Udall and Heinrich Tell Trump: Don’t Reverse National Monument Designations

Today, U.S. Senator Tom Udall led a group of Western Democratic senators in calling on President Donald Trump to live up to his repeated promises on the campaign trail to protect public lands for all Americans and uphold the existing protections for the 157 national monuments, which have been designated throughout the decades by nearly every U.S. president of the last century. "Weakening the protections for this deserving landscape [Bears Ears National Monument], or any of the 157 Monuments previously protected, would be a direct affront to the local communities and stakeholders who worked collaboratively to identify and advocated to protect these areas for future generations. This is especially true, in the case of Bears Ears National Monument, for the Native American tribes who call this living cultural landscape their ancestral home. It also would cut against your commitment to be a good steward of our nation’s public lands," the senators wrote. "We urge you to maintain the current protections so that our children and grandchildren can experience them with the same wonder we do today.”...more