It’s not a traditional off-road vehicle, but with President Trump in the driver’s seat the steamroller appears to be the ride of choice in the intensifying debate over protected public lands in the West.

 Nevadans who care about their state should be gearing up for a fight.

 In late April, Trump signed an executive order asking Department of Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to review two decades of national monument declarations made by previous presidents under the Antiquities Act of 1906. The signal was clear coming from the man who claims American capitalism is choking on regulation.

 With a level of hyperbole usually reserved for lounge comics and car salesmen, Trump on April 26 enthused, “It’s a real pleasure to be at the Department of Interior to help preserve the splendor and the beauty of America’s natural resources.”

 He then proceeded to threaten some of America’s most beautiful natural resources. In the name of protecting “the people” against federal overreach and ensuring “the ability of the people to access and utilize the land, which truly belongs to them and belongs to all of us,” Trump opened the gate that could lead to the destruction of environmentally sensitive areas held dear to many and considered sacred by native Americans.

 When the president talks about land use by the people, he appears to be thinking of the people who want to use it for agriculture, mining, and commercial development. In that way, his view reflects the Republican Party’s own platform on natural resources and the environment: “Only a few years ago, a bipartisan consensus in government valued the role of extractive industries and rewarded their enterprise by minimizing its interference with their work. That has radically changed.”

 Yeah, large-scale mining just can’t catch a break in Nevada and the West.

 As reckless as Trump’s rhetoric is proving on topics ranging from health care to Russian interference with the presidential election, it’s a mistake to write off his executive order on national monuments. As Jim Lyons astutely observed in High Country News, it’s part of a new public lands management philosophy that reflects the anarchic influence of Trump senior strategist Steve Bannon while showing disdain for Barack Obama. “Trump has aggressively implemented this strategy by reviewing and repealing Obama-era conservation initiatives and long-standing policies; replacing agency personnel; and setting the stage to shrink federal land management agencies and make their important work even harder.”

 Trump’s rhetoric appears to spell big trouble for Nevada’s breathtaking Gold Butte National Monument. Located near Lake Mead, and within shouting distance of Bunkerville rancher Cliven Bundy’s wandering cattle, the 300,000-acre Gold Butte received its protected designation in 2016 from Obama. (The even larger Basin and Range National Monument is equally imperiled.)

 Those who imagine Bundy’s protracted battle with the Bureau of Land Management is limited to overdue grazing fees and trespassing steers are naive. His story may be symbolic for libertarians, but it’s strategic for those bent on exploiting the last best places in America.

 As alarming as the president’s bravado has been, it’s probably fortunate Trump is behind the wheel of that environmental steamroller. Politically speaking, so far he’s been Mr. Magoo incarnate.

 Like so many of the more than two dozen executive orders Trump pronounced during his first 100 days in office, he appears to have fired up the engines without fully mapping the journey. It unclear whether Trump’s order is even legal. With even his man Zinke admitting it’s “untested whether the president can do that,” the order promises to become a full employment act for environmental litigators.

 Presidents since Theodore Roosevelt have created national monuments in an effort to preserve the nation’s precious public lands from commercial exploitation. Previous presidents may have differed mightily with their predecessors, but they didn’t vandalize their monument designations. Of course, Trump is proving he shares little in common with previous residents of the White House.

 Nevadans who love the state’s rugged beauty are likely to be thinking Trump has it in for them. Between the push to re-fund the licensing process for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository and the order that could pull Gold Butte’s protected status, Silver State residents aren’t being paranoid.

 Although the environmental community in Southern Nevada has always been active, it’s also been diminutive. This is a valley whose elected leaders can’t hit the political pause button long enough to see the wisdom of fiercely protecting the Red Rock National Conservation Area -- one of the most precious natural wonders in the state and easily one of the most stunning in the nation located in close driving proximity to a major metropolitan area.

 Write it off to a president’s reckless rhetoric, but no good can come from his off-road adventure.

John L. Smith is a longtime Nevada journalist and author. Contact him at [email protected]. On Twitter: @jlnevadasmith. 

Feature photo: Rock formations in Gold Butte National Monument located northeast of Las Vegas. File photo.