August 25, 2016 — The Antiquities Act was passed by Congress in 1906 and signed into law by President Teddy Roosevelt in an effort to preserve American land after the pillage and destruction of a number of Native American and archaeological sites in the Southwest United States. The Antiquities Act is one of the most important pieces of conservation legislation in our nation’s history, providing the President with the sole power to declare National Monuments on federal land for the purposes of historical and natural preservation and waters. These sites often become part of the National Parks Systems under the care of the National Parks Service which is tasked with the protection of all of our valuable monuments.

Throughout its history, the Antiquities Act has had bipartisan support and has been used by 13 Presidents. The preservation of the Statue of Liberty, Death Valley and Grand Canyon are just a few of the monumental and historic American sites that were saved through the Antiquities Act. However, for fishermen on Long Island and nationwide, the current administration’s overzealous and overly broad interpretation of this law is causing great concern.

Recent Marine Monument designations proclaimed by the Obama Administration have been the largest in U.S. history, locking out fishing in perpetuity—a severe departure from the original intent of the Antiquities Act to preserve historical sites and archeological treasures. In 2014, President Obama declared a 490,000 square mile area of water in the Pacific Ocean as a National Marine Monument after receiving little public input and through a process where transparency was severely lacking. As a result of this new monument, recreational fishing was severely limited and commercial fishing was completely banned, hurting fishermen in the Pacific Ocean. Now, important fishing areas in the Northwest Atlantic, where fishermen from Greenport, Montauk, and throughout the entire New York and New England region have worked for centuries, are under consideration for a National Marine Monument designation by the current administration. As the President is pushing to apply this power to large areas of ocean in the Northwest Atlantic, he is threatening to shutdown thousands of square miles of ocean from Long Island fishermen through abuse of the Antiquities Act.

Read the full op-ed at Rep. Lee Zeldin’s House Website