Poll shows majority of Arizonans are against eliminating national monument lands

A majority of Arizonans are against eliminating national monument lands as well as selling off public lands, a new poll shows.

Echelon Insights conducted the survey for The Wilderness Society from Aug. 18-22, polling 918 likely Arizona voters, including oversamples of Republican and Republican-leaning voters and voters in Arizona’s 6th Congressional District. The margin of error is plus or minus 4.3 percentage points statewide and 5.5 points for the Republican sample.

It found that 83% of voters were opposed to eliminating some national monument lands in Arizona, with 61% being strongly opposed. That included 71% of Republicans, 86% of independents and 96% of Democrats.

Voters’ opposition went beyond national monuments as 76% were also against national public lands in the Grand Canyon State being sold off. The poll noted that 84% preferred that national public lands be kept public and protected while conservation and managed recreational and economic uses be kept balanced.

Protecting the state’s public lands was also not viewed as a partisan issue with 93% of voters stating that leaders in both political parties should want to defend them.

The poll comes after President Donald Trump significantly reduced the size of two Utah national monuments, the Bears Ears National Monument and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, in July. The two sites were part of six included in an order Trump gave the Department of the Interior to review recently created monuments. There were two Arizona monuments included in the evaluation. They were Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni-Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument and Ironwood Forest National Monument.

“The national monument status is there to protect antiquities and it gives presidents superpowers when it comes to declaring these monuments,”  former U.S. Rep. Matt Salmon explained on KTAR News 92.3 FM’s The Mike Broomhead Show Monday.

The survey found that 84% and 72% of voters, respectively, said protections of Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni National Monument and Ironwood Forest National Monument should remain the same.

“The Antiquities Act sometimes is abused, you’re supposed to use it to protect the smallest area necessary to protect that item that you are trying to protect,” Michael Cravens, advocacy and conservation director for the Arizona Wildlife Federation, said. “A decade ago or more, our organization actually opposed the designation of that monument because it was twice the size it currently is now. Second time around, that size was cut in half. We thought it was much more reasonable.”

Cravens added that it is a misnomer that people are locked out of lands that are designated as national monuments.

“We worked very hard with [Kyrsten] Sinema’s office at the time to make sure that human element was intact within the monument,” Cravens said. “We worked to keep hunting and angling in the monument. We worked to keep wildlife management in the capable hands of our Arizona Game and Fish Department.”

He emphasized the poll shows the general public, not just hunters and anglers, care about protecting national monument and public lands.

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