THE BUREAU OF LAND MANAGEMENT this month revealed plans for the huge tracts of land President Trump removed from two major Utah national monuments. They include the prospect of new coal, oil and gas development on nearly 700,000 previously protected acres, according to the Salt Lake Tribune. This was sadly unsurprising: The Interior Department inadvertently released documents in July suggesting that officials who are supposed to care for the federal government’s precious lands accentuated the benefits and played down the harms of removing millions of acres from national monuments.
The Post’s Juliet Eilperin reported that “estimates of increased tourism revenue, analyses showing that existing restrictions had not hurt fishing operators and agency reports finding that less vandalism occurred as a result of monument designations were all set aside.”