In 1906, Republican President Theodore Roosevelt signed into law the Antiquities Act. It was the first U.S. law enacted expressly to protect cultural and natural resources with historic or scientific value on federal public lands. The Antiquities Act grants the president the authority to designate national monuments. It has been used by 18 presidents across party lines to protect 164 important spots around the U.S. In Maine, in 1916 President Wilson established Sieur de Monts National Monument, which became Acadia National Park. A century later, President Obama established Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument.

Many national monuments later were upgraded by Congress as national parks. In fact, more than 30 national parks were originally protected as national monuments, including Acadia, Grand Canyon, Grand Teton, Joshua Tree, Olympic, and Zion national parks.

The Biden-Harris administration has used the executive powers of the Antiquities Act to establish, expand, or restore eight landscape-level national monuments totaling more than 3.7 million acres. Those lands directly serve over 15.6 million people living in the surrounding areas and millions more who visit. [1]

Around the US there are active campaigns to designate additional national monuments. In Maine, activists are urging the Biden-Harris Administration to proclaim the Frances Perkins Homestead in Newcastle a national monument. [2]

However, the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 threatens to remove protections from recent national monuments. It calls for the removal of much of the Biden-Harris administration’s conservation and climate progress, including actions taken through long-established and bipartisan tools such as the Antiquities Act. That means rolling back or removing protections for national monuments by a Trump Administration. Project 2025 also calls for repealing the Antiquities Act so future presidents cannot protect cultural treasures. Pendley previously was acting director under Trump of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the agency that manages the most U.S. public lands. He is the author of the section of Project 2025 about public lands. He has been clear that he wants public lands sold off. His plan parallels the policy agenda of the extremist antiparks caucus in Congress, lawmakers working to erase land protections and to increase the reach of oil and gas drilling on public lands.

According to the authors of a recent article, “Getting rid of the Antiquities Act, a tool that has been so impactful over the past 118 years, would have disastrous consequences for the state of conservation in the United States.” [2] In Maine, it could mean rollbacks in Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument and blocking or undoing a Frances Perkins Homestead National Monument.

RESTORE and other conservation advocates are preparing to oppose rollbacks of our public lands protections. You can help by supporting those groups and by urging your representatives in Congress to create new national parks and to uphold federal protections for your national monuments, national parks, and other public conservation lands.

_____

[1] Sam Zeno, Disappearing Parks: How Project 2025 Would Decrease Protections for Nature, Center for American Progress, Oct 21, 2024, https://www.americanprogress.org/article/disappearing-parks-how-project-2025-would-decrease-protections-for-nature/

[2] Frances Perkins Homestead National Monument Campaign, https://francesperkinscenter.org/national-monument-campaign/

[3] Mariel Lutz et al, Project 2025 Seeks To Repeal One of America’s Greatest Conservation Tools, Center for American Progress, Sep 12, 2024, https://www.americanprogress.org/article/project-2025-seeks-to-repeal-one-of-americas-greatest-conservation-tools/