No miners seek ex- monument site claims

Early Friday morning, vast areas of the red- rock high plateau that surrounds federally protected buttes in southern Utah were officially thrown open to miners.

A decision weeks earlier by President Donald Trump had shrunk the size of two national monuments — known as Bears Ears and Grand Staircase- Escalante — by hundreds of thousands of acres, enraging environmentalists and American Indian groups. And yet, five days in, not only has there been no stampede, but also no one has shown up.

The Utah Division of Oil, Gas and Mining says it hasn’t received a single permit application for plots in the areas. That may not ease the angst in the activist community any, but it does highlight a couple of key elements to the dispute: While the remote region contains several minerals as well as oil and gas, the logistics of moving material in and out are tricky, and the only resource that has the real potential of luring explorers is uranium. But uranium prices are depressed, having plunged more than 80 percent since 2007 and squelched interest in opening new mines.

Late last year, Trump shrank the 1.4 million- acre Bears Ears to about 220,000 acres and the 1.9 million- acre Grand Staircase- Escalante to about 1 million acres. The aim for lifting the monument boundaries was to create jobs and prospecting opportunities in the region for companies looking to exploit oil, natural gas, coal and mineral deposits.