a historic mining town and ancient Native American petroglyphs and artifacts ...

... with defiant Bunkerville rancher Cliven Bundy and some of his anti-government militia backers in jail, it seems like a prime opportunity for the Obama administration to step in. In April 2014, Bundy and law enforcement had an armed standoff after federal officials began rounding up Bundy’s cattle that were grazing in Gold Butte ...

http://www.reviewjournal.com/news/nevada/reid-says-he-s-confident-obama-will-designate-gold-butte-national-monument

[struggle4progress]

1. National Monument "will happen before the first of the year"

Jud Burkett
6:28 p.m. MDT August 18, 2016

... The Senate Minority Leader, along with Nevada Democratic Rep. Dina Titus, William Anderson, former chairman of the Moapa Band of Paiutes, and representatives from the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority and the Nevada Resort Association, held a press conference on Thursday to announce the release of a new report detailing damage done over the past year at Gold Butte near Mesquite.

Reid told reporters and supporters of the effort to provide greater protection to Gold Butte that he would continue to push President Obama to designate Gold Butte as a national monument and that “it is going to happen before the first of the year.”

Reid, who introduced legislation in 2013 that would have designated Gold Butte as a National Conservation Area, said the only reason Gold Butte hadn’t already received greater protection was because “Republicans hate public lands.”

Gold Butte is an area of about 350,000 acres of public lands that sits between the Overton Arm of Lake Mead National Recreation Area and the Grand Canyon-Parashant National Monument just west of Mesquite. Most of the area is currently designated as an Area of Critical Environmental Concern in order to protect the habitat of endangered desert tortoise and bighorn sheep, along with significant cultural resources in the area like petroglyphs, historic mining sites and pioneer-era artifacts ...

http://www.thespectrum.com/story/news/2016/08/18/reid-gold-butte-national-monument-happen-before-first-year/88973730/