What to know about Trump’s move to shrink the size of 2 national monuments in Utah

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Revisiting actions from his first term that were reversed, President Donald Trump announced Monday that he will scale back the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments in Utah.

The Republican’s actions undo proclamations from his predecessors who deemed the sites worthy of preservation under the Antiquities Act, a 1906 law that gives presidents power to protect areas of cultural, historic or scientific interest.

 

Trump made similar moves during his first term, but many were reversed by his successor, President Joe Biden.

The back-and-forth underscores how national monuments have become a flashpoint over the management of public lands. Trump is not the first president to scale back monuments.

Here’s a look at U.S. national monuments and presidents who have created or reshaped them:

How many national monuments have Biden and Trump acted on?

Trump made only a handful of Antiquities Act proclamations during his first term, including two that reduced the size of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante monuments. The sprawling Utah monuments include natural attractions and sites that are sacred to some Native American tribes.

Trump also dedicated the 340-acre (138-hectare) Camp Nelson National Monument in Kentucky — a Union Army hospital, supply depot and recruiting center for African American troops during the Civil War.

Biden’s first use of the act was to restore the size of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase Escalante monuments. He cited their spiritual, cultural and prehistoric legacy.

Biden established 10 new monuments, among them the site of a 1908 race riot in Springfield, Illinois, and a monument in honor of Mamie Till-Mobley and her son, Emmett, a Black teenager from Chicago who was tortured and killed in 1955 after he was accused of whistling at a white woman in Mississippi. He also established monuments in the mountains of California and on a sacred Native American site near the Grand Canyon.

Is it legal to shrink or eliminate monuments?

Environmental groups have argued the Antiquities Act is a one-way road that allows presidents to create but not undo monuments. But there’s a history of presidents taking actions similar to Trump’s.

Since 1912, presidents have issued more than a dozen proclamations that diminished monuments, according to a National Park Service database.

In Washington state, Woodrow Wilson reduced the acreage of Mount Olympus National Park — now Olympic National Park — by roughly half. Harry Truman did the same for Santa Rosa Island National Monument.

Dwight Eisenhower was most active in undoing proclamations of his predecessors as he diminished six monuments, including Arches in Utah, Great Sand Dunes in Colorado and Glacier Bay in Alaska, which have all since become national parks.

How is a national monument different from a national park or forest?

Unlike national parks, which are established by Congress, most of the more than 100 national monuments were created by presidents.

They’re governed by one or more agencies such as the National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management or National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

A designation provides sweeping protections not just for significant geological features or artifacts but also for the surrounding landscape, banning drilling, mining and new construction. Backers downsizing the Utah monuments said the protective boundaries stretched too far and hindered mining for critical minerals.

The U.S. Forest Service was established in 1905 and has jurisdiction over some 300,000 square miles (775,000 square kilometers) of land, including 154 national forests and 20 national grasslands in 43 states.

Under federal law, the forest lands are managed for renewable resources — including timber, clean water, wildlife habitat, forage for livestock and recreation. But many forests overlay valuable minerals and parcels can be leased by private companies for the extraction of nonrenewable resources such as oil, gas and coal.

Some forests contain specially designated wilderness areas where human activities are sharply curtailed. Even bicycles and hang gliders aren’t allowed because they are mechanical.

National parks have some of the most stringent rules against development under a 1916 law known as the Organic Act. The law says the fundamental purpose of the parks is to conserve their scenery, nature, history and wildlife and “leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.”

How long have presidents been creating monuments?

President Theodore Roosevelt signed the Antiquities Act after a generation of lobbying by educators and scientists who wanted to protect sites from commercial artifact looting and haphazard collecting by individuals. It was the first law in the U.S. to establish legal protections for cultural and natural resources of historic or scientific interest on federal lands.

On Sept. 24, 1906, Roosevelt used it to designate a national monument at Devils Tower — a giant rock butte in eastern Wyoming that later gained fame as the focus of the movie “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.”

For Roosevelt and others, science was behind safeguarding Devils Tower. Scientists have long theorized about how once-molten lava cooled and formed the massive columns that make up the geologic wonder. Narratives among Native American tribes, who still conduct ceremonies there, detail its formation.

All but three presidents have used the act to protect unique landscapes and cultural resources.

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Brown reported from Billings, Mont.