Under an order from President Trump, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke will report by Labor Day whether the federal government was justified in preserving land in the West as national monuments over the past two decades. Trump specifically questioned the creation of the 1.35-million-acre Bears Ears National Monument, saying it was created “over the profound objections of the citizens of Utah” in the final month of the Obama administration.
“The Antiquities Act does not give the federal government unlimited power to lock up millions of acres of land and water, and it’s time we ended this abusive practice,” Trump said during an 10-minute ceremony at the Interior Department headquarters. “That’s why today I am signing this order and directing Secretary Zinke to end these abuses and return control to the people — the people of Utah, the people of all the states, the people of the United States.”
Enacted by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1906, the Antiquities Act empowers the president to designate national monuments on federal land to protect “historic landmarks, historic and prehistoric structures and other objects of historic or scientific interest” on public land. The law says national monuments should be “the smallest area compatible with proper care and management of the objects to be protected.”
Trump’s executive order, applying to monuments designated since 1995 and covering more 100,000 acres, or 156 square miles, calls for Zinke to determine whether the boundaries should be smaller, if the monument truly has noteworthy features, and how the designation has affected logging, mining, oil and gas development or other activities that could occur under the government’s policy of multiple use of federal land.
The review could lead to recommendations to scale back or abolish monuments. A 1938 attorney general’s opinion said the Antiquities Act allows presidents to create monuments but not abolish them, said High Country News in a “fact-checking” that contradicts Trump’s account of the creation of Bears Ears. Trump called for a 45-day interim report on Bears Ears, while allowing 120 days for a final report on all the monuments under review.
Over the years, more than 100 monuments have been created. Two dozen are covered by the review, according to the White House. They range from the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah, designated by President Clinton in 1996, to the Sand to Snow National Monument in California, proclaimed by Obama in 2016. The list includes Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument, the largest marine conservation area in the world, stretching westward for hundreds of miles from the northwestern Hawaiian islands to beyond Midway Atoll.
Critics often say national monuments quash local economic development, although they may attract tourist and recreational visitors, an alternative source of revenue.
Trump credited Utah Sens. Orrin Hatch and Mike Lee as the leading proponents of the review, and described national monuments as “this massive federal land grab,” although the government already owned the land. Obama placed 265 million acres in national monuments “through the abuse of the monuments designation,” said Trump. “And it’s gotten worse and worse and worse, and now we’re going to free it up, which is what should have happened in the first place.”
In talking about Bears Ears, Sen. Hatch has echoed the Sagebrush Rebellion rhetoric of the 1980s, when local officials complained of heavy-handed federal management of Western lands. The takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon in early 2016 symbolized the continuing dispute between local landowners and federal land managers, and became a rallying point in a campaign for the federal government to cede millions of acres of land to state and local authority.
High Country News says debate over preservation of Bears Ears began in the 1930s, and that the Obama administration discussed the issue with Utahns for months before acting, including a public hearing attended by Interior Secretary Sally Jewell last July. Hatch says Obama acted unilaterally and ignored the views of local residents. High Country News says some residents of San Juan County, the site of the monument, supported the action, although a majority of white residents opposed it. Obama designated a smaller amount of land than was proposed and allowed grazing to continue, says the newspaper. “If anything, the tourist economy will get a boost, as monument status makes an already well-visited area more marketable.”
Two groups speaking for ranchers, the Public Lands Council and the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, said the Antiquities Act was being misused “to place heavy restrictions on massive swaths of land,” so they applauded Trump’s review. NCBA president Craig Uden said, “[T]o bring the act back to its original intent,” Congress should pass a law to require congressional approval of new monuments.