Trump's Move To Leave Millions Of Acres Unprotected Rooted In Old Land Battles

President Donald Trump’s executive order to review federal control of millions of acres is, for now, the latest salvo in a land-use war almost as old as the Old West itself.

Trump signed an executive order Wednesday calling on Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke for an unprecedented review of more than two dozen national monuments proclaimed by the last three presidents to protect huge swaths of open land from development.

Even though the land was protected under the 111-year-old Antiquities Act, it has been used by presidents in recent years to keep state and local governments from selling mineral rights or otherwise over-developing places of cultural or historic importance.

Much of the right-wing militia violence of the 1990s is an outgrowth of animosity between landowners, local governments, and some states which want to wrest control of federal lands. President Barack Obama, in particular, declared hundreds of thousands of acres as “national monuments” in the closing days of his administration.

Trump Eyes Vast Utah Expanse Protected By Obama

Trump said he was eager to change the boundaries of a 1.35-million acre national monument Obama declared in December in Utah, Bears Ears, and that he wanted governors and those living near these sites to have the ultimate say over how it’s managed.

He noted several opponents of recent Antiquities Act designations, including Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) and GOP Govs. Gary R. Herbert of Utah and Paul LePage of Maine, saying, “Today we are putting the states back in charge.”

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The 1993 siege by federal agents of the Branch Davidian sect near Waco, Texas, which killed 76 people; the siege a year earlier at Ruby Ridge in Idaho; and even the Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 people in 1995 all had their roots in rightist militants upset over alleged federal intrusion on land use.

Most recently, the armed standoff last year at an Oregon wildlife refuge has its roots in a similar 2014 standoff by many of the same participants at the Bundy family ranch in Nevada. The organizers in those cases were seeking an opportunity to advance their view that the United States Forest Service (USFS), Bureau of Land Management and other agencies are constitutionally required to turn over most of the federal public land they manage to the individual states.

Keystone Pipeline

The peaceful protests at the Keystone Pipeline in Nebraska were the flip side of a similar issue; Native American groups and environmental advocates trying to protect their open lands from environmental hazards.

Sen. Tom Udall, a New Mexico Democrat, questioned if it would be legal for Trump to rescind any federal monument status, and he pledged to “fight him every step of the way” if the president attempts to do so.

“This executive order is nothing more than a political move that will waste limited resources and unnecessarily add uncertainty for growing businesses and communities around these monuments, including two in New Mexico,” Udall told the Albuquerque Journal.

Image: Bureau of Land Management, Flickr