Summary
On Monday, President Trump announced the dramatic reduction in protected federal land in Utah, including cutting Bears Ears National Monument (established by President Obama) by about 85 percent, and cutting Grand Staircase-Escalante (established by President Clinton) by about half of its current size. In the discussion that follows, Stanford Law’s Greg Ablavsky discusses the law and national monuments.
Can you give us the cliff notes explanation of the Antiquities Act?
Congress enacted the Antiquities Act in 1906 in response to widespread looting of historic sites located on public lands, particularly in the Southwest. The Act authorizes the President “to declare by public proclamation” that certain public lands are “national monuments,” which confers on them a protected legal status that forecloses certain uses of the land—particularly resource extraction.
How was it used by Presidents Obama and Clinton to set up these national monuments?
Both Obama and Clinton used the Antiquities Act in the final days of their presidencies to set aside Bears’ Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante in southern Utah respectively. Legally, this transformed these federal lands into national monuments, a status enjoyed other protected sites like Devil’s Tower in Wyoming, Muir Woods here in the Bay Area, or even the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor.
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