MAINE ENVIRONMENTAL NEWS • January 9, 2025
On Tuesday, to honor the long-standing urging of local tribes, President Biden used his authority under the Antiquities Act to create the Chuckwalla and the Sáttítla Highlands National Monuments. Within seconds, the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) and the Public Lands Council (PLC), a rightwing advocacy group that has led the war on public lands for nearly six decades, condemned the action as an irresponsible use of the Antiquities Act. Their beef? That the ranchers might not be able to run their cows on the lands. These are public lands that belong to all Americans, whether they live in Maine or California. For generations, ranchers have wrongly treated millions of acres of public lands as their personal territory to be used for private profit. They have also received massive public subsidies while ruining the land. Bernard DeVoto exposed this national scandal in a 1934 essay called “The Plundered Province.” Christopher Ketcham updated it in his 2019 book “This Land: How Cowboys, Capitalism, and Corruption are Ruining the American West.” NCBA and PLC are threatening to work with the Trump administration to “bring common sense back to this process.” They may prevail in getting Trump to remove or restrict the new land protections, but that does not make it right.