Last month, Obama designated eighty-seven thousand acres in central Maine as a new national monument. He bypassed Congress to make the designation, invoking the Antiquities Act, which was signed into law by Roosevelt in 1906. (The act allows the President to create national monuments “by public proclamation.”) And, on August 24th, he added almost three hundred million acres to the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument, northwest of Hawaii; the additional acres made Papahānaumokuākea (pronounced “Papa-ha-now-moh-koo-ah-kay-ah”) the largest ecological preserve on the planet. Obama has now put more acreage under protection than any other President, though the bulk of it is underwater. The historian Douglas Brinkley recently dubbed him “a 21st-century Theodore Roosevelt.” [...]
For many in Congress, underfunding isn’t enough. Last summer, Representative Cresent Hardy, a Nevada Republican, offered an amendment to an appropriations bill that would have sabotaged the Antiquities Act, curtailing a President’s ability to create national monuments. (National monuments are a lot like national parks; most are managed by the Park Service, and many—including the Grand Canyon, first designated by Teddy Roosevelt—have gone on to become parks themselves.) The Hardy amendment was approved by the House but then dropped in the bill’s final version.
More recently, Representative Rob Bishop, a Utah Republican, who is the chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, tried to prevent Obama from creating the preserve in central Maine. Bishop, too, has introduced legislation to undermine the Antiquities Act, which he has called “the most evil act ever invented.” (Last year, he was recorded suggesting that anyone who supports it ought to die.) The Republican National Committee’s 2016 platform—a hair-raising document if ever there was one—seems to subscribe to this sentiment. It calls on “national and state leaders and representatives to exert their utmost power and influence” to wrest land away from federal protection.
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