The federal government helped make the islands a national monument. But locals worry a Trump-era focus on making public lands productive could be their undoing.
For at least 10,000 years, this cluster of 450 green-on-gray islands has drawn Native people who followed the salmon and seasons. In the 1860s, English and American soldiers shared one island for a decade in a border standoff triggered by the death of a trespassing pig. Today, tourists and wanderers tugged by the cobble beaches and quiescent waters arrive on ferries and floatplanes by the thousands, searching for wild peace.
On April 1, 2013, U.S. Department of the Interior brass gathered there to celebrate with state and tribal leaders and community members. About a thousand acres of forests, meadows, beaches, three lighthouses and dozens of islands had been rechristened a national monument — preserved, they contended, for generations to come.
Now, though, that monument is yet another point of tension for the Trump administration’s controversial public lands policies, leaving some who fought for decades to protect the San Juans concerned that federal management may harm the ecologically sensitive islands irreparably.
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