THIS IS IMPORTANT!!!

Greg Walden  state Representative from Oregon will be holding a press conference

on the steps of the court house

in Medford

at 10:30am on

January 31.

This News conference will deal with the Antiquities Act.

 

This is the act that gives the president the power to just sign a paper to create a monument without it going through the Congress or the Senate.

 

Congressman Walden is going to present a bill to the House taking this power away from any serving president. Then the bill will go to the Senate for a vote.

This helps us if he can get it passed both the House and Senate. Our biggest fear is that our president has the power to declare the Siskiyou Crest National Monument into law as he goes out the door in 2 years.

 

All presidents like to leave a legacy, the

 Siskiyou Crest National Monument

would be President Obama’s legacy.

 

You are all invited to attend this press conference, and encouraged to do so. This is our chance to let Greg Walden see that we are supporting him in his effort to stop this unfair land grab in our area.

 

PNP Comment by Liz Bowen:   Earlier this month, I wrote about the proposed Siskiyou Crest National Monument in my column in the Siskiyou Daily News.
 

In doing more research, I found an article that ran in the Siskiyou Daily News on Aug. 4, 2009, where the Siskiyou County Board of Supervisors voted 4-1 to oppose the monument.

It is Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Center in Ashland, Ore. that is advancing the monument as a “land bridge,” which will create 600,000 acres of set-aside land.

Of that, about 300,000 acres are in Siskiyou County.

I agree with the reasoning behind the supervisors’ opposition. Siskiyou County is huge, and 62 percent is already federal land, mostly managed by Klamath National Forest.

Substantial portions are already set-aside as Wilderness, roadless, late successional reserves and other special designations for exceptional protection of the environment.

The Marble Mt. Primitive Area was upgraded from the 1930s designation of  “Primitive” in 1964 when Congress created the Wilderness Act. The Marble Mt. Wilderness is 241,744 acres large.

Then 20 years later, Congress passed the California Wilderness Act of 1984 and areas that were previously logged and had roads for other reasons were determined to be “preserved.”

So roads were taken out in the western range of mountains bordering Scott Valley and the Russian Wilderness was created. It has 12,000 acres.

At one time, about 10 years ago, U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer proposed that all of the Klamath National Forest should be preserved as Wilderness, which was an outrage to me as a Siskiyou County resident.

Public lands do not provide taxes.

The lands are a financial hindrance.

Timber harvesting, mining, cattle grazing and many recreational activities are not allowed in the National Forest already and Wilderness is an extreme designation of non-use.

Only an elite few are able to use the land – all under the guise of preserving pristine areas.

“National monuments do not promote the interests of local economies, public safety, private property ownership and the protection of local custom and culture,” stated the supervisors. I heartily agree.