Interior Releases More of Leaked List of Potential National Monuments

The Interior Department has released the rest of a partially leaked document listing potential sites for new national monuments, but the move did nothing to quell Republican accusations that the Obama administration is plotting to lock up public lands. House Republicans in February received a leaked copy of pages 15 through 21 of a document that details 14 Western sites potentially eligible for national monuments designation under the Antiquities Act of 1906, a law that allows the president to create new monuments without congressional approval. The newly released pages of the document detail the Bureau of Land Management's goals for expanding its National Landscape Conservation System. The agency considers up to 140 million acres of land -- more than half of the 264 million acres it manages -- as "treasured lands," the document says. The document calls on the administration to first support legislative efforts for new conservation designations and turn to executive action "should the legislative process not prove fruitful." Such assurances did little to satisfy Bishop, who said the new details support his charges that the Obama administration is planning to block energy development across millions of acres of Western lands...more