It was a Republican president, Theodore Roosevelt, who established the federal government's authority to set natural lands out of reach of development. So there's a sad irony to President Donald Trump's eager dismantling of that proud aspect of his party's legacy. In Trump's latest assault on American's most pristine landscape, the administration announced recently it will open millions of acres of Alaska's Tongass National Forest to development, including road building and logging. Environmentalists vow to fight the move in court. They should.

Trump set his course on conservation during his first year in office, when he dramatically shrank two Utah national monuments — Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante — by 85% and about 50% respectively. It was the largest rollback of federal land protection in U.S. history.

The administration has aggressively moved against other federally protected land again and again at the behest of industry, approving a toxic copper mine at the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in Minnesota, relaxing protections for salmon and smelt in California's Central Valley, opening part of Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas development, and much more.

Even amid that worst-in-modern-times conservation record, the administration's assault on Tongass stands out. The 16.7 million-acre Alaskan monument is among the world's largest temperate rainforests. It is America's largest national forest and has been dubbed by scientists as "the lungs of North America" for its major contribution to absorbing greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming.

That effect is due largely to the abundance of old-growth tree stands, some a thousand years old — the very reason logging interests are so eager to get their saws on it. The administration's new rule specifies that the additional forest available for harvesting will be primarily "old growth timber." To get at it, industry will be allowed to build roads and other development on more than 9 million acres. The administration is doing this despite the fact that 96% of the public comments received during the U.S. Forest Service's environmental review were in opposition to it.

Trump's hostility toward environmentalism and conservation is about more than just giving his big-industry supporters the keys to America's natural treasures. It's part of a broader theme of undermining efforts to mitigate climate change — an existential threat that Trump refuses to acknowledge — especially those efforts promoted by his most hated predecessors. Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton both were aggressive in expanding environmental protections, which in many if not most cases serve not just immediate environmental needs, but also mitigate climate change.

Trump's zeal to reverse those strides is nothing less than environmental vandalism. On the Tongass question, as on so many others, opponents should be relentless in their legal challenges.

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