Last week, Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto and Jacky Rosen, along with Rep. Dina Titus, joined more than 100 co-sponsors in the House and the Senate to introduce the Antiquities Act of 2019, aimed at protecting national monuments from executive branch threats.

This bill would designate wilderness areas within Gold Butte from which the Trump administration has threatened to remove safeguards. On behalf of Friends of Gold Butte, we want to thank Cortez Masto, Rosen and Titus for leading efforts to stand up to the Trump administration and protect Nevada wilderness and national monuments.

For two years now, the administration has threatened to undo national monument designations made through the authority of the Antiquities Act of 1906. In Nevada, this placed Gold Butte and Basin & Range’s national monument designations at risk.

Trump has claimed that he has the power to change national monument boundaries, which most legal scholars have said is flatly untrue. The Antiquities Act clearly leaves that power with Congress, not the executive branch. The newly introduced bill, the Antiquities Act of 2019, reinforces that the president does not have the authority to revoke or reduce national monument protections.

Still, using faulty and potentially illegal grounding, the previous secretary of the Interior recommended changes to several treasured national monuments, including Gold Butte. He most notably gutted Utah’s Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments, opening to development and degradation lands especially valuable to tribal communities.

This not only devastated trust with indigenous, conservation and outdoor recreation communities, but it also ignored the overwhelming majority of 2.8 million commenters who provided input on his review and asked him to leave public lands in public hands.

Now, a new secretary of the Interior has been nominated and could take the lead in destroying the protections we fought so hard to achieve.

This is why what Congress is now moving to do is vital to our public lands. The new legislation our senators and Titus have co-sponsored would expand Bears Ears to its original national monument proposed designation, while ensuring that areas under threat in Gold Butte are protected as Wilderness.

Cortez Masto, Rosen and Titus aren’t just taking a stand for the wild places and sensitive areas that Americans value, cherish and want to protect. They’re defending the very legal principles that underwrite how we protect public lands.

The Antiquities Act has been used by presidents both Republican and Democrat for over a century to protect scientifically, culturally and historically significant lands. By denying the importance of this process, the Trump administration has also tried to deny the inherent value of these national monuments.

Sadly, we have no doubt the Trump administration will continue to attempt to roll back protections for public lands. It’s fortunate that Nevada can count on public lands champions like the senators and Titus. We thank them sincerely for their leadership and urge them to continue defending the lands Nevadans love.

We ask Congress to please support and move forward with the Antiquities Act of 2019.