The Trump administration is considering reducing the size of several national monuments in the West to open up more land for energy development, according to The Washington Post.
Officials at the Department of the Interior (DOI) are assessing whether to get rid of federal protections for at least six national parks covering millions of acres, the Post reported Thursday, citing an internal document as well as two unnamed sources familiar with the matter. Doing so would make it easier to develop and extract natural resources and energy from the relevant areas.
The monuments that Trump officials are reportedly eyeing for reductions include the Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni-Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon, Ironwood Forest, Chuckwalla, Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks, Bears Ears, and Grand Staircase-Escalante, according to the Post. Those particular parks are located in California, Utah, Arizona and New Mexico.
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Officials have been analyzing maps to figure out which areas may have reserves of resources available and where those deposits are relative to monument boundaries, according to the Post. If the administration follows through and amends the boundaries, it is likely to find itself in legal battles from challengers questioning its right to do so under the Antiquities Act of 1906.
During his first administration, President Donald Trump moved to cut down the size of the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante monuments in Utah, but the Biden administration subsequently rolled back those changes, according to the Post. Any potential move to shrink national monuments is likely to draw the ire of green groups and some tribal groups.
On the other hand, many conservatives in Western states consider the president’s ability to unilaterally take land off the table for resource development to be an example of federal overreach, according to the Post.
The Post obtained a DOI “strategic plan draft framework” that lays out the agency’s agenda, which reportedly includes evaluating national monuments to confirm that they are “assessed and correctly sized.” Other items on the list reportedly include boosting fossil fuel production, cutting protections for endangered species that have recovered, freeing up land in Alaska and other areas for resource development, cutting costs of grazing, opening land for housing construction and giving various landmarks back their “historic names.”
DOI spokeswoman Kathryn Martin told the Post that it is “beyond unacceptable that an internal document in the draft/deliberative process is being shared with the media before a decision point has been made.”
“We will take this leak of an internal, pre-decisional document very seriously and find out who is responsible,” Martin told the outlet. “The internal document is marked draft/deliberative for a reason — it’s not final nor ready for release.”
(Featured Image Media Credit: Screenshot/ ABC News)
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