||| FROM THE SALISH CURRENT |||
Lopez Island residents Tom Reeve (second from left) and Asha Lela (directly behind the president) were in the room where it happened on March 25, 2013, when President Barack Obama designated five new national monuments including the San Juan Islands site. (Official White House Photo by David Lienemann)
An 11:30 a.m. celebration on March 25 at the Friday Harbor Grange will commemorate both the anniversary of the proclamation and the brand-new Record of Decision and Approved Resource Management Plan (RMP), which was eight years in the making. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) director Barry Bushue and other BLM officials will be attending, said monument manager Brie Chartier.
“This is pretty exciting. If you look across the bureau at these plans, this is the first one to get completed in three-and-a-half years,” observed BLM Spokane District manager Kurt Pindel in announcing at the February meeting of the Monument Advisory Committee (MAC) that the management plan had been finalized and signed on Jan. 26.
Process, process, process
It has been a lengthy process for the San Juan Islands monument. Well before the presidential proclamation in 2013, community members were advocating for protection of these special areas.
Tom and Sally Reeve have been involved in trying to protect the BLM lands on the south end of Lopez Island for more than a decade. These parcels include Iceberg Point, Point Colville, Watmough Bay and Chadwick Hill; contiguous parcels totaling over 500 acres, half of all the monument acreage.
An outdoor advocate, Tom serves on the National Board for the Trust for Public lands and the Washington Wildlife Coalition.
”We have explored these lands on the south end of Lopez many times over 30 years; alone, with our kids, with friends and with visitors,” he said. “Everyone comes away from those visits better for it. I wanted to help to ensure that those experiences were available to everyone, including future generations.”
In 2010, Sally and Tom created a website and have kept it up-to-date with clear, easily understandable information and thorough documentation of the history of the monument designation, including the advocacy that led up to it, summaries of the process and the issues and active links to documents and comment letters.
“We realized these special places were appearing in guide books and articles about the San Juan Islands and that visitation would increase,” Sally said. “We saw bike tracks over reindeer lichen, tents pitched on a cultural burial site with beer cans thrown about, side trails trampling fragile plants. These lands and the community that cared about the lands deserved better.”
They hoped that the additional federal protection would provide the funding and staff needed to allow for public access in a manner respectful of the places and the cultural heritage.
Protection as a priority
Sally credited others in the Lopez community, calling out “those who had contributed much over many years to ensure these lands would be protected,” and said she and Tom “were honored to be asked to help in the pursuit of gaining permanent conservation protection for the lands.”
Tom admitted to having had concerns. “I’d seen legislation introduced in every session of Congress and in national party platforms calling for the federal government to divest itself of lands that were small and hard to manage,” he said. “I didn’t want these lands to be sold to private ownership, making a tiny dent in the federal deficit while causing a big loss to the island community. The monument designation ensures that BLM’s top priority in these landscapes is to protect them.”
Tom was appointed to the initial MAC which first met in October 2014. The RMP process officially kicked off in March 2015. After his first term ended in 2017, he applied again and was reappointed in 2022.
Between 2015 and 2019, BLM sought input on management issues, created draft alternative plans for analysis, received comments on those drafts, and published a Final Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) and Proposed RMP of over 900 pages.
A 30-day “protest period” (federal terminology for all comments at that point) drew 236 “protest” submissions. All were rejected, except for the Washington governor’s, which carried additional weight as a “consistency review” by the State of Washington.
Adding to the lengthy federal National Environmental Policy Act process of a complete EIS and alternative actions analysis in the Proposed RMP, there were notable delays in completing the RMP due to the suspension of MAC meetings.
Due to a 2017 moratorium issued by Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke, a Trump appointee, all BLM Advisory Committees — over 200 of them — were suspended to have their charters reviewed, Tom explained.
Animals such as this mother and baby seal use rocks throughout the San Juan Islands for haulouts. Around 1,000 acres of islands and rocks are protected within the San Juan Islands National Monument. (Salish Current file photo ©)
MAC meetings stopped between 2018 and 2022, and the terms of several MAC members expired. The committee did not have enough members for a quorum and were unable to formally discuss the proposed RMP during the review period.
A concerned San Juan County Council wrote in a letter to BLM in June 2020, “The MAC has been unable to meet in two-and-one-half years because of a lack of a quorum due to appointments not being made in a timely manner.” They urged BLM to fill the appointments as soon as possible, making sure to fill the seats as intended, representing different stakeholders.
Today, all seats are filled, but more community members will be needed to serve on the MAC in the coming years. There are three terms ending in May this year, five ending in October 2024 and four ending in May 2025
A vision and a plan
“The San Juan Islands National Monument provides an awe-inspiring experience that connects people to a flourishing, intact landscape, rich in natural, cultural, and historical features,” asserts a vision statement developed by the MAC and adopted by BLM.
The Proposed RMP reflected the multi-use philosophy mandated for BLM. Most BLM lands are very large parcels in the western U.S., used for grazing or mining. Dispersed camping is one of the uses generally allowed for recreation on BLM Lands. In 2018, Zinke issued an order to increase recreational opportunities on BLM properties. This followed a 2017 order to increase opportunities for “hunting, fishing, recreational shooting, and wildlife conservation.”
Traditionally, neither camping nor target shooting took place on BLM lands in the San Juan Islands, but the Proposed RMP opened the possibility for these activities.
In 2018, Zinke issued an order to increase recreational opportunities on BLM properties. This followed a 2017 order to increase opportunities for “hunting, fishing, recreational shooting, and wildlife conservation.”
Everything has a caveat. Such proposals always come loaded. The good part is that while saving the environment from one type of development, it’s procuring it for another. When you give a place such a designation you “up” the entity involved within the worldwide tourism domain (they’re on the list). In this county “multi-use” generally means more tourism promotion, and therefore more tourism. Such land use policies beg the question of which form of recognition serves the county best in the long run… more tourism, or more development.
“Once you define a place the people will come.” Historian South Burns.