Trump reduces size of 2 national monuments in Utah as Republicans reshape land management
President Donald Trump on Monday sharply reduced the size of two national monuments in Utah, eliminating protections established on public lands by his Democratic predecessors. is sacred among many Native Americans.
Bear Ears and the Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments in southern Utah feature ancient cliff dwellings, petroglyphs, and scenic canyons, as well as coal and uranium deposits. government officials We want it to be submitted for development.
Trump, a Republican, has issued proclamations under the Antiquities Act calling for their size to be reduced by about 90%. He took similar actions during his first term, but these were reversed. President Joe Bidena Democrat.
The latest move comes as Trump and other Republicans are dramatically reshaping management of vast tracts of taxpayer-owned land concentrated in Western states. Trump administration officials and congressional Republicans expand drilling, mining And logging on public lands removal of protections for endangered species and return protection rules.
“They took the land from the people quite squarely,” Trump said at a signing ceremony at the White House on Monday. “We give it back.”
President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, established Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in 1996, and President Barack Obama, also a Democrat, established Bears Ears National Monument under the Antiquities Act in 2016. The 1906 law gives presidents the authority to protect areas deemed historically, archaeologically significant or culturally significant.
Davina Smith-Idjesa, a Navajo Nation citizen and co-chair of the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, said tribal leaders have been preparing for the reduction since Trump was elected to a second term. He said it was “heartbreaking” and accused federal officials of shirking their legal responsibility to consult with tribal nations that would be affected.
“From a Navajo perspective, Bears Ears is not just federal public land,” Smith-Idjesa said. “This is a living cultural site that holds our history, ceremonies, traditional foods and medicines, and the footprints of our ancestors.”
‘Big day for Utah’
Utah officials have long opposed designating the monuments and argued that the state should control its own lands. Trump in his first term they reduced their sizehe calls their creation “a massive land grab.” They spread together More than 3.2 million acres (13 million hectares), an area almost the size of Connecticut.
Trump reduced those areas to a total of less than 303,000 acres (123,000 hectares) on Monday.
This is a larger reduction from his first term, when he left Grand Staircase Escalante at 1 million acres (405,000 ha) and Bears Ears at 213,000 acres (86,000 ha).
“This is a big day for Utah,” Utah Gov. Spencer Cox said as he stood next to Trump at the White House. “These monument designations need to be the smallest area possible to protect the antiquities.”
Bears’ Ears was the first national monument created at the request of tribal nations that considered these lands sacred. The landscape includes ancestral villages, ceremonial and burial sites, and features of some tribes’ creation and migration stories. This designation honored five tribes in the area: Navajo, Hopi, Zuni, Ute Mountain Ute, and Uintah-Ouray Ute.
Bears Ears, home to hundreds of thousands of objects of cultural and scientific significance, is managed jointly through an agreement between tribal nations and federal agencies.
Grand Staircase-Escalante consists of cliffs, canyons, natural arches, and archaeological sites, including rock paintings. While uranium is found in the Bears Ears region, there are large coal reserves here.
National monument designation provides comprehensive protection not only for significant geological features or artifacts, but also for the surrounding landscape; It bans drilling, mining and new construction nearby. Proponents of Trump’s degrowth drive say protective limits go too far and are blocking mining for critical minerals.
Trump said Monday that people can’t hunt, fish and “barely walk” on the monuments. That’s wrong: Hunting, fishing, camping and other recreation are allowed under state and federal regulations, said Steve Bloch, legal director of the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, a conservation group.
Biden set or extended more than a dozen monuments and had a goal of protecting at least 30% of U.S. lands and waters by 2030.
Trump’s policies are largely the opposite: He wants to capitalize on the natural resource wealth of federal lands, which total more than 100,000 square miles (260,000 square kilometers), and offshore areas under federal control, such as the Gulf of Mexico and off Alaska.
This sparked a backlash from Democrats, who warned against the wholesale disposal of valuable landscapes for commercial gain.
“Today’s executive action is another chapter in this administration’s war against the West,” Democratic Sen. Martin Heinrich of New Mexico said in a statement Monday. he said. He added that Trump “reversed the Antiquities Act.”
Land sales offers failed
Trump Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said last year that federal officials would review and evaluate the redrawing. monument borders as part of a push Expanding US energy production.
Trump has used proclamations to remove this status during his current term commercial fishing bans Within the vast marine monuments of the Pacific Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of New England. These monuments were created by Democratic and Republican administrations. The effort to revive the fishing industry, which is being challenged in court, marks a dramatic shift in federal policy that prioritizes commercial interests over efforts to allow fish supplies to increase.
Some Republicans have attempted to sell or transfer federal lands to states or other entities. These efforts were largely unsuccessful: A push some GOP lawmakers While selling public lands faces bipartisan opposition in the House of Representatives, another proposal to do so by Sen. Mike Lee of Utah More than 3,200 square miles (8,300 square kilometers) of federal land removed Republicans’ big tax and spending bill.
The U.S. Supreme Court rejected a lawsuit filed by Utah officials last year. take control of large areas the acquisition of public lands within the state from the federal government.
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Hannah Schoenbaum reported from Salt Lake City.
