If Utah Rep. Celeste Maloy gets her way, presidents will no longer have the authority to designate or modify the size of national monuments.
Maloy, R-Utah, joined Rep. Mark Amodei, R-Nev., on Thursday to introduce the Ending Presidential Overreach on Public Lands Act, which would strip a president’s sole authority to create or change the size of monuments and hand that power over to Congress.
The bill would replace the section in the Antiquities Act of 1906 that empowers presidents to preserve historic land, landmarks and “objects of scientific interest” on federal lands with one that stipulates creating or extending such monuments can only be authorized by Congress.
“Congress, not the executive branch, has jurisdiction to make decisions on public land,” Maloy stated in a news release. “Congress trusted presidents with a narrow authority to declare national monuments in the Antiquities Act.
“Unfortunately, " she added, “presidents have continued to abuse that narrow authority to designate millions of acres of land in Utah and across the West without proper Congressional oversight. My bill aims to rebalance the powers between Congress and the executive branch and restore transparency and accountability to these designations.”
Condemnation and commendation
The proposed legislation is drawing swift condemnation from environmental and conservation groups, who note it comes several days after a new poll by the Grand Canyon Trust found Utahns overwhelmingly support a president’s ability under the Antiquities Act to designate national monuments and also favored keeping the Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears national monuments.
“Unfortunately, just days into a new Congress, Utah politicians have renewed their long-running attacks on one of the most important and successful conservation tools: the Antiquities Act,” Travis Hammil, the Southern Utah Wilderness Association’s D.C. director, stated in a release. “The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance will rally our supporters from across the nation and will work to defeat this short-sighted bill.”
Conserve Southwest Utah Executive Director Holly Snow Canada said the proposed legislation would effectively repeal the Antiquities Act that has been the “cornerstone of conservation efforts” for more than a century.
“This legislation would strip away an essential tool used by presidents across party lines to protect irreplaceable landscapes, habitats and cultural resources — including many in Utah that are central to our identity, economy, and way of life,” Snow Canada said.
Conversely, the bill enjoys strong support from Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, according to his spokesperson, Robert Carroll.
“There’s a long history of presidents ignoring the plain language of the Antiquities Act and creating massive, landscape-scale monuments that harm the public’s ability to access their public lands,” Carroll told The Tribune via email. “The governor has consistently argued that if we need a national monument, it should be created by Congress, not the president. The congressional process by necessity includes input by local communities and residents whose lives and livelihoods are most impacted.”
Latest skirmish in longstanding battle
The squabble is the latest in a longstanding battle over national monuments, which has raged ever since 1996 when President Bill Clinton created the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument on 1.7 million acres in southern Utah.
President Barack Obama’s designation of Bears Ears as a national monument in 2016 and President Joe Biden’s creation of the Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni — Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument in northern Arizona in 2023 further inflamed tensions. So did Biden’s decision in 2021 to restore the 2 million acres to Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante that President Donald Trump stripped out during his first term in 2017.
Garfield County Commissioner Leland Pollock, an ardent supporter of the bill, argues Democratic presidents’ unbridled passion for tying up public lands and ignoring the input of people who live there are reason enough to rein them in through amending the Antiquities Act. Otherwise, he added, the future looks bleak for rural Utah counties and residents.
“If you fast-forward 50 years, everything is going to be a monument … and there won’t be any public land left other than a monument. That’s horrible policy because it takes away the multiple uses on our public lands that everybody enjoys.”
