Interior Secretary to make proposal on Bears Ears monument in test for protected land
http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN1910JM
By Valerie Volcovici | WASHINGTON
U.S. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke is due to make a recommendation to the White House on Saturday on whether to rescind or resize Utah's Bears Ears monument, setting the tone for the administration's broader study of which lands protected by past presidents should be reopened to development.
The 1.35 million-acre monument, created by former president Barack Obama at the end of his term and named after its iconic twin buttes, is the first of 27 national monuments that will be evaluated by the Department of the Interior after President Donald Trump ordered the review in April.
The deadline for Zinke's recommendation on Bears Ears is June 10, though an Interior Department official did not say when the recommendation would be made public.
Trump had argued that previous administrations "abused" their right to designate national monuments under the U.S. Antiquities Act of 1906, and put millions of acres of land, mainly in western states, off limits to drilling, mining, logging and ranching without adequate input from locals.
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