Activists to Rally Across Country Protesting Trump's Attacks on National Monuments

Thousands of people will participate in dozens of actions across the country in the coming week to speak out against President Trump's attacks on public lands, including his expected announcement today to greatly reduce the size of at least two national monuments.

The Center for Biological Diversity, the Sierra Club and other environmental and Native American groups are organizing the Save Our National Monuments Week of Action, Dec. 2-9. The week kicked off with the Rally Against Trump's Monumental Mistake in Salt Lake City, Utah, on Saturday.

"There's a powerful, unified national uprising to defend our public lands," said Valerie Love, deputy organizing director for Ignite Change, a grassroots network launched by the Center. "Trump and corporate polluters need to keep their hands off our public lands. These are irreplaceable natural and cultural treasures. They belong to everyone."

Activists from San Francisco to Maine will stage a variety of actions throughout the week to protest Trump and support national monuments, including demonstrations at Trump properties in San Francisco and Washington, D.C., protests in front of government offices, musical performances and rallies at local parks. A map of Save Our National Monuments Week of Action events is online.

On Monday Trump is expected to travel to Utah and order 2 million acres slashed from Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments. This would be the largest reduction of our public lands by any administration in United States history.

"It's an insult to native people who hold this land sacred and out of step with the vast majority of Americans who want these monuments protected," Love said.

Trump is also expected to slash protections for other national monuments, including significantly shrinking the boundaries of Gold Butte in Nevada and Cascade-Siskiyou in California and Oregon. Republicans in Congress also want to strip the president's authority to designate national monuments under the 1906 Antiquities Act.

Background

In April Trump ordered Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to review the designation of 27 national monuments -- those larger than 100,000 acres protected since 1996. His goal was to trigger dramatic changes in monument protections or boundaries to allow fossil fuel development, logging, mining and other development on these public lands. More than 2.8 million people wrote to the Interior department urging the administration to preserve protections for these iconic places.

National monument designations have protected some of the most spectacular public landscapes in the country from fossil fuel extraction, mining and logging. Dozens of the nation's most treasured national parks were first protected as monuments, including Grand Teton, Grand Canyon, Bryce, Zion, Acadia and Olympic national parks.