President Trump on Wednesday signed an executive order directing the Interior Department to review the Antiquities Act and monuments created via it by the last three presidents/BLM photo of Bears Ears National Monument

President Trump, sounding as if he's ready to transfer federal lands back to the states, on Wednesday signed an executive order directing the Interior Department to review national monuments designated by the last three presidents, going back to 1996 when President Clinton established the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah via his authority under the Antiquities Act.

"Today I'm signing another executive order to end another egregious abuse of federal power, and to give that power back to the states and to the people where it belongs," the president said during a signing ceremony at the Interior Department. "The previous administration used a 100-year-old law known as the Antiquities Act to unilaterally put millions of acres of land and water under strict federal control. Eliminating the ability of the people who actually live in those states to decide how best to use that land.

"Today we're putting the states back in charge," President Trump added.

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said the executive order would not abolish any monuments and does not weaken any environmental regulations, but is designed to review how the Antiquities Act has been used.

"Let's be clear. The Antiquities Act grants the president the authority to declare historic landmarks, historic and prehistoric structures, and other objects of historic or scientific interest," the secretary said. "To be sure, the Antiquities Act has been an effective tool for preserving some of our greatest treasures for our generations to come.

"The act also specifies, in law, the president to designate the smallest area compatible with proper care and management of the objects to be protected. Despite this clear directive, smallest area too often has become the exception rather than the rule."

Secretary Zinke noted that when President Theodore Roosevelt, whom he's frequently mentioned as his conservation idol, designated Devils Tower National Monument in Wyoming he set aside just 1,200 acres. 

"Yet in recent years we've seen single monuments span tens of millions of acres," he added. "In some cases, monument designations have placed public lands off limits for grazing, fishing, mining, multiple use, and even outdoor recreation."

Secretary Zinke charged that the act in recent years has been used as a "tool of political advocacy rather than public interests. And it's easy to see why designations in some cases are viewed negatively in local communities that are impacted most."

Opponents viewed the order as an attack on public lands and quickly denounced it.

“Trump and the anti-public-lands zealots in Congress are plotting to destroy some of the country’s most stunning landscapes and cultural treasures,” said Randi Spivak, director of the Center for Biological Diversity’s public lands program. “They couldn’t care less how much Americans treasure these iconic places. Their goal is to hand our public lands over to corporations to mine, frack, bulldoze and clear-cut till there’s nothing left to dig up.”

U.S. Rep. Raúl Grijalva noted that the order comes as some Republicans in Congress, including House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Rob Bishop (R-Utah), called on the president and the Interior secretary to unilaterally wipe out or shrink Utah’s Bears Ears National Monument and other national monuments around the West.

“Elections have consequences, and if President Trump is uninterested in joining the long line of his predecessors who identified and preserved new national monuments, that is his decision," the Arizona Democrat said. "If the only monuments Donald Trump wants are hotels, so be it. But the elections in 1996, 2000 and 2008 had consequences as well, and the national monuments established by those presidents are not subject to Donald Trump’s whims.

“Attempting to wipe national monuments off the map with the stroke of a pen would be illegal and unpopular, and this review will show as much. If done in good faith, this review will lead President Trump and Secretary Zinke to see these wonderful places as the American people see them: as sources of national pride and engines for local economic development."

David Yarnold, president and CEO of the National Audubon Society, also criticized the order, saying "(B)lowing up more than 100 years of bipartisan tradition to rob our kids of their natural legacy is shameful and sad.

"These are places Americans hold in their hearts, and this is just a mean-spirited, dangerous, political game the President is playing with America’s national monuments,” Mr. Yarnold said Tuesday evening.

“Birds depend on public lands and waters as places to breed in the spring or ride out the winter. Each President since Teddy Roosevelt has used the Antiquities Act to protect extra special places. And until today, no President has initiated such a broad assault on the conservation legacy of those before him.”

Staff at the Center for Biological Diversity said the executive order could potentially impact 27 national monuments that combined encompass more than 1 billion acres, places such as the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument and Bears Ears National Monument in Utah as well as monuments in vast ocean areas in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. California, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico and Nevada have the most national monument acreage in the country under threat. (See a state-by-state list of the national monuments threatened by Trump’s order.)

“Trump and the anti-public-lands zealots in Congress are plotting to destroy some of the country’s most stunning landscapes and cultural treasures,” said Ms. Spivak. “They couldn’t care less how much Americans treasure these iconic places. Their goal is to hand our public lands over to corporations to mine, frack, bulldoze and clear-cut till there’s nothing left to dig up.”

There are conflicting legal opinions on whether a president can rescind a national monument designation. Past presidents have, however, reduced the size of some monuments.

• President Eisenhower reduced the reservation for Great Sand Dunes National Monument by 25 percent. (He reduced the original 35,528-acre monument by a net 8,920 acres.)
• President Truman diminished the reservation for Santa Rosa Island National Monument by almost half. (The original 9,500-acre reservation by Franklin Roosevelt was diminished by 4,700 acres.) 
• Presidents Taft, Wilson, and Coolidge collectively reduced the reservation for Mount Olympus by almost half, the largest by President Wilson in 1915 (cutting 313,280 acres from the original 639,200-acre monument). 
• The largest percentage reduction was by President Taft in 1912 to his own prior reservation in 1909 for Navajo National Monument. (His elimination of 320 acres from the original 360-acre reservation was an 89 percent reduction.)

Rep. Bishop said the executive order "sends the powerful message that communities will no longer take a back seat to out-of-state special interest groups. I’m pleased to see President Trump recognize long-standing abuses of the Antiquities Act. It was created with noble intent and for limited purposes, but has been hijacked to set aside increasingly large and restricted areas of land without public input.

“I applaud the Trump administration’s clear commitment to do what past administrations refused to do, actually talk to real people who live in the area. This EO is not the end of the story, we will work the Trump administration and our communities to get this right.