By Matthew Brown | Associated Press via Denver Gazette
BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — Lawyers for President Donald Trump’s administration say he has the authority to abolish national monuments meant to protect historical and archaeological sites across broad landscapes, including two in California created by his predecessor at the request of Native American tribes.
Colorado has nine national monuments, which include Canyons of the Ancients National Monument, Chimney Rock National Monument, Colorado National Monument, Browns Canyon National Monument, Camp Hale-Continental Divide National Monument, Dinosaur National Monument, Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument, Hovenweep National Monument, and Yucca House National Monument.
A Justice Department legal opinion released Tuesday disavowed a 1938 determination that monuments created by previous presidents under the Antiquities Act can’t be revoked. The department said presidents can cancel monument designations if protections aren’t warranted.
The finding comes as the Interior Department under Trump weighs changes to monuments across the nation as part of the administration’s push to expand U.S. energy production.
Sen. Martin Heinrich of New Mexico, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Natural Resources Committee, said that at Trump’s order, “his Justice Department is attempting to clear a path to erase national monuments.”
Trump in his first term reduced the size of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase Escalante National Monuments in Utah, calling them a “massive land grab.” He also lifted fishing restrictions within a sprawling marine monument off the New England Coast.
Former President Joe Biden reversed the moves and restored the monuments.
The two monuments singled out in the newly released Justice Department opinion were designated by Biden in his final days in office: Chuckwalla National Monument, in Southern California near Joshua Tree National Park, and Sáttítla Highlands National Monument, in Northern California.
The Democrat’s declarations for the monuments barred oil and natural gas drilling and mining on the 624,000-acre (2,400-square-kilometer) Chuckwalla site, and the roughly 225,000 acres (800 square kilometers) Sáttítla Highlands site near the California-Oregon border.
Chuckwalla has natural wonders including the Painted Canyon of Mecca Hills and Alligator Rock, and is home to rare species of plants and animals like the desert bighorn sheep and the Chuckwalla lizard. The Sáttítla Highlands include the ancestral homelands of the Pit River Tribe and Modoc Peoples.
All but three presidents have used the 1906 Antiquities Act to protect unique landscapes and cultural resources. About half the national parks in the U.S. were first designated as monuments.
But critics of monument designations under Biden and Obama say the protective boundaries were stretched too far, hindering mining for critical minerals.
Deputy Assistant Attorney General Lanora Pettit wrote in the Trump administration opinion that Biden’s protections of Chuckwalla and the Sattítla Highlands were part of the Democrat’s attempts to create for himself an environmental legacy that includes more places to hike, bike, camp or hunt.