President Trump was in Utah today for the signing of a rollback on federal land overreach. He’s basically giving land back to the states that Clinton and Obama took for the federal government.
The local leaders have applauded this move by Trump but the environmentalists are freaking out:
President Trump signed two proclamations Monday shrinking federally protected lands in Utah in the largest rollback of national monument designations in history.
The Bears Ears National Monument will shrink to 220,000 acres from its current 1.5 million-acre size, and the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument will be cut in half to about 1 million acres, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said.
Trump’s decision to roll back federal protections marks an unprecedented use of presidential power to shrink the national monument designations made by two of his predecessors.
Trump said previous administrations overstepped their authority in declaring vast tracts of western lands off limits to use and development, abusing the “purpose, spirit and intent” of a century-old law known as the Antiquities Act. That law requires presidents to limit the monument designation to “the smallest area compatible with proper care and management of the objects to be protected.”
“These abuses of the Antiquities Act give enormous power to faraway bureaucrats at the expense of people who work here, live here, and make this place their home,” Trump said at the Utah State Capital in Salt Lake City. “Because we know that people who are free to use their land and enjoy their land are the people who are most determined to preserve their land.”
Read more: USA Today
