The federal Bureau of Land Management is considering significantly reducing the area where recreational shooting is allowed in Arizona's Sonoran Desert National Monument.
The agency announced Friday that an amendment to the resource management plan would allow shooting on 5,295 acres of the monument and prohibit shooting on the remaining 480,496 acres.
Target shooting is currently permitted on Monument's 435,700-acre property, which includes parts of Maricopa and Pinal counties.
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A BLM spokesperson said target shooting is still permitted on other agency-controlled lands in and around the Phoenix metropolitan area.
Sonoran Desert National Monument was established in 2001.
The Federal Bureau of Land Management has proposed reducing recreational shooting within Sonoran Desert National Monument to better protect the resources and culture within Sonoran Desert National Monument. (Fox News)
Critics say the target shooting threatened the cultural and natural resources the monument was designated to protect, damaging objects such as saguaro cacti and Native American petroglyphs.
A notice announcing the start of a 60-day public comment period on the proposed target shooting discontinuation was scheduled to be published in the Federal Register on Monday.
BLM, an agency of the U.S. Department of the Interior, manages more than 245 million acres of public land, primarily in 12 Western states.
