By Thursday the Trump administration’s project of dismantling the public domain will burst into full bloom when Interior Sec. Ryan Zinke announces a wholesale reversal of more than a century of public lands protection through presidential designation of national monuments under Antiquities Act of 1908. No president since the act was passed under Theodore Roosevelt […]
By Jason Mark Sequoiadendron giganteum. That’s the scientific name for the giant sequoia: the mammoth trees found in California’s Sierra Nevada that are the largest organisms on Earth, and among the longest-lived. Biologists estimate that about half of all sequoias live in Giant Sequoia National Monument, a 328,000-acre preserve in the Southern Sierra Nevada established […]
Interior Sec. Ryan Zinke, who recently recommended a reduction in the size of the 1.35 million acre Bears Ears National Monument to President Trump, is advocating for more drilling and mining on public lands and waters. The former Montana Rep. told Reuters that the development of America’s protected federal lands could help the country become […]
Interior Sec. Ryan Zinke is recommending President Trump scale back portions of the Bears Ears National Monument, saying that the Antiquities Act should be used to protect the “smallest area” needed to cover important sites. Zinke’s recommendations, announced Monday, add fuel to the controversy over the Utah monument, which President Obama designated during his final […]
The Antiquities Act, which has been integral to building our nation’s public-lands legacy, is 111 years strong. Americans’ love of and support for our public lands remains strong, too. Support is strong despite attempts to transfer, sell off or carve up the lands that belong to all Americans, whether they live next door to a […]
A coalition of conservation groups and others announced Thursday that a historic number of comments and petitions of support have been submitted to the U.S. Department of the Interior in support of Bears Ears National Monument. Despite the entirely inadequate 15-day comment period ending on May 26, more than 685,000 comments in support of Bears […]
Looks like you’ll have to trust your map if you want to find the newly designated Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument in Maine. Gov. Paul LePage has refused to put up any official signs along the four main roads to the 87,500-acre preserve, which is on the list of 27 national monuments under Interior […]
An anti-public lands official in Utah said Interior Sec. Ryan Zinke has already made up his mind to repeal Bears Ears National Monument, a move experts say could be against the law. According to a report from E&E News, Zinke has already told some officials in Utah that he will recommend revoking Bears Ears National […]
By Mike Matz Eighty-one years ago, Franklin Roosevelt’s secretary of the interior, Harold Ickes, proposed a vast, four million-acre national monument for southern Utah. Over the ensuing decades, pieces of Ickes’ vision were realized in the establishment of Canyonlands and Capitol Reef national parks, Glen Canyon National Recreation Area and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. Last […]