More than a century ago, to prevent the degradation of open natural spaces and the pillaging of ruins and prehistoric sites, Congress adopted the Antiquities Act, which gives the president the authority and flexibility to unilaterally protect historically or geologically significant federal lands from exploitation.

Four months later, President Theodore Roosevelt used the act to establish the Devil's Tower National Monument in Wyoming, the first of 152 such set-asides. All but three presidents since have created national monuments under the act to protect federal lands from development, mining or other landscape-altering activities.

Enter President Trump. On Wednesday, he ordered the Interior secretary, who oversees national monuments, to review two decades of designations larger than 100,000 acres (more than two dozen monuments) and, if he decides it's merited, propose legislation or administrative steps to modify the proclamations.

The move dovetails with long-running efforts by some Western politicians to transfer federal lands to the states under the unpersuasive argument that states know best how to manage land within their borders.

Focusing strictly on the Obama administration, Trump described the designation of monuments as a "massive federal land grab" and an "egregious abuse of federal power" and said his order would "give that power back to the states and the people, where it belongs."

But the monuments were carved out of existing federal land that has been under Washington's control since the nation's westward expansion — and which predates the states themselves. And the states have little interest in protecting the land: They want to be able to open it for extractive industries, which fits in with Trump's desire to dig, drill and burn more fossil fuels with blithe disregard for the environment.

No one has offered a convincing argument that there is a problem in need of a solution or that the previously declared monuments were poorly chosen.

The trigger for Trump's review was President Barack Obama's designation last year of the Bears Ears National Monument in Utah, a stunningly picturesque region that state political figures wanted to open to oil and gas drillers and potash mining companies. But the Interior Department reviews will stretch back to Grand Staircase-Escalante, also in Utah, designated a national monument by President Bill Clinton.

Fortunately, the president's authority to undo the designations of his predecessors is in doubt. The Antiquities Act grants the president the authority to designate monuments but says nothing about the right to change, amend or revoke designations (although Congress can do so through legislation).

The people need to remain awake, and they need to fight to ensure that neither the Trump administration nor the fossil fuel-friendly congressional leadership succeeds in this assault on our shared national heritage.

FROM AN EDITORIAL IN THE LOS ANGELES TIMES