Nevada is home to four national monuments—Tule Springs Fossil Beds, in the northwest corner of the Las Vegas Valley; Avi Kwa Ame, surrounding Searchlight; Gold Butte, northeast of Lake Mead; and Basin and Range, south of Ely. Their federal designations, which protect the lands from mining and commercial development, were fought for by a broad coalition of Indigenous groups, conservationists, recreationists, businesses and local government officials. And they were made possible by the 1906 Antiquities Act, which authorized the sitting president and Congress to designate federal land as national monuments.
However, President Trump’s return to the White House may retroactively thwart those efforts after his newly confirmed Secretary of the Interior, Doug Burgum, called for “actions to review and, as appropriate, revise all withdrawn lands” including those established by authority of the Antiquities Act. Burgum said the review is intended to reduce “barriers to the use of federal lands for energy development,” and set a deadline of February 18 for officials to submit plans to carry out this order.
Reacting to the Department of Interior’s order, Mathilda Guerrero Miller, government relations director of the nonprofit Indigenous Voices of Nevada, emphasized the cultural significance of Nevada’s national monuments and vowed to protect and preserve the areas.
Basin and Range National Monument
“As we confront the federal review of Nevada’s national monuments, we must emphasize the sacred nature of these lands—cherished ancestral lands of Indigenous communities. These landscapes, including Avi Kwa Ame, represent far more than natural beauty; they embody the deep spiritual and cultural heritage of Native peoples who have been their stewards since time immemorial. Our dedication to protecting these sacred landscapes is unwavering, and we are committed to continuing our efforts to honor and preserve these crucial parts of our nation’s history and culture,” Miller said in a partial statement.
An adjacent legislative push by Senate and House Republicans, including Nevada’s own Rep. Mark Amodei, also seeks to revoke the presidential authority to establish new national monuments. Amodei’s bill, co-authored by Utah Republican Rep. Celeste Maloy and titled “Ending Presidential Overreach on Public Lands Act,” would put the power to establish, expand or reduce the boundaries of monuments solely in the hands of Congress.
Weekly. “When you’re talking about hundreds of thousands of acres, what’s the problem with having a public discussion and participation and opportunity for input when those decisions are made?”
“There are legitimate arguments for those areas to be special. However, the problem with the way the Antiquities Act has been used is that it’s kind of become highly political. I think there ought to be some process which formalizes broader public input rather than just who can get the president’s ear,” Amodei tells the Amodei, who represents Nevada’s 2nd Congressional District on the state’s northern end, argued that the presidential authority granted by the Antiquities Act does not provide for “predictability or stability” because it permits a sitting president to reverse decisions made by their predecessors. “The problem is, under the present circumstances, if Doug Burgum gets together with Donald Trump and his policy folks and they decide they want to scramble that egg a little bit, they can do it. And then the next guy or girl that comes along can come back and change it again. … People need to be able to count on the folks that they elected to do land use planning in their counties and regions,” Amodei says. But conservationists who came together to get Nevada’s national monuments designated say the process was driven by public input. To them, both the Department of the Interior’s order to review national monuments and Amodei’s proposed legislation defy the coalition of Nevadans who secured those protections.
Tule Springs Fossil Beds National Monument
Alan O’Neill was one of the many Nevadans who helped pave the way for the creation of Avi Kwa Ame, Basin and Range and Gold Butte National Monuments. The Washington, D.C. native spent 13 of his 34 years at the Department of the Interior as superintendent of the Lake Mead National Recreation Area.
“This was a classic example of democracy at work as grassroots advocacy. It wasn’t driven by governmental agencies; it was led by everyday Nevadans. It was a communal approach to power and the most highly vetted and transparent process I’ve ever been involved in,” O’Neill says. “We spent so much time building the momentum to get this protected. The thought that someone may downsize these monuments is incredibly heartbreaking to me.”
It’s not the first time Trump’s administration has taken aim at lands designated under the Antiquities Act. In 2017, Trump issued an executive order instructing his former interior secretary, Ryan Zinke, to review all national monument designations since 1996. That review led to the shrinking of two national monuments: Utah’s Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments. The former is the site of coal reserves, while the latter contains uranium deposits.
According to a fact brief from The Nevada Independent, the Nevada Mining Association has acknowledged rare earth mineral deposits in Southern Nevada, possibly where Avi Kwa Ame is situated. When Joe Biden designated the national monument in 2023, Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo raised concerns about “the potential for terminal disruption of rare earth mineral mining projects.”
Despite the possibility that rare minerals do exist within Avi Kwa Ame’s borders, Jocelyn Torres, chief conservation officer for the nonprofit Conservation Lands Foundation, believes it’s worth foregoing that potential in order to continue to protect the “small fraction of places” that have already been set aside for conservation.
She argues that “the majority” of Nevada’s lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management is still “open to all of these uses.” Additionally, she adds, “existing mining rights and active leases are grandfathered in and can continue to be developed” on national monument lands.
Kristee Watson, executive director of the political advocacy group Nevada Conservation League, is skeptical that Nevada’s monuments contain the energy sources the Trump administration seems keen on accessing.
“I think it’s important to remember that oil and gas leasing in Nevada is almost always a losing investment. Time and time again, investors will come in and buy the land for speculation, but it results in nothing or even in a financial loss for these companies,” Watson says.
Amodei reiterates his stance that these decisions should rest with Congress and local officials rather than the president.
Gold Butte National Monument
“Maybe there’s something we want to mine or drill around the edges of one of the monuments. If so, we’ve got to go back to Congress and make that case. And once it’s done that way, it stays done. That’s how it should be,” he says.
Regardless of how the process unfolds, Watson believes that interfering with existing national monuments could have adverse effects on a burgeoning recreation scene. According to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, the Silver State’s outdoor recreation industry accounted for $8.1 billion of its total annual GDP in 2023—a 12.8% increase from 2022 and fourth largest growth among all states for that period.
“If we just start selling off random plots of land, that’s not actually going to create solutions, because it’s not going to be near economic drivers where this infrastructure already exists,” Watson says.
Torres, who was present for Trump’s first round of national monument reviews in 2017, cites concerns over what she called the secretive nature” of the 2025 review.
“They’re taking 15 days to review monuments that have been designated over the course of many years. There’s no real public engagement component to an internal review process, so it feels like they have already made the decision on what they want to undo,” Torres says.
She adds that the national monuments can serve future generations if preserved.
“These are national treasures that people have asked their representatives to set aside, and Americans don’t want their access blocked. They want to continue being able to hike, camp, hunt and fish on these public lands. It’s also important to look at the future value of these places—not just what we can get out of them right now,” she says.
On February 17, Nevada’s Democratic U.S. Senators Catherine Cortez Masto and Jacky Rosen joined the calls against rolling back monument designations via a joint letter in which they urged Burgum to reconsider his department’s review.
“Decisions to protect these treasured lands were not made on a whim. They were the result of intense engagements with tribes, community leaders, and local businesses,” Cortez Masto and Rosen wrote. “While Congress reserves the authority to revoke or adjust national monuments, any future action by your department should be a result of the same level of outreach and public engagement.”
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