"Last month, President Trump signed an executive order calling for the Department of Interior to review 56 of the most recently designated national monuments. These national monuments, designated under the 1906 Antiquities Act, aim to protect lands with natural, historic or scientific significance.
Trump vows to do something that has never been done before, kill protection for these significant places. The current review could open the door to transferring these lands out of the national public trust, and into state, private, or individual hands.
Preservation evokes economic insecurity in areas of the West historically dependent upon resource extraction, however the economic diversification that national monuments create offers a solution to economic anxiety...."
Read the full article here: http://www.sltrib.com/opinion/5332924-155/op-ed-coal-is-a-dead-man
Signed by Alexander Lee, Ph.D., and Sarah Rogers, faculty members of the Environmental Studies Program at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and by environmental studies students Kristina Cowell, Becca Ingwers, Jordan Erdie and Kenny Prior.