A Monumental Update

    Source: Wikipedia 

     The nature of this blog post is not really monumental I just thought it was funny, sorry. There has been a strong undercurrent of uncertainty and lack of information provided about the unknown, long-awaited decision by the Trump Administration over our National Parks and Monuments. A big update, however, is that on September 17, 2017, the Washington Post leaked the DOI’s report. In this report from Secretary Zinke to the president, he addresses a lot of questionable topics. He defends the downsizing of national monuments on the grounds of the Antiquities Act. Like I have said in a previous blog post, the Antiquities Act only gives the president power to create national parks and monuments; not destroy them. He also includes this updated, official list of the national monuments under “review”. This is his list. 

     The report is still somewhat ambiguous and does not offer extremely specific plans for review or when these plans would even be carried out. Addressing the concern of my last post, Secretary Zinke’s only comment on historical or cultural sites is that “Ideally the ‘historic landmarks, history and prehistoric structures, and other objects of historic or scientific interest’ would be specifically identified, and then the quantity of land necessary to protect each object, if any would be determined”. Overall, there is little clarity to this report for commenting on or processing. That said,I will continue to fight to preserve and fight for our national monuments. I will give tips on how you too can do this in my next blog post. If you would also like to read the rest of the leaked report (in better quality), you can do so here.