What is federally protected land for?
The Trump administration is treating it as plunder. The Antiquities Act saw it as a bearer of stories and wonders.
Deep in the Sonoran Desert, construction crews are blasting through a hill on the Arizona-Mexico border to set the foundation for a 30-foot-high steel bollard fence. This hill, which contains ancient human remains and artifacts, is sacred to members of the Tohono O’odham Nation who live near it. It sits among 33,000 biodiverse acres that were established as Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument in 1937 and have been designated by the United Nations as an International Biosphere Reserve since 1995.
Meanwhile, the Interior Department has released final plans to allow for drilling, mining, and grazing on large sections of federal land in Utah that were part of Bears Ears National Monument and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument until 2017—when the department vastly reduced the size of each monument. This land, which contains cultural artifacts, dinosaur fossils, and ancient rock art, is considered sacred by several Native American nations.
Neither of these shifts in land use is against US law. The Antiquities Act of 1906, which allows public lands such as Bears Ears and Grand Staircase to be designated as national monuments, also allows the executive branch to redefine their boundaries. And the Real ID Act of 2005 permits the federal government to waive archaeological protections, tribal consultation requirements, and environmental rules in cases of national security. The Trump administration evoked such a waiver before beginning the border wall construction in Organ Pipe.
