(Photos by Tim Peterson)
More than 330 organizations and businesses have sent a letter to the Trump administration protesting the drastic reductions in two Utah national monuments.
The letter, sent July 30, is signed by a plethora of indigenous entities, scientific and conservation organizations, outdoor recreation companies, and others. Those include Dolores River Boating Advocates, the Native American Rights Fund, New Mexico Wild, Patagonia, the Grand Canyon Trust, Great Old Broads for Wilderness, Torrey House Press, and Conservation Colorado.
On July 13, President Trump issued a proclamation that downsized Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments by more than 90 percent each. This is the second time he has shrunk the monuments. In his first term, he slashed both, but in a game of back-and-forth, President Biden returned them to their original sizes.
This time, Trump has cut their acreage even more drastically than before. In 2017, he reduced Bears Ears from about 1.35 million acres to 228,000. Now, it sits at 121,000 acres. Grand Staircase-Escalante, originally 1.87 million acres, was cut to about 1 million acres in 2017 and to just 182,000 acres now.
In his proclamation, Trump said many of the cultural resources the monuments are intended to protect “are prevalent throughout the Four Corners region and, in some cases, throughout the American West.” The commonness of these resources, the proclamation states, “suggests that the specific instances of such objects found within the Monument are not of particular historic or scientific interest.”
The proclamation says the reduced boundaries will “unburden public National Forest System lands that can and should be put to a higher-priority use,” such as mining for “critical minerals such as silver, copper, molybdenum, lead, uranium, vanadium, and zinc.”
The Trump administration also supports opening more lands to oil and gas development.
In their letter to the administration as well as the Department of Interior and Congress, the critics of the action wrote that 82 percent of national public lands are already open to oil and gas leasing, and that even speculative mining damages wildlife habitat and possibly drinking water.
They also cited polls showing that 91 percent of Western voters support keeping existing national monuments in place and, even in Utah, more than 70 percent of voters support retaining the two monuments.
The changes to the monuments have also drawn criticism because they reject the input of indigenous nations that have been involved in both monuments.
“Public lands and waters have been stewarded by Indigenous peoples since time immemorial,” states the letter. “The recent gutting of protections for over 90% of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments is a direct affront to Tribal sovereignty, government-to-government consultation, and the U.S. Government’s trust and treaty obligations to Tribes.”
While downsizing the monuments, Trump also terminated the Bears Ears Commission, which was composed of five indigenous tribal nations that worked with the Bureau of Land Management to develop a management plan for Bears Ears. The nations are the Hopi Tribe, Navajo Nation, Ute Indian Tribe of the Uintah and Ouray Reservation, Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, and Pueblo of Zuni.
Since Trump’s proclamation, the BLM, which manages most of the lands in question, has been removing seals of the five tribal nations from roadside signs about Bears Ears.
“In a particular act of cruelty from the administration and the Utah delegation,” says the letter to the Trump administration, “the proclamation for Bears Ears explicitly ‘terminated’ the longstanding and ground-breaking Bears Ears Commission(BEC). The proclamation for Grand Staircase-Escalante essentially erases a landmark co-stewardship framework established between the Grand Staircase-Escalante Inter-Tribal Coalition and the Bureau of Land Management.”
Representatives of all five tribes made statements objecting to Trump’s proclamation.
“The Bears Ears region is our homeland,” said Gwen Cantsee, vice chairwoman for the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe and Bears Ears commissioner, in a release on July 14.
“Our ancestors lived, hunted, gathered, and prayed here long before boundaries were drawn. The Ute Mountain Ute people were forcefully removed from these lands, but our connection to this sacred place cannot be erased. We are deeply disappointed by the decision to dramatically reduce Bears Ears National Monument. No matter what actions the U.S. government takes, we will continue to carry our history forward, build community, and protect this landscape through our traditions and teachings.”
