Donald Trump issued an Executive Order requiring the Department of the Interior to determine whether or not to shrink or otherwise modify existing national monuments across the country. The Order is reported to require the Department of the Interior to review large landscape national monuments designated through use of the Antiquities Act since 1996. The Bears Ears National Monument in Utah will receive special attention.
In anticipation, Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune issued the following statement:
America’s parks and public lands are not in need of corporate restructuring. We should not be asking which parts of our history and heritage we can eliminate, but instead how we can make our outdoors reflect the full American story.
There is no need for a review to demonstrate what families across the country already know first-hand — national monuments provide tangible health, natural, and economic benefits. Protected outdoor spaces drive the outdoor recreation economy which supports 7.6 million jobs and generates $887 billion in consumer spending each year. National monuments and public lands are vital both for the history they preserve and the future they offer.
Contrary to the Trump administration’s thinly veiled hopes, this review will reveal what studies, surveys and polls have consistently found across the country — a deep, widespread appreciation for our parks, monuments, and other public lands, and a popular belief that they should continue to exist.”
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