Southwest Oregon's Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument Proposed to Double

Oregon’s two U.S. senators are asking that President Obama to double the size of the existing Cascade Siskiyou National Monument — from the original 66,000 acres designated by President Bill Clinton in 2000 — by adding another 65,000 of public land and includes approximately 34,000 acres of privately held timber and grazing land in two Southwest Oregon counties and a small portion of a California county as well.
Oregon Cattlemen’s Association Executive Director Jerome Rosa says we’ve gotten away from the original use of the Antiquities Act and in the case of this proposed expansion those ranchers who may be affected nor BLM officials were not told until right before the public hearing.
Rosa: “This was not a transparent process — we just got this just a few weeks ago and it was the first that anybody had heard of this. Yet it had apparently had moved and gone through quite a few channels and very well-known by environmental community but not by our ranchers and not by us. So there is a real transparency issue here. The government should not be allowed to follow through on this because this has not been a transparent process. That is one way we can possibly try and stop this Cascade Siskiyou Monument because due diligence and due process was not done on this.”