The Biden administration says it has begun reaching out to elected officials, Native American tribes and other stakeholders as part of its review of the Trump administration’s controversial rollback of national monuments, kick-starting a process that is widely expected to result in President Joe Biden fulfilling a campaign promise to restore the protected sites.

As part of a sweeping first-day executive order to “protect public health and the environment and restore science,” Biden ordered the Interior Department to review President Donald Trump’s proclamations to dismantle three protected monuments, two in southern Utah and one off the Atlantic coast. Biden has slammed the monument cuts as among Trump’s “assaults on America’s natural treasures.”

In 2017, the Trump administration launched a review of recent national monument designations made under the Antiquities Act of 1906. That process featured administration officials cozying up to monument opponents, cherry-picking data and dismissing overwhelming public support for maintaining protected sites, and ended with Trump carving more than 2 million acres away from two sites in southern Utah.

The boundary of Bears Ears, a 1.35 […]