The Antiquities Act is meant to protect America’s natural and cultural treasures forever. Is the Act itself in danger?

Aside from the obvious, what do Grand Canyon National Park, Pinnacles National Park, Olympic National Park, Bryce Canyon National Park, Saguaro National Park, Joshua Tree National Park, Zion National Park, Arches National Park, Death Valley National Park and Grand Teton National Park have in common?

The answer is that all of these places, protected and preserved under federal law for all of us to enjoy, first came under federal protection not as national parks, but as national monuments. And more specifically, those protections came not from Congress, but from presidential action taken under the 1906 Act for the Preservation of American Antiquities. Or as it’s more commonly known, the Antiquities Act.

In the history of the U.S. conservation movement, few environmental protection laws have wielded as profound an influence as the Antiquities Act. Though many of us might not realize it, it’s thanks to this landmark law – which celebrated its 118^th birthday last month – that Americans are able to enjoy some of the spectacular landscapes that many of us tend to take for granted.

They shouldn’t be taken for granted. And neither should the law that protected them. Despite more than a century of major conservation successes, the Antiquities Act has been dogged by constant challenges more or less since its birth. Recent court rulings and the potential of a second Trump presidency should set alarm bells ringing once again.

The Antiquities Act: A history of preservation

Signed into law by President Theodore Roosevelt in June 1906, the Antiquities Act was born at a time when the rapid expansion of agriculture, mining and urban development was threatening to obliterate vast swathes of America’s wilderness and the priceless natural and historical artifacts they contained. Arising in particular in response to the growing problem of looting on prehistoric and Native American sites in the Southwest, the Act gave the president the authority to declare national monuments on federal land containing “historic landmarks, historic and prehistoric structures, and other objects of historic or scientific interest.”

National monument status puts an area of land off limits to new mining, drilling and other extractive activities that could damage the unique historical and archaeological features within its boundaries. But although directed specifically at “antiquities,” the mandate of the Antiquities Act is unusually broad, recognizing the interconnectedness of cultural heritage and natural lands and the importance of safeguarding not just historical sites themselves, but also the landscapes around them.

Since 1906, when President Roosevelt used the Act to designate the nation’s first national monument – Devils Tower in Wyoming – the law has been used nearly 300 times by presidents from both parties to create new monuments or enlarge existing ones. Roosevelt himself used it 18 times to establish national monuments, including the spectacular landscapes known today as Petrified Forest National Park, Grand Canyon National Park, Lassen Volcanic National Park and Olympic National Park, and the archaeological treasures of Chaco Culture National Historical Park and Tumacácori National Historical Park.

These and other designations have been instrumental in protecting and preserving an astonishing array of places, from the ancient cliff dwellings of Mesa Verde in Colorado to the breathtaking geology of the Grand Canyon to the pristine ocean of Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument in the Hawaiian Archipelago to the ancient burial grounds, cliff dwellings and petroglyphs of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante in Utah.

Like many of the monuments created under the powers of the Antiquities Act, the proclamation of these latter two – Grand Staircase-Escalante by President Clinton in 1996 and Bears Ears by President Obama in 2016 – was the culmination of longstanding campaigns by Native American tribes fighting to protect their ancestral lands. Within months of the Bears Ears proclamation, however, these two monuments would find themselves at the center of a new flare-up in disputes that have tormented the Antiquities Act more or less since it first became law.

The Antiquities Act under attack

In April 2017, President Trump signed Executive Order 13792, ordering a sweeping review of the Antiquities Act and the national monuments designated under its authority with the aim of rescinding national monument designations or reducing their size in order to open up federal lands to drilling, mining and other development. That December, Trump issued proclamations slashing the size of Bears Ears National Monument by 85% and Grand Staircase-Escalante by nearly half, putting a total of around 2 million acres of land up for grabs by energy companies and other commercial interests.

After a nationwide outcry and multiple legal challenges, the Biden administration in 2021 reinstated the protections for these two monuments. But with disputes around the nature and extent of the Antiquities Act’s authority still raging, the battle over Bears Ears – and the Act itself – is likely far from over.

These disputes have been around since the Antiquities Act first came into being. President Roosevelt’s 1908 creation of the Grand Canyon National Monument, which reserved the land designated as part of that monument “subject to all prior valid adverse claims,” almost immediately found itself facing a lawsuit from a mining company already operating in the area, in part based on the argument that the scope of the Act did not extend to places like the Grand Canyon and that it therefore did not give the president authority to establish the monument.

Ultimately the Supreme Court rejected that challenge, but claims of executive overreach and arguments about what the Act does and doesn’t apply to continue. 

Critics argue that the sweeping executive powers it grants to the president to create national monuments without congressional approval impact local economies and land use without taking proper account of the views of those most directly affected by the decisions. Ranchers, miners and energy companies have argued that monument designations limit access to valuable resources, stifle local economic development and employment opportunities and, as argued by the Trump administration, create barriers to America’s quest for “energy independence.” Questions also persist over the extent of the president’s authority under the Act, particularly concerning the size and scope of designated areas, and also – as was the case with Trump’s attempt to shrink the Bears Ears monument – whether or not the Act empowers the President to rescind monument designations as well as create them (something on which the language of the Act is unclear).

Permanent protection for America’s most special places

The recent attacks on the Antiquities Act are a reminder of two things.

First, the threats that this legislation was created to address have not gone away. The specter of mining, drilling, logging and destructive agricultural practices looms just as large over America’s natural lands as it did in 1906, and it’s unlikely that that’s going to change any time soon.

The larger reality thrown into sharp relief by the Bears Ears/Grand Staircase-Escalante affair, however, is the sheer ease with which an administration can potentially undo decades of hard-won conservation victories. Ongoing efforts to scale back the powers of the Antiquities Act, and in particular to rescind designations or shrink existing monument boundaries, can lead to vast expanses of wilderness, historically significant sites and fragile ecosystems being stripped of protections at the stroke of a pen.

It is vital – particularly now, with a second Trump presidency potentially on the horizon, and possible new openings for court challenges – that we remember and appreciate the critical role that the Antiquities Act has played in protecting many of the nation’s foremost natural and cultural treasures and recognize the full implications of rolling back its powers.

America’s wild places are not “resources” to be exploited; they are irreplaceable treasures to be protected and preserved for future generations. A bulwark against the ever-present forces pushing for short-term economic gains over long-term sustainability and respect for our country’s heritage, the Antiquities Act is a law which at once honors the past, safeguards the present, and helps to ensure a future where America’s wilderness remains a sanctuary of wonder and inspiration.