Trump aides look at shrinking at least 6 national monuments for mining, oil
Source: Washington Post
WP Exclusive
Trump aides look at shrinking at least 6 national monuments for mining, oil
Interior Department officials are considering scaling back the boundaries of national monuments in the West to encourage energy development on public lands.
April 24, 2025 at 6:00 a.m. EDT
The Toadstool Hoodoos in Kanab, Utah, in 2018. The site is in an area that was removed from Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument during the first Trump administration. (Bonnie Jo Mount/The Washington Post)
By Jake Spring and Dino Grandoni
Trump officials are analyzing whether to remove federal protections for national monuments spanning millions of acres in the West, according to two people familiar with the matter and an internal Interior Department document, in order to spur energy development on public lands.
Interior Department aides are looking at whether to scale back at least six national monuments, said these individuals, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because no final decisions had been made. The list, they added, includes Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni-Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon, Ironwood Forest, Chuckwalla, Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks, Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante — national monuments spread across Arizona, California, New Mexico and Utah.
Interior Department officials are poring over geological maps to analyze the monuments’ potential for mining and oil production and assess whether to revise their boundaries, one individual said. ... Such a move would build on President Donald Trump’s policies that aim to boost American energy and critical minerals production, which he says is vital to economic growth and powering artificial intelligence. Trump has declared a national energy emergency, established an energy council to fast-track resource development projects and sought to dismantle dozens of environmental protections.
The push would spark an intense legal fight over the right of a president to grant sweeping lands protections under the 1906 Antiquities Act — and take them away. In his first term, Trump became the first president in more than half a century to modify existing national monuments when he drastically shrank the boundaries of Utah’s Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante — only for President Joe Biden to reverse the cuts. ... In 2021, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. invited litigants to challenge how presidents of both parties have used the law to ban commercial activities in vast stretches of land and ocean.
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Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2025/04/24/trump-national-monument-reductions-mining-oil/
I'm not truncating the link, because the page loads for me when I access it via Google News. Usually, I hit a paywall.
= new reply since forum marked as read
What is this total fixation on minerals? Whoever put that in his feeble brain should be shot.
