Mirroring actions taken in his first term, president Donald Trump signed an executive order on Monday that slashes the size of the Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears National Monuments, both of which are located in Utah.
Both monuments are located in some of the country’s most stunning landscape, including high-alpine forests and red rock deserts. Both areas feature great hunting and fishing, as well as other recreation opportunities. And both monuments are once again a political football thrown between Utah’s right-wing state government and congressional delegation, and left-leaning environmental groups.
Why target these monuments again?
In his first term, Trump targeted Bears Ears and Grand Staircase in what he called an effort to return these lands to more local control. His comments on Monday mirrored those made years ago.
“We’ve done something that I think was very desperately needed,” Trump said at the signing ceremony held in the Oval Office. “It was very unfair to the people of Utah, and now fairness has been brought back.”
President Joe Biden restored the monuments to their original size in his term, undoing Trump’s first actions. Trump’s executive order doesn’t just take them back to the size he designated in his first term; instead, the monuments have shrunk by about 90% each. This was done to “rightsize” the monuments, according to Utah Governor Spencer Cox, a Republican.
Both monuments have become lightning rods for land management in the West. Proponents of the monuments say National Monument status is needed to protect sensitive lands from development, including some land considered sacred by local Native American tribes. Opponents say the National Monument designation unfairly limits economic development in an area of Utah already surrounded by federally managed land.
While the monuments have been reduced in size, management for those lands has simply returned to the Bureau of Land Management or the Forest Service. These lands have not been transferred to the state of Utah. However, both the BLM and Forest Service operate with multiple-use guidelines in place, meaning it’s possible for economic development like oil and gas leasing to occur. Those activities are prohibited in National Monuments.
Too Large
Utah’s state government and congressional delegation have said since Grand Staircase was enacted by president Bill Clinton, and Bears Ears by Barack Obama, that both monuments were far too large. The protections expanded to an area that was bigger than necessary to protect environmentally sensitive and sacred sites.
Opponents of large national monument designations also point to the common use of the Antiquities Act – the law giving presidents the power to designate monuments – before Clinton’s use of it on Grand Staircase. They say most monuments were much smaller, on average, than the millions of acres designated by Clinton.
However, president Teddy Roosevelt originally used the Antiquities Act to preserve 800,000 acres of the Grand Canyon National Monument, which later became a national park.
Writing about the monuments for KSL.com, Carter Williams said,”Proponents of the original Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears boundaries argue that the sizes helped secure cherished places that were vulnerable to defacement, looters and development.”
Williams also quoted Brian King, chair of Utah’s Democratic Party, as saying, “These places have been entrusted to us by generations past, and we have a duty to protect them for generations to come.”
Lawsuits are expected to halt Trump’s actions.