But Kristen Brengel, senior VP of govt affairs at the #NationalParks #Conservation Association, noted Roosevelt himself used the #law to #protect the huge swath of #land that later became #GrandCanyon National Park.

“He stood on the rim of the Grand Canyon & said he was going to protect it, & then he did,” she said.

*#Conservatives* in Western states especially have long seen the president’s power to unilaterally set aside land as an example of federal overreach, w/many viewing it as a burdensome restriction on #mining & #drilling.

…During his confirmation hearing, Interior Secretary #DougBurgum said the #AntiquitiesAct is meant only for small, “Indiana Jones-type archeological” sites.

Signed into #law by President Theodore Roosevelt, the #AntiquitiesAct of 1906 gives presidents vast powers to #protect #lands & #waters through the creation of #NationalMonuments. But the law is quiet on whether presidents can remove designations set by their predecessors.

The Bureau of Land Management administers ~17k square miles of national monuments in the West….

Other performance metrics include removing #protections for #EndangeredSpecies that have *recovered* & restoring “historic [racist] names” to #landmarks. On his first day back in office, #Trump stripped #NorthAmerica’s tallest mountain of its #Indigenous name, #Denali, & restored its previous title, Mount McKinley.

The draft strategic plan spells out the #Trump admin’s #Interior Dept’s priorities through 2030, which include increasing production of #FossilFuels, opening #lands in #Alaska & elsewhere to #minerals extraction, reducing grazing costs & trying to “release” federal holdings for housing #development.

While #Interior ofcls declined to comment about any potential monument review, the approach was outlined in a “strategic plan draft framework” shared w/ WaPo. One of the dept’s “potential performance measures” going forward, acc/to the document, will be making sure #NationalMonuments are “assessed & *correctly* sized.”

#Conservation & #Indigenous advocates argue that there is little demand to develop those resources & that the #NationalMonuments represent vital #ecological & #sacred cultural reserves that local communities fought for years to #protect.

The push would spark an intense #legal fight over the right of a president to grant sweeping #lands #protections under the 1906 #AntiquitiesAct — & take them away. In his 1st term, #Trump became the 1st president in more than half a century to modify existing #NationalMonuments when he drastically shrank the boundaries of Utah’s Bears Ears & Grand Staircase-Escalante—only for Pres Joe #Bidento reverse the cuts.

#PublicLands #conservation #wildlife #FossilFuels #ClimateChange #Environment #law

#Interior aides are looking at whether to scale back at least 6 #NationalMonuments, said these individuals…. The list, they added, includes Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni-Ancestral Footprints of the #GrandCanyon, Ironwood Forest, Chuckwalla, Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks, Bears Ears & Grand Staircase-Escalante—national monuments spread across #Arizona, #California, #NewMexico & #Utah.

#Trump officials are analyzing whether to remove federal #protections for #NationalMonuments spanning millions of acres in the West, according to two people familiar with the matter and an internal #Interior Department document, in order to spur #energy development on #PublicLands.

#land #conservation #habitats #ecosystems #wildlife #FossilFuels #ClimateChange #EnvironmentalLaw #law

@Geotripper if you see this you can cut and paste them to your post and reach a bigger audience and definitely add any extra hashtags.
#Science
#History
#bucketlist
#BucketListTravel
#dinosaur
#fossils
#FossilFriday on Monday
#USA
#Geology
#NationalParks
#StateParks
#NationalMonuments
#AllTheThings

#DoItOnce

#OnceInALifetime
#Outdoors
#hiking
#Hike
#College