12/6/2018
On Monday President Trump slashed the size of two national monuments in Utah, the largest reduction of public-lands protection in U.S. history.
Trump’s actions shrink the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments by more than 1.1 million acres and more than 800,000 acres, respectively. The move sparked protests outside the White House and in Utah. The changes put the Trump administration into uncharted legal territory, as no president has sought to modify monuments established under the 1906 Antiquities Act in more than half a century.
His decision removes about 85 percent of the designation of Bears Ears and nearly 46 percent of that for Grand Staircase-Escalante, land that potentially could now be leased for energy exploration or opened for specific activities such as motorized vehicle use.
Trump told a rally in Salt Lake City that he came to “reverse federal overreach” and took dramatic action “because some people think that the natural resources of Utah should be controlled by a small handful of very distant bureaucrats located in Washington. And guess what? They’re wrong.” “They don’t know your land, and truly, they don’t care for your land like you do,” he said. “But from now on, that won’t matter.”
The Interior Department received more than 2.5 million comments on the plan, and they “overwhelmingly” said all of the monuments should remain unchanged. But Zinke attributed the extreme tilt to “a well-orchestrated national campaign organized by multiple groups.” “I don’t yield to public pressure,” Zinke said Tuesday.
In addition to the Utah sites, Zinke supports cutting Nevada’s Gold Butte and Oregon’s Cascade-Siskiyou, though the exact reductions are still being determined. He also would revise the proclamations for those and the others to clarify that certain activities are allowed.
The additional monuments affected include Northeast Canyons and Seamounts in the Atlantic Ocean; both Rose Atoll and the Pacific Remote Islands in the Pacific Ocean; New Mexico’s Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks and Rio Grande Del Norte, and Maine’s Katahdin Woods and Waters.
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