A coalition of local landowners has recently dropped plans to ask county officials to sue the federal government.

The Southwest Colorado Landowners Coalition, a local group adamantly opposed to the proposed Canyons of the Ancients National Monument west of Cortez, is planning to fight the likely designation by lobbying Congress to overturn it.

Members of the group, who oppose any new federal protection of the McElmo Dome area, have said in the past that they were considering filing a lawsuit against the government to protest the monument. A similar lawsuit was filed against Clinton and Babbitt by the Utah Association of Counties for declaring the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southern Utah in 1996.

Rick Keck, a member of the landowners coalition board, said the group had decided to research other ways of fighting the monument designation.

"We [the landowners coalition] wouldn’t be filing a lawsuit anyway," said Keck. "In order for it to do any good it would have to come from the county. The most effective, cheapest way to fight this is to try and follow the law in FLPMA [Federal Land Policy Management Act of 1976]."

FLPMA stipulates Congress can enact a concurrent resolution to revoke or modify the monument designation without presidential approval. Congress has 90 in-session days to pass the resolution.

Although the act technically gives Congress the right to revoke the monument, U.S. Senate sources said Wednesday that the act is considered to be ineffective because most members of Congress would not support revoking the monument.

"We are eminently familiar with FLPMA," said Josh Penry, a spokesman for U.S. Rep. Scott McInnis (R-Co). "No one has ever questioned that Congress has had the wherewithal to do it [overturn a monument]. It’s just a matter of political viability; once a national monument is put in place by the president it’s nearly politically impossible for Congress to overturn it."

Keck admitted that there are some obstacles to the landowners’ plan, but still thinks that it is a politically viable option.

"If Clinton does make this a monument, there is nothing we’re going to be able to do about this until the next Congress," said Keck. "A lot of people say that the [political] atmosphere is just right for this."

The objections of the landowners coalition to any federal protection for the area were instrumental in forcing Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell and Rep. McInnis to scrap companion bills that would have designated the 164,000 acres as a National Conservation Area.

The group is encouraged that the House Resources subcommittee recently voted to block funding of four new national monuments.

But Penry said McInnis fully supports funding the monument.