Opposition builds to US Interior measure

摘要

Washington-Bipartisan outrage is growing to news the Obama administration is considering designating huge swaths of western lands as national monuments, a move opponents say could lock up potential oil and gas resources.An internal US Interior Department document, leaked to several federal legislators on February 18, identified millions of acres that could be designated national monuments by presidential order. The unilateral authority is granted under the Antiquities Act of 1906, which allows the president to declare prehistoric structures, objects or landmarks to be "national monuments" under the protection of the federal government.