Interior boss seeks to reduce Utah preserve
Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke proposed scaling back the borders of a national monument in southeastern Utah on Monday, a move that could prompt the first major rollback of public land protections under the Trump administration.
Bears Ears National Monument is a 1.3-million-acre conservation area that was designated by President Barack Obama in the final days of his presidency. President Trump had called for a review of that decision, and Zinke’s recommendation is being watched closely as an indicator of how the Trump administration will treat public acres.
Zinke made his recommendation in a report that also requests Congress give local tribes the authority to co-manage “designated cultural resources” within the monument’s new boundaries. But he suggests holding off on a final decision on the region until a review of 26 other monuments is complete in late August.
The Bears Ears designation was supported by environmentalists and the leaders of many native tribes in the region, including the Navajo Nation, but was opposed by Utah’s governor, the state’s congressional delegation and some local residents.
In a statement, Zinke said monument designation is “not the best use of the land.” Zinke recommended that Trump roll back the boundaries, to protect only areas that include historic and prehistoric structures, such as archaeological sites and remains of dwellings.
The monument, as it stands, is a vast canyon region of red rocks named for two towering buttes called the Bears Ears. It is home to some 100,000 archaeological sites.
In terms of protection, national monuments are generally considered one step below national parks.
The Antiquities Act, signed by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1906, gives presidents the authority to protect designated areas as public monuments. In the century since its passage, presidents have used the law to protect millions of acres of public lands, from the Grand Canyon to the Muir Woods in Marin County.
No president has ever used his authority to eliminate a monument, or to reduce one at the scale proposed by Zinke.
Zinke declined to quantify the area of the proposed smaller monument but said that the new boundaries should be limited to “the smallest area compatible” with the management of those sites.
Farmers, ranchers and the oil and gas industry have urged the Utah congressional delegation to push for a rollback of the protected areas so they could have access to the land.