BY THE TIMES EDITORIAL BOARD
More than a century ago, to prevent the degradation of open natural spaces and the pillaging of ruins and prehistoric sites, Congress adopted the Antiquities Act, which gives the president the authority and flexibility to unilaterally protect historically or geologically significant federal lands from exploitation. Four months later, President Roosevelt used the act to establish the Devil’s Tower National Monument in Wyoming, the first of 152 such set-asides. All but three presidents since then have created national monuments under the act to protect federal lands from development, mining or other landscape-altering activities.