Press briefing by Secretary of Interior Bruce Babbitt

Press briefing by

Secretary of Interior Bruce Babbittand acting chair of the council

of environmental quality George Frampton

Thunderbird Lodge

Grand Canyon, Arizona

MR. FRAMPTON: Good afternoon. A little nicer view than the West

Wing. I'm George Frampton. I'm the Acting Chair of the White House

Council of Environmental Quality. And Secretary Babbitt and I are here to

basically answer questions you may have about the President's designation

this morning of three new national monuments and the expansion of a fourth

-- monuments that were recommended to the President in early December by

the Secretary.

Q One of the points that critics of this designation have made in

talking about Grand Canyon-Parashant is that they say a year ago you were

talking about protecting about a half-million acres, now it's double. Why

the big jump?

SECRETARY BABBITT: Well, the discussion about the Arizona monuments

that the President designated has been going on in public for quite some

period of time, and the exact acreage was put forward in my recommendation

to the President. In the case of the Agua Fria National Monument, the

acreage recommended was half of what we were originally looking at.

We originally, looking at the maps, thought that it made good sense to

draw a line from the Tano National Forest to the Prescott National Forest,

straight east-west above Black Canyon City, and that the monument would

then nestle in between the national forests. Now, we got out on the ground