It could happen any day now that President Biden will designate several new national monuments during the waning days of his lame duck presidency. We are currently tracking 10 national monument proposals that combined are larger than five million acres. To designate all of them would make this a lame duck land grab that rival the size of states like New Jersey, Hawaii, or Massachusetts.
Most monument proclamations fit on a few short pages of paper. Compare that to the body of laws, ordinances, and regulations that would otherwise govern the land mass of an entire state. Anyone who has ever signed their name to real estate transaction knows that even the sale of a fractional acre of land requires stacks of paperwork and reasonable negotiations between landowners. The transactions and policies that govern land policy are necessarily nuanced and complex, and for good reason. How land gets used is directly correlated to economic prosperity, national security, environmental health, and community strength.
This is why it makes no sense at all that an old law written to protect archaeological artifacts has evolved into an amorphous power grab with no discernible limits to control millions of acres.
One of our biggest active legal challenges is our lawsuit against the Biden Administration’s expansion of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase Escalante National Monuments. This September our legal team made their oral arguments in this challenge which is titled Dalton v. Biden in the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals. We encourage all of our supporters to listen to the 30 minute audio recording of these arguments. You will get to hear our team in action, and you will see why we think the days of presidents abusing the Antiquities Act are numbered:
If you only listen to a small part of the audio recording, we invite you to start at minute marker 25:30 where one of the judges on the panel asks the lawyer from the Department of Justice whether a president could designate all the federal land in the state of Utah as a national monument. The government lawyer couldn’t identify any limits to the Antiquities Act that would prevent a president from doing so.
We are still waiting for a ruling from the 10th Circuit, and we’re encouraged that Chief Justice John Roberts has expressed concern about the abuse of the Antiquities Act.
After seeing the monument management plans that were released earlier this year, it is clear that monuments are devastating for recreation access. The plan for the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument closes 1.2 million acres to motorized access – but don’t worry monument supporters insist you can still access these 1.2 million acres by foot. The Bears Ears plan will close nearly 600,000 acres.
While we are alarmed that Biden could designate an additional five million acres as monuments, we believe these lame duck, land grab designations would be the final straw. We believe these designations would elevate Antiquities Act reform to be a major priority of the incoming administration, and likely lead to the rescission of new monuments, shrinking old monuments, and passing laws that permanently limit future use of the Antiquities Act.
We encourage you to add your voice in opposition to these monument proposals by visiting NoLameDuckLandGrab.com. We need to send a strong message against these monuments to ensure that there are commitments to reverse the damage as soon as possible.
Help us Oppose Lame Duck Land Grabs
