National monuments restored
Biden order protects Bears Ears, Grand Staircase-escalante
WASHINGTON — President
Joe Biden on Friday restored two sprawling national monuments in Utah, reversing a decision by President Donald Trump that opened for mining and other development hundreds of thousands of acres of rugged lands sacred to Native Americans and home to ancient cliff dwellings and petroglyphs.
The Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-escalante monuments in Southern Utah encompass more than 3.2 million acres — an area nearly the size of Connecticut — and were created by Democratic administrations under a century-old law that allows presidents to protect sites considered historic or geographically or culturally important.
“This may be the easiest thing I’ve ever done so far as president — I mean it,” a smiling Biden said at a White House ceremony attended by Democratic lawmakers, tribal leaders and environmentalists.
Bears Ears in particular was an important site to protect,
Biden said, noting that the 1.3-million acre site is the first national monument to be established at the request of federally recognized tribes.
Biden called Grand Staircase-escalante “a place of unique and extraordinary geology” and noted that the 1.9-million acre site had been protected by presidential order for 21 years before Trump’s 2017 order slashed the monument nearly in half. Trump cut Bears Ears by 85 percent, to just over 200,000 acres.
In a separate action, Biden also restored protections at a marine conservation area off the New England coast that has been used for commercial fishing under an order by Trump. A rules change approved by Trump allowed commercial fishing at the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts National Monument in the Atlantic Ocean, a nearly 5,000-square-mile area southeast of Cape Cod.
Trump’s action was heralded by fishing groups but derided by environmentalists who pushed Biden and Interior Secretary Deb Haaland to restore protections against fishing.
Utah Gov. Spencer Cox and other Republicans expressed disappointment in Biden’s decision to restore the Utah monuments.
Trump invoked the century-old Antiquities Act to cut 2 million acres from the two monuments. Restrictions on mining and other energy production were a “massive land grab” that “should never have happened,” Trump said in revoking the protections.
Sen. Mitt Romney, R-utah, said Biden had “squandered the opportunity to build consensus” and find a permanent solution for the monuments. “Yet again, Utah’s national monuments are being used as a political football between administrations,” Romney said.