President Donald Trump has reduced the size of two national monuments in Utah, undoing protections established by former presidents on public lands that are sacred among many Native Americans. The Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments in southern Utah have ancient cliff dwellings, petroglyphs, and scenic canyons, as well as coal and uranium deposits that state officials want made available for development.
Background
The move comes as Trump and other Republicans have drastically reshaped the management of vast taxpayer-owned lands concentrated in Western states. Trump administration officials and congressional Republicans have sought to expand drilling, mining, and logging on public lands, while removing protections for imperiled species and rolling back rules for conservation.
President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, established Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in 1996, and President Barack Obama, also a Democrat, created Bears Ears National Monument in 2016 under the Antiquities Act. The 1906 law gives presidents the powers to protect sites considered historic, archaeologically significant, or culturally important.
Utah officials have long fought against the monument designation and have argued that the state should be in charge of controlling its own lands. Trump in his first term reduced their size, calling their creation a “massive land grab.” Combined, they span more than 3.2 million acres, an area nearly the size of Connecticut.
Impact
Bears Ears was the first national monument protected at the request of tribal nations that consider the land sacred. The landscape contains ancestral villages, ceremonial and burial sites, and features in some tribes’ creation and migration stories. Its designation honored five tribes in the region — Navajo, Hopi, Zuni, Ute Mountain Ute, and Uintah-Ouray Ute.
Home to hundreds of thousands of objects of cultural and scientific significance, Bears Ears is jointly managed by an agreement between tribal nations and federal agencies. Grand Staircase-Escalante consists of cliffs, canyons, natural arches, and archaeological sites, including rock paintings. It holds large coal reserves, while the Bears Ears area has uranium.
The national monument designation provides sweeping protections not just for significant geological features or artifacts but also for the surrounding landscape, banning drilling, mining, and new construction nearby. Proponents of Trump’s plan to downsize say the protective boundaries stretch too far and hinder mining for critical minerals.
Original reporting: 40/29 / KHBS (NW Arkansas) — read the source article.
