Trump declares major reduction of 2 national monuments
SALT LAKE CITY — President Donald Trump said he would dramatically reduce the size of a vast expanse of protected federal land in Utah on Monday, a rollback of some 2 million acres that is the largest in scale in the nation’s history.
The administration said it would shrink Bears Ears National Monument, a sprawling region of red rock canyons, by about 85 percent, and cut another area, Grand Staircase-Escalante to about half its current size. The move, a reversal of protections put in place by Democratic predecessors, comes as the administration pushes for fewer restrictions and more development on public lands.
The decision to reduce Bears Ears is expected to trigger a legal battle that could alter the course of U.S. land conservation, possibly opening millions of protected public acres to oil and gas extraction, mining, logging and other commercial activities.
“Some people think that the natural resources should be controlled by a small handful of very distant bureaucrats located in Washington,” Trump said, speaking at Utah’s domed state Capitol. “And guess what, they’re wrong.”
“Together,” he continued, “we will usher in a bright new future of wonder and wealth.”
President Barack Obama designated Bears Ears in 2016, and President Bill Clinton set aside Grand Staircase-Escalante in
1996. In both cases, Utah politicians said the actions were illegal abuses of a century-old law called the Antiquities Act.
Environmentalists and some native tribes say Trump’s move will destroy the national heritage and threaten some 100,000 sites of archaeological importance tucked into the monuments’ desert landscapes. Conservative lawmakers and many Westerners argue that the move is the proper response to decades of federal overreach.
The announcement sparked immediate outcry from Trump’s opponents.
“What’s next, President Trump,” said Rhea Suh, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, “the Grand Canyon?”
In April, the president ordered Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke to review 27 national monuments created since 1996, something he said would “end another egregious use of government power.” In August, Zinke delivered a report to the president suggesting that Trump change the boundaries of six of those monuments.
Americans on both sides of the aisle had anxiously awaited the decision. On Monday morning, hundreds of people gathered outside the state Capitol in cowboy hats to protest Trump’s decision.
Helaman Thor Hale and Andrea Hale, both Native Americans, had brought their three sons to the rally. “It’s a historical trauma our people have been through over and over,” said Helaman Thor Hale. “We’re showing our kids this is the real world. And it’s not nice.”
Farther south, at the edge of the monument, another group had gathered to applaud Trump’s decision over the weekend, standing beneath a banner: “Thank you for listening to local voices.”
Trump’s decision to reduce Bears Ears is viewed as a victory for Republican lawmakers, fossil fuel companies and others who argue that monument designations are federal land grabs that limit revenue and stifle local control. And it is considered a defeat for many environmentalists and recreation groups and for the five Indian nations who have fought for generations to protect the Bears Ears region.
The Navajo Nation has vowed to challenge the decision in court, along with other tribes and conservation and outdoor industry groups.
“We will stand and fight all the way,” said Russell Begaye, president of the Navajo Nation, adding that the U.S. government had already taken “millions of acres of my people’s land.”
“We have suffered enough,” he said.
Sen. Mike Lee of Utah said Trump’s decision would benefit his state. “He’s been sympathetic to our plight,” he said of the president. “He’s been sympathetic to the fact that we’ve been mistreated, and I’m grateful that he is willing to correct it.”
The federal government controls about two-thirds of the land in Utah, and the state’s leading politicians have long pushed for more local control of public lands. In an interview, Gov. Gary Herbert called Trump’s move “nothing more than a realignment, a reconfiguration of the boundaries.”
Each monument has its own specific restrictions. At Bears Ears, for example, federal rules forbid new mining and drilling, but allow the interior department to continue to issue cattle grazing leases.
Supporters of the Antiquities Act say the law is part of the bedrock of U.S. conservation. But some Republican lawmakers, particularly those in Utah, argue that recent presidents have abused the act, using it to put aside far more land than its language permits. The law says that presidents should limit designations to “the smallest area compatible” with the care of the natural features that the monument is meant to protect.
Trump is not the first president to shrink a monument. Woodrow Wilson reduced Mount Olympus by half. Franklin Roosevelt cut the Grand Canyon monument at the behest of ranchers. (Both are now national parks.)
But the courts have never ruled on whether a president actually has the power to make these changes. The coming legal battle will probably have far-reaching implications.