Page A-14
Illinois Valley News, Cave Junction, Ore. Wednesday, August 30, 2017
Weather Oregon girds for lawsuit if Trump
Watch
Cave Junction
Thursday, Aug 31
Sunny
High --91 Low -- 62
shrinks national monument
Andrew Selsky
Associated Press
Friday, Sept 1
Sunny
High -- 102 Low -- 67
Saturday, Sept 2
Sunny
High -- 101 Low -- 69
Sunday, Sept 3
Sunny
High -- 97 Low -- 67
Monday, Sept 4
Mostly Sunny
High -- 97 Low -- 68
Tuesday, Sept 5
Mostly Sunny
High -- 100 Low -- 69
Wednesday, Sept 6
Sunny
High -- 98 Low -- 66
Following are the high & low temperatures,
and rainfall recorded at The End of the Road
in O’Brien by Cheryl Johnson:
August
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
High
93.8
85.7
88.7
77.5
92.9
92.7
84.7
August Rain: 0.00”
YTD Rain: 116.54”
Low
50.2
60.2
60.8
55.8
51.0
54.9
53.6
SALEM, Ore. (AP) — Oregon’s
attorney general said Friday she is
ready to take legal action if the Trump
administration tries to shrink a national
monument in this Pacific Northwest
state.
Oregon Gov. Kate Brown and other
political leaders were seeking a copy
of a draft report Friday on 27 national
monuments that Interior Secretary Ryan
Zinke gave to President Donald Trump
this week, the governor’s press secretary,
Bryan Hockaday, said in a telephone
interview. So far, no copy has been made
available, he said.
Among the 27 monuments created
by past U.S. presidents that were under
review is the Cascade-Siskiyou National
Monument, which covers 112,000
acres (45,730 hectares) of mountains,
forests and rivers along Oregon’s border
with California. In the last days of his
administration, then President Barack
Obama added about 48,000 acres (19,425
hectares) to the monument to protect its
biodiversity.
Late Thursday, Brown said she’s
deeply concerned about the monument’s
future and that she suspects “Oregon’s
public lands are in the crosshairs of the
federal administration.”
“In the face of new threats to
Oregon’s public lands and our natural
resources, I call on Attorney General
Ellen Rosenblum to consider all legal
options necessary to defend our Oregon
values, and to be ready to challenge any
overreach of executive power,” Brown
said.
Rosenblum said neither Trump
nor Zinke has the power to unilaterally
revoke or reduce the monument.
“It is a truly special part of Oregon,
and one that I will continue to fight for.
We stand ready to take appropriate legal
action,” she said in a statement.
Zinke has said that none of the
monuments he’s examined will be
rescinded, though he said he’ll push for
boundary changes on a handful.
On a visit to the Cascade-Siskiyou
National Monument in July, Zinke
expressed doubts that much scientific
study went behind the drawing of
its boundaries. He stressed that the
Antiquities Act of 1906, which authorizes
a president to create a monument, limits
their size “to the smallest area compatible
with proper care and management of the
objects to be protected.”
“Nobody knows how exactly the
boundaries were made,” Zinke said.
“Going back, were the boundaries made
on the basis of science, best guess? And
so those are the things I’m reviewing.”
But in a report published in 2011,
a group of scientists said many of the
region’s key species relied on habitats
that were outside the monument’s
boundaries as they existed then, where
they faced threats from logging, grazing
and development, the digital magazine
Undark reported in January. The smaller
monument also didn’t provide continuous
protection across elevation gradients,
which is important for species migration,
especially amid global warming, said the
scientists, who supported the expansion.
Created by President Bill Clinton
in 2000, Cascade-Siskiyou is the first
monument set aside solely for the
preservation of biodiversity.
It is situated where the Klamath,
Siskiyou, and Cascade mountain ranges
converge, creating a unique mixing of
diverse habitats that are home to species
that co-exist there but would normally
live in separate ecoregions. Species that
live there include pygmy nuthatches,
kangaroo rats, rough-skinned newts and
northern spotted owls, according to a
monument pamphlet.
___
Follow Andrew Selsky on Twitter at
https://twitter.com/andrewselsky.
(Photo by Dan Mancuso, Illinois Valley News)
Monday, Aug. 21 eclipse from the Illinois Valley News parking lot in Downtown Cave Junction.