Rob Bishop's, R-Utah, "No New National Parks" bill is out of committee and will be [View all]
voted on as early as tomorrow. This bill guts the Antiquities Act and puts our parks, like the Grand Canyon, Arcadia, and Muir Woods at risk. Can we stop this?
http://www.sierraclub.org/lay-of-the-land/2017/10/no-more-parks
So, what does this bill do? Here are the four main
takeaways:
1. It changes the definition of what qualifies as deserving of protection. Artifacts and buildings are in, items of scientific importance and natural objects are definitely out.
2. It places restrictions on the size of monuments. Anything over 85,000 acres definitely cant be a monument. National monuments between 10,000 and 85,000 acres require approval from state legislatures and governors, which has been known to take decades.
3. It includes language that explicitly permits the president to rescind a national monument, totally undercutting the Administration and Bishops arguments that the Antiquities Act as currently written already allows the president to get rid of a monument.
4. It completely prohibits the creation of marine monuments under the Antiquities Act.