President Donald Trump is planning to sign an executive order on Wednesday ordering a review of national monument designations going back 21 years, according to multiple media reports.
The order directs the U.S. Department of the Interior to look at designations dating back to Jan 1, 1996, which means more than 50 national monuments named by three presidents could be up for review. A White House official told The Washington Post on Monday that Trump wants to make sure his predecessors have not abused the federal law allowing such designations.
National monuments are historic sites or geographic areas — like Bears Ears National Monument in Utah or Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument in Maine — that have been granted special federal protections. While only Congress can designate new national parks or wilderness areas, the president can unilaterally declare a national monument under the Antiquities Act of 1906.
President Barack Obama’s designation of Bears Ears last December spurred Trump’s decision to review more than two decades of national monuments, according to The Salt Lake Tribune. Protecting the 1.35 million-acre site as a monument incited controversy in Utah, with opposition from ranchers and some lawmakers.
The Interior Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment from HuffPost.
Conservation groups have condemned the impending executive order as an attack on U.S. public lands.
“Eliminating or shrinking the 55 national monuments designated during the last 21 years would short-circuit the will of local residents, hunters, anglers, business owners and recreationists who campaigned, in some cases for decades, for these monument designations,” the National Wildlife Federation said in a statement.
Losing protected areas could reduce the habitats for numerous wildlife species, the federation said, and would be a devastating blow to the outdoor recreation industry.
“The most troubling fallout would be the beginning of the dismantling of our nation’s outdoor heritage, built over more than a century,” the group said.
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