U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner said Tuesday he was “encouraged” by comments from Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke about the future of Canyon of the Ancients, whose protected status as a national monument was put in question early last month as part of a broader federal review.
“It is currently not on our priority review list,” Zinke said in response to a question from Gardner during a Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing.
The site is on a list of 27 national monuments designated by former presidents and listed as being reviewed by the Interior Department as part of an executive order from President Donald Trump directing Zinke to take a hard look at national monuments greater than 100,00 acres and created since 1996.
There has been a month of speculation and anxiety about Canyons of the Ancients since it showed up on the list. The Interior Department did not elaborate on Zinke’s comments Tuesday afternoon.
“I don’t have anything further to announce on monuments at this time,” said Heather Swift, Zinke’s press secretary.
But Gardner found Zinke’s words promising.
“I’m encouraged Secretary Zinke stated today that Canyons is not currently on the department’s priority review list,” Gardner said in a written statement to The Denver Post. “I’ll continue to … do all that I can to protect Canyons of the Ancients.”
Bears Ears National Monument, in southeast Utah, has been at the center of the review process and the controversy surrounding it. Zinke last week recommended that Trump scale back Bears Ears, which former President Barack Obama gave federal protections last year just before leaving office.
Canyons of the Ancients, a 176,056-acre national monument with 6,000 ancestral Puebloan cliff dwellings and rock paintings, draws more than 30,000 visitors a year to rural Cortez. It was created by President Bill Clinton in 2000.
Gov. John Hickenlooper and U.S. Rep. Scott Tipton, R-Cortez — along with U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colorado — have been working alongside Gardner, a Republican, to advocate on behalf of the monument. All four sent Zinke letters last month asking that he protect Canyons of the Ancients.
“The designation of Canyons is an example of what the Antiquities Act was intended to do – protect cultural treasures while incorporating the historic use of the land into the management of the monument so that communities support and promote the designation,” a letter from Gardner and Tipton said.
A spokeswoman for Tipton, whose district includes the monument, said Tuesday that Zinke’s comments were “welcome news.”
Trump’s executive order directs the Interior Department to consider, among several things, the part of the Antiquities Act that requires monument designations not commit the federal government protect more land than is necessary.
It also asks the department to weigh whether the designation includes “historic landmarks, historic or prehistoric structures (or) other objects of historic or scientific interest.”
