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President Donald Trump on Monday sharply reduced the size of two national monuments in Utah, undoing protections established by his Democratic predecessors on public lands that\u00a0are sacred\u00a0among many Native Americans.<\/p>\n
Bears Ears\u00a0and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments in southern Utah have ancient cliff dwellings, petroglyphs and scenic canyons, as well as coal and uranium deposits that\u00a0state officials\u00a0want made available for development.<\/p>\n
Trump, a Republican, issued proclamations under the Antiquities Act to reduce their size by about 90% each. He took similar actions during his first term, but those were reversed by\u00a0President Joe Biden, a Democrat.<\/p>\n
The latest 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\u00a0expand drilling,\u00a0mining\u00a0and\u00a0logging\u00a0on public lands, while\u00a0removing protections\u00a0for imperiled species and rolling back\u00a0rules for conservation.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey took the land from the people quite honestly,\u201d Trump said at a signing event at the White House Monday. \u201cWe\u2019re giving it back.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Davina Smith-Idjesa, a citizen of the Navajo Nation and co-chair of the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, said tribal leaders had braced for a reduction since Trump was elected to a second term. She said it was \u201cheartbreaking\u201d and accused federal officials of sidestepping their legal responsibility to consult with tribal nations that would be impacted.<\/p>\n
\u201cFrom a Navajo perspective, Bears Ears is not simply a piece of federal public land,\u201d Smith-Idjesa said. \u201cThis is a living cultural site that holds our histories, our ceremonies, our traditional foods and medicines and our ancestors\u2019 footprints.\u201d<\/p>\n
Utah officials had long fought against the monument designations and argued that the state should be in charge of controlling its own lands. Trump in his first term\u00a0reduced their size, calling their creation a \u201cmassive land grab.\u201d Combined they spanned\u00a0more than 3.2 million acres\u00a0(13 million hectares), an area nearly the size of Connecticut.<\/p>\n
Trump reduced them Monday to less than 303,000 acres (123,000 hectares) combined.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s a greater reduction than his first term, when he left Grand Staircase Escalante at 1 million acres (405,000 hectares) and Bears Ears at 213,000 acres (86,000 hectares).<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a big day for Utah,\u201d Utah Gov. Spencer Cox as he stood next to Trump at the White House. \u201cThese monument designations are supposed to be the smallest area as possible to protect the antiquities.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bears Ears was the first national monument created 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\u2019 creation and migration stories. Its designation honored five tribes in the region \u2014 Navajo, Hopi, Zuni, Ute Mountain Ute and Uintah-Ouray Ute.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s move to downsize say the protective boundaries stretch too far and hinder mining for critical minerals.<\/p>\n
Trump asserted Monday that people can not hunt, fish or \u201cvirtually not even walk\u201d on the monuments. That\u2019s false: Hunting, fishing, camping and other recreation are permitted under state and federal regulations, said Steve Bloch, legal director for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, a conservation group.<\/p>\n
Biden designated or expanded\u00a0more than a dozen monuments\u00a0and had a goal to conserve at least 30% of U.S. lands and waters by 2030.<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s policies are largely the opposite: He wants to tap into the natural resource wealth of federal lands that total more than 100,000 square miles (260,000 square kilometers) and offshore areas under federal control, such as in the Gulf of Mexico and off Alaska.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s drawn backlash from Democrats who warn of the wholesale disposal of treasured landscapes for commercial gain.<\/p>\n
\u201cToday\u2019s executive action is another chapter in this administration\u2019s war on the West,\u201d Democratic Sen. Martin Heinrich of New Mexico said Monday. He added that Trump was \u201cturning the Antiquities Act on its head.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said last year that federal officials would review and consider redrawing\u00a0monument boundaries\u00a0as part of a push to\u00a0expand U.S. energy production.<\/p>\n
Trump in his current term has used proclamations to lift\u00a0commercial fishing prohibitions\u00a0within expansive marine monuments in areas of the Pacific Ocean and in the Atlantic Ocean off the New England coast. Those monuments were created by Democratic and Republican administrations. The effort to boost the fishing industry, which has been challenged in court, marks a dramatic shift in federal policy by prioritizing commercial interests over efforts to allow the fish supply to increase.<\/p>\n
Some Republicans have tried to sell or transfer federal lands to states or other entities. Those efforts have largely fallen flat: A push by\u00a0some GOP lawmakers\u00a0in the House to sell public lands ran into bipartisan opposition, while another proposal by Sen. Mike Lee of Utah to sell\u00a0more than 3,200 square miles\u00a0(8,300 square kilometers) of federal lands was removed from\u00a0Republicans\u2019 big tax and spending bill.<\/p>\n
The U.S. Supreme Court last year turned back a lawsuit from Utah officials who sought to\u00a0wrest control of vast areas\u00a0of public land within the state from the federal government.<\/p>\n
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Hannah Schoenbaum reported from Salt Lake City.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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