John,
President Donald Trump and newly appointed Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum have just ordered a so-called review of every mining ban and national monument on U.S. public lands. What they're actually doing is looking for immediate opportunities to reverse those bans or slash national monuments — a shameless ploy that would open the nation's most cherished public lands to industry oligarchs for mining, drilling, and development.
It’s the most sweeping attack on public lands in U.S. history.
The monuments on the chopping block include Bears Ears in Utah; Vermilion Cliffs and Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni – Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon in Arizona; Chuckwalla, Sand to Snow, and Carrizo Plain in California; Rio Grande del Norte in New Mexico; and Avi Kwa Ame in Nevada.
These places are a vast, beautiful part of the country's natural heritage. They're home to chuckwalla lizards, kit foxes, pronghorns, Mexican spotted owls, California condors, and other rare and imperiled species — and many are the sacred lands of Indigenous peoples.
It's time to fight back for public lands and the precious wildlife who live there.
Tell Sec. Burgum: No rollbacks or giveaways of national monuments, which belong to the people — not private interests.
