Trump aides look at shrinking at least 6 national monuments for mining, oil

Washington Post

24-04-2025

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.
The law limits presidents to protecting 'the smallest area compatible with the care and management,' Roberts wrote. 'Somewhere along the line, however, this restriction has ceased to pose any meaningful restraint.'
Conservation and Indigenous advocates argue that there is little demand to develop those resources and that the monuments represent vital ecological and sacred cultural reserves that local communities fought for years to protect.
'They opened up Grand Staircase under the previous [Trump] administration and the coal market did not rush in, the oil and gas market did not rush in, nobody rushed in,' said Tracy Stone-Manning, who led Interior's Bureau of Land Management under Biden. 'There are plenty of minerals elsewhere. This is about an ideological battle.'
While Interior officials declined to comment Wednesday about any potential monument review, the approach was outlined in a 'strategic plan draft framework' shared with The Washington Post. One of the department's 'potential performance measures' going forward, according to the document, will be making sure monuments are 'assessed and correctly sized.'
The draft strategic plan spells out the Interior Department's priorities through 2030, which include increasing fossil fuel production, opening lands in Alaska and elsewhere to mineral extraction, reducing grazing costs and trying to 'release' federal holdings for housing development.
Other performance metrics include removing protections for endangered species that have recovered and restoring 'historic names' to landmarks. On his first day back in office, Trump stripped North America's tallest mountain of its Indigenous name, Denali, and restored its previous title, Mount McKinley.
Referring to the internal strategic plan, Interior spokeswoman Kathryn Martin said it was 'beyond unacceptable that an internal document in the draft/deliberative process is being shared with the media before a decision point has been made.'
'We will take this leak of an internal, pre-decisional document very seriously and find out who is responsible,' she added. 'The internal document is marked draft/deliberative for a reason — it's not final nor ready for release.'
Signed into law by President Theodore Roosevelt, the Antiquities Act of 1906 gives presidents vast powers to protect lands and waters through the creation of national monuments. But the law is quiet on whether presidents can remove designations set by their predecessors.
The Bureau of Land Management administers about 17,000 square miles of national monuments in the West, an area twice the size of New Jersey.
Conservatives in Western states especially have long seen the president's power to unilaterally set aside land as an example of federal overreach, with many viewing it as a burdensome restriction on mining and drilling.
'What we saw under the prior administration was a clear disregard for the legal obligation to balance multiple uses on federal lands, placing conservation above all else, enacting unwarranted land withdrawals and 180-degree reversals of fully approved projects — all of which handed China a competitive advantage on minerals,' Rich Nolan, head of the National Mining Association industry group, said in a statement.
'This administration clearly understands that conservation and responsible resource development can proceed together and is driving a return to reason and balance,' Nolan added.
During his confirmation hearing, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said the Antiquities Act is meant only for small, 'Indiana Jones-type archeological' sites.
But Kristen Brengel, senior vice president of government affairs at the National Parks Conservation Association, noted Roosevelt himself used the law to protect the huge swath of land that later became Grand Canyon National Park.
'He stood on the rim of the Grand Canyon and said he was going to protect it, and then he did,' she said.