Patagonia dismissed Interior Secretary Ryan Zinkes efforts to knock the company as Patagonia made in China on Monday, saying the Trump administration is trying to deflect from its unpopular decision to open up huge chunks of protected land to potential industrial development, including uranium mining.

A fierce opponent of the Trump administrations monthslong review of monuments designated under the Antiquities Act of 1906, Patagonia is now part of a coalition thats suing to block a White House proposal to reduce the boundaries of a 1.35 million-acre Bears Ears National Monument in Utah by 85 percent.

On Friday, The Washington Post published documents detailing a uranium companys lobbying campaign to scale back Bears Ears. The company Energy Fuels Resources (USA) Inc., a subsidiary of a Canadian firm said eliminating large portions of the monument would give it easier access to the areas radioactive ore and help it expand a nearby uranium processing mill.

For almost this entire year, the administration has claimed that this was not about opening up these lands for the extractive industries, Hans Cole, Patagonias director of environmental campaigns and advocacy, wrote in an email to HuffPost on Monday. But from the Washington Post reporting, it seems clear that the uranium industry lobbied hard to reduce the size of the monument, underlying our long-held concern that if protections for these lands are taken away, they will be drilled, mined and fracked.

The Interior Department did not respond to a request for comment on Monday about the Washington Post report.