With Trump, A Full-Scale Assault on Protections for U.S. Public Lands

"With a series of actions – including proposals to de-authorize recently created national monuments and open environmentally sensitive lands to fossil-fuel development – the Trump administration is moving to overturn long-standing U.S. policies on protecting the nation’s public lands."

"The battle over President Donald Trump’s efforts to roll back heightened protection for large swaths of federal lands is now focused on the Bears Ears National Monument, a 1.35-million-acre tract on the red rock landscape of southeastern Utah. Carved out of territory owned by the federal government and created largely at the behest of Native American tribes because of tens of thousands of sacred sites there, Bears Ears is the main reason Trump signed an executive order requiring the Interior Department to review 27 national monuments to see if there is a way to fully or partially undo them.

But while legal experts say that revoking federal protection for these national monuments is unlikely, conservationists, environmentalists, and outdoors enthusiasts warn that the Trump administration and its allies are already moving decisively to make dramatic changes in the federal government’s management of public lands.

These include efforts to slash funds for managing federal lands, cutting budgets for the acquisition of new protected areas, allowing large-scale fossil fuel development on public lands where resource extraction is now prohibited, eliminating citizens groups that advise officials on stewarding federal lands, and considerably weakening the Endangered Species Act, which could lead to more resource extraction and economic activity on public lands."

Jim Robbins reports for Yale Environment 360 May 30, 2017.