Most opposed to proposal to scale back national monuments
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WASHINGTON – An Interior Department plan to review recently designated national monuments has drawn more than 1.4 million public comments, a “phenomenal” number that one advocate said he had not seen in 25 years of environmental activism.
The comments came in response to President Donald Trump’s order that Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke review the use of the Antiquities Act to create national monuments in recent decades, what the president called “another egregious abuse of federal power.”
But some activists worry that, despite the outpouring of comments on the proposal, administration officials may already have their minds made up.
Wayne Y. Hoskisson, the wilderness and public lands co-chair of the Utah chapter of the Sierra Club, said the Trump administration is acting under pressure from Republicans to take a harder tack on deregulation.
“I can’t imagine why anyone would be concerned about, say, overturning the Ironwood Forest in Arizona,” he said. “That seems like an incredibly appropriate designation for that area.”
The Ironwood Forest, near Tucson, was designated a national monument in 2000 using the Antiquities Act, a 1906 law that gives the president the authority to name national monuments to protect natural, cultural and archeological resources that might otherwise be endangered.